Transcript Cold_war_1950s.vnd

1950’s
THE COLD
WAR
• PEOPLE SCARED
– RED SCARE
– ROSENBERGS
– USSR A-BOMB
– RED CHINA
RDS-1, the first Soviet atomic test,
code-named by the US as Joe 1
McCarthyism
1950
• Joseph McCarthy (19081957) was a Republican
Senator, on February 9th
1950,McCarthy claimed to
have a list of 205 Communists
in the State Department.
• Conformity
• McCarthy's attacks emerged within a
climate of political and social conformity.
– One state required pro wrestlers to take a
loyalty oath before stepping into the ring.
– In Indiana, a group of anti-communists
indicted Robin Hood (and its vaguely
socialistic message that the book's titular hero
had a right to rob from the rich and give to the
poor) forced librarians to pull the book from
the shelves.
"You read
books, eh?"
• Baseball's Cincinnati Reds renamed
themselves the "Redlegs."
• Cosmetics companies recalled a face
powder called "Russian Sable" and
renamed it "Dark Dark."
• Starting in Dearborn, Michigan, and
spreading to other parts of the
country, "Miss Loyalty" beauty
contests became the rage.
• In the spring of 1954, however,
the tables turned when
McCarthy charged United
States Army.
• The ensuing hearings proved
to be McCarthy's downfall.
"I have here
in my hand . . ."
In the course of testimony
McCarthy submitted evidence that
was identified as fraudulent.
As both public and politicians
watched the bullying antics of the
Senator, they became increasingly
disenchanted.
• For the first time, television broadcast
allowed the general public to see the
Senator as a bully.
• "McCarthyism" lives on to describe
anti-Communist fervor, reckless
accusations, and guilt by association
Effects of McCarthyism
•Many people lost their jobs and
livelihoods.
•Blacklists and the banning of the
Communist Party in America.
•Anti-democratic atmosphere.
Effects of McCarthyism
9,500 civil servants were dismissed and 15,000
resigned; 600 teachers lost their jobs and many fine
actors and scriptwriters were unable to work again.
Charlie Chaplin, the biggest Hollywood movie star of the
pre-war years (and also a Communist) left America in
disgust.
The 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act forced
organizations to give lists of members (they might be
Communists) and the 1954 Communist Control Act
banned the Communist Party altogether.
Civil
Defense!
1951
We Have To Be Prepared!
The Korean
War
1950–53
•The Korean War
was the time when
the Cold War
became a GLOBAL
CONFLICT!
What caused it?
• President Truman was interested in the
Far East
•DUCKS
• Domino theory:
Europe was not
the only place where Communists were
coming to power.
• In the Far East, too, they were getting
powerful – China turned Communist in
1949.
• Truman believed that, if one country fell to
Communism, then others would follow, like
a line of
Dominoes.
• He was worried that, if Korea fell, the
Communists would capture Japan.
• Undermine Communism: In
April 1950, the American
National Security Council
issued a report (NSC 68)
recommending that America
abandon 'containment' and
start 'rolling back' Communism
• Cold War: Truman realized
the USA was in a competition
for world domination with the
USSR.
• By supporting South Korea,
America was able to fight
Communism without directly
attacking Russia.
• Stalin, also, was involved in the
Far East:
• Kim iI Sung visited Stalin. In
1949, he persuaded Stalin that he
could conquer South Korea.
• Stalin did not think that America
would dare to get involved, so he
gave his agreement.
• Stalin saw a chance to continue
the Cold War and discomfort
America, but ‘at arm’s length’ –
without directly confronting the
Americans.
• Kim II Sung also went to see Mao
Zedong, the leader of China, to
get his agreement.
• Syngman Rhee (leader of
South Korea) In 1950
boasted that he was going
to attack North Korea. It
was a good enough excuse
– the North Koreans
invaded South Korea.
• June 1950
On 25
June 1950, the North
Koreans attacked.
•
The North Korean
People's Army
(NKPA) easily
defeated the Republic
of Korea's army (the
ROKs)
• They captured most
of South Korea.
• On 27 June
America
persuaded the
United Nations to
pass a resolution
supporting South
Korea.
•
The Americans
sent troops to
Korea to reinforce
the South Korean
Army at Pusan .
• On 15 September,
the American
General MacArthur
led a UN
amphibious landing
at Inchon (near
Seoul) behind the
NKPA . Out of the
300,000 UN
troops, 260,000
were Americans.
• In danger of being cut off,
the NKPA had to
retreat. The Americans
drove them back and
recaptured South Korea.
125,000 NKPA prisoners
were taken.
• On 7 October 1950
MacArthur invaded North
Korea. He advanced as
far as the Chinese
border. He boasted that
the Americans would be
'home by Christmas'.
• Now the Chinese
were alarmed.
• On 25 November,
200,000 Chinese
troops ('People's
Volunteers') attacked
MacArthur.
• They had modern
weapons supplied by
Russia, and a
fanatical hatred of
the Americans.
• Then, on 31
December, half a
million more Chinese
troops entered the war
and attacked the
Americans.
• They drove the
Americans back (using
'human wave tactics').
• They recaptured North
Korea, and advanced
into South Korea.
• The Americans
landed more troops.
• The Chinese
admitted to losing
390,000 men dead UN sources put the
figure at up to a
million Chinese and
half a million North
Koreans dead.
• The Americans
drove the Chinese
back, but lost
54,000 American
soldiers dead
doing so.
• MacArthur reached
the 38th parallel in
March 1951
March 1951 – 1953
• Truman told MacArthur to stop. MacArthur
was fired when he publicly criticized
Truman’s order.
• In 1953, Eisenhower became American
president.
• The Americans threatened to use the
atomic bomb if China did not stop
fighting. The Chinese agree to a truce,
which was signed on 27 July 1953.
• It is estimated that 10 million people died in
the war - as many as died in the First World
War.
• Eventually a cease-fire was
established on July 27th, 1953, by
which time the front line was back in
the proximity of the 38th parallel.
• Demilitarized zone (DMZ) was
established around it, which is still
defended today by North Korean
troops on one side and South Korean
and American troops on the other.
•No peace treaty
has yet been
signed to date!!!!!!
RESULTS
• The Korean War was the first armed
confrontation of the Cold War.
• It created the idea of a limited war, where
the two superpowers would fight without
descending to an all out war that could
involve nuclear weapons.
• It also expanded the Cold War, which to
that point had mostly been concerned
with Europe
Joseph Stalin, 73 years of age, had
suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and
died at 9:50 p.m. on March 5, 1953
The
Rosenbergs
1953
…a lengthy and controversial
espionage case.
In 1950, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation arrested Julius
Rosenberg (1918–53), an electrical
engineer who had worked (1940–
45) for the U.S. army signal corps,
and his wife Ethel (1916–53); They
were indicted for conspiracy to
transmit classified military
information to the Soviet Union. In
the trial that followed (Mar., 1951),
the government charged that in
1944 and 1945 the Rosenbergs had
persuaded Ethel's brother, David
Greenglass—an employee at the
Los Alamos atomic bomb project—
to provide them and a third person,
Harry Gold, with top-secret data on
nuclear weapons. The chief
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
evidence against the Rosenbergs
came from Ethel’s brother
Greenglass and his wife, Ruth.
Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty (1951) and received
the death sentence;
Morton Sobell, a codefendant, received a 30-year prison term, as did
Harry Gold; and David Greenglass was later sentenced to 15 years
imprisonment.
Despite many court appeals and pleas for executive clemency, the
Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953.
Julius was taken to the electric chair first and given one last chance to
confess – if he did, he was assured that Ethel’s sentence would be
commuted. He remained silent and was executed.
Ethel was brought in – she was much smaller than her husband and the
authorities failed to adjust the chair’s connections. The first jolt of
electricity failed to kill her …. They would have to shock her two more
times before she would be declared dead.
They became the first U.S. civilians to suffer the death penalty in an
espionage trial – Ethel was the first women executed in the electric
chair.
It would later be revealed that the testimony against Ethel was false.
She was only guilty of being Julius Rosenberg’s wife.
1954
.......things begin to get warm.......
Soviet Union
sets up the KGB.
• Komitet Gosudarstvennoy
Bezopasnosti or Committee for State
Security.
• It was the Soviet Union's premier internal
security, intelligence, and secret police
organization.
CIA Coup in Iran
The 1954 Coup in Iran was the CIA's (Central Intelligence
Agency) first successful overthrow of a foreign
government.
Great Britain initiated the plot in 1952 to guarantee
access to Iranian oil and approached the US. The
Truman administration rejected it, but President
Eisenhower approved it shortly after taking office in 1953,
because of fears about oil and Communism.
CIA agents orchestrating the Iran coup worked directly
with royalist Iranian military officers, handpicked the prime
minister's replacement, sent a stream of envoys to bolster
the shah's courage, directed a campaign of bombings by
Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and
planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.
A harsh military dictatorship was setup. The coup was a
turning point in modern Iranian history and remains a
persistent irritant in Tehran-Washington relations. It
consolidated the power of the shah, who ruled with an
iron hand for 26 more years in close contact with the
United States.
CIA Coup in Guatemala
CIA Coup in Guatemala
In the 1950s, the Guatemalans dared
to challenge an American business
that controlled much of its economy.
In 1954, the CIA helped overthrow the
democratically elected government of
Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz.
Why? Because Arbenz incurred
Washington's wrath with his Agrarian
Reform Plan, which, among other
things, confiscated lands owned by
the U.S.-based United Fruit Company
and redistributed it to peasants.
This map shows extent of the holdings of the United Fruit Company of Boston.
Friends of the United Fruit Company in Washington -- including the Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles and the CIA Director Allen Dulles -- began yelling for action, and in
1953 the CIA was directed to arrange for Arbenz's removal
Gasoline depot bombed by
CIA rebel air force.
The agency began funding a small band of rebels based in
neighboring Honduras, and on June 18, 1954, these forces
attacked. At first they made little progress, but a CIA radio
propaganda campaign exaggerated the size of the rebel
force and contributed to the defection of Arbenz's officer
corps. Arbenz fled into exile and a military junta took
control of the Guatemalan government.
Guatemala now had a
government installed
by the CIA – a military
dictatorship . . .
But it wasn’t
Communist!
The Nuclear Arms Race
TheThe
Soviet
U.S.atomic
monopoly
bomb
onmotivated
nuclear weapons
the USA to
regain
technology
its nuclear
ended
advantage;
in 1949 when
In 1952,
the the
USSR
U.S.
st hydrogen
successfully
tested the 1tested
their bomb
own atomic
(1,000bomb
times
more powerful than the a-bomb)
The Soviets responded with their own
hydrogen bomb in 1953
First Indochina War
1946-1954
• Throughout the 1930s and 40s, rural
uprisings in French Indochina organized
by Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party
became common occurrences. However,
the British and the Nationalist Chinese
sided with the French.
Vietnam was part of
the French Empire in
South East Asia.
After the Japanese
withdrawal, Paris had
agreed with Ho Chi
Minh to recognize his
Democratic Republic
of Vietnam as a
"freestate within the
Indochinese
Federation." But as
soon as the French
military was reestablished in Hanoi,
the apparent
concession was
forgotten
• Since WWI Ho Chi Minh sought
independence from France.
• Ho Chi Minh turned to USSR for aid
• Put US in difficult spot
• France had agreed with Ho Chi Minh to
recognize his Democratic Republic of
Vietnam as a "freestate within the
Indochinese Federation."
• But as soon as the French took over from
the Japanese after WWII the apparent
concession was forgotten
In December 1946,
negotiations with Ho Chi Minh
failed, and fighting broke out
again between the French and
Ho's Viet Minh. The first
Indochina war had begun, and
it would continue for another
eight years.
7 May 1954
Dien Bien Phu
On May,8 1954 the Viet Minh counted
11,721 prisoners, amongst whom were
4,436 wounded. 858 of the most seriously
wounded were evacuated under the control
of the Red Cross.
Of the remaining 10,863 prisoners,
including 3,578 wounded, the Viet Minh
returned only 3,290 four months later. The
number of men who died in the camps,
7,573, represents a percentage on the
order of 70%.
Geneva
Agreement
established the
17th parallel as
the "cease-fire
line" and made
Ho Chi Minh the
president of
North Vietnam
At the same time, the first
major refugee movement had
began. Almost a million
Catholic Vietnamese from
North Vietnam, led by their
priests and transported by the
United States Navy moved to
South Vietnam.
While more than 50,000
people from
South Vietnam moved to
the North.
The United States refused to
bail France out.
“We shall fight no land war in
Asia.”
Warsaw Pact
• The Warsaw Pact, officially named
the Treaty of Friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance was
a military alliance of the Eastern
European Eastern Bloc countries
• Who intended to organize against the
perceived threat from the NATO
alliance
• The Warsaw treaty was drafted by
Nikita Khrushchev in 1955 and signed
in Warsaw on May 14, 1955.
Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact Members
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Soviet Union
Albania
Bulgaria
Romania
East Germany
Hungary
Poland
Czechoslovakia
The Hungarian
Rebellion
The First Domino
November 14, 1956
Causes
•
Poverty
– Hungarians were poor, yet much of the food
and industrial goods they produced was sent
to Russia.
•
Russian Control
– The Hungarians were very patriotic, and
they hated Russian control – which included
censorship, the vicious secret police (called
the AVH after 1948) and Russian control of
what the schools taught.
–
• Catholic Church
– The Hungarians were religious, but the
Communist Party had banned religion, and
put the leader of the Catholic Church in
prison.
• Help from the West
– Hungarians thought that the United Nations or
the new US president, Eisenhower, would
help them.
• Destalinisation
– When the Communist Party tried to
Destalinise Hungary, things got out of control.
The Hungarian leader Rakosi asked for
permission to arrest 400 trouble-makers, but
Khrushchev would not let him.
János Kádár
Communist leader
1956-1988
At 5:20 a.m., Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy
announced the invasion to the nation in a grim, 35second broadcast, declaring: "Our troops are
fighting. The Government is in its place." However,
within hours Nagy himself would seek asylum at the
Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest while his former
colleague and imminent replacement, János Kádár,
who had been flown secretly from Moscow to the
city of Szolnok, 60 miles southeast of the capital,
prepared to take power with Moscow's backing.
On November 22, after
receiving assurances of
safe passage from Kádár
and the Soviets, Nagy
finally agreed to leave the
Yugoslav Embassy. But
he was immediately
arrested by Soviet
security officers and flown
to a secret location in
Romania.
By then, the fighting had mostly ended, the
Hungarian resistance had essentially been
destroyed, and Kádár was entering the next
phase of his strategy to neutralize dissent
for the long term.
The defeat of the Hungarian revolution was
one of the darkest moments of the Cold
War.
TWO reasons why the West did
not help Hungary:
• 1. Britain and France were involved
in the Suez crisis in Egypt.
• 2. Eisenhower did not
think Hungary worth a world war.
When the UN suggested an
investigation, Russia used its veto to
stop
The Suez
Crisis
1956
Great Britain decided to join with France and Israel in a military
intervention to attempt to prevent General Nasser from
nationalizing the Suez Canal in the autumn of 1956. Nasser was
promoting Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East and had
become an increasing source of irritation to the British and the
French.
The Anglo-French assault upon
Egypt, which began on 31
October 1956, provoked a
furious response from the USA.
President Eisenhower's
condemnation of the attack
triggered a sterling crisis which
forced the government to
withdraw from the venture.
Coup in Cuba
Former Cuban president Fulgencio
Batista y Zaldivar seized power by
coup, and ruled as dictator until he
fled from the forces of Fidel Castro
(January 1, 1959) CIA tried to stop
Fidel Castro from taking over Cuba
but failed resulting in Cuba
becoming a communist country.
Sputnik
1957
History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully
launched Sputnik I.
The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed
only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical
path.
That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and
scientific developments.
While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the
space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.
Tension grows between USSR and US
•
•
•
•
•
1. Sputnik (1957)
Sputnik = psychological
2. Castro in (1959)
Castro = communist right next to US
3. China accused Khrushchev of being soft
on America
• A summit was planned for May 1960
between the two superpowers
The second Sputnik
satellite was launched
on Nov 3, 1957 and
carried a dog, named
Laika, into space. Laika
died a few hours after
launch from stress and
overheating. Her true
cause of death was not
made public until
decades after the flight,
with officials stating that
she was either
euthanized by poisoned
food or died when the
oxygen ran out. Some former Soviet scientists have since expressed regret for
allowing Laika to die.
The last Sputnik installment was intended to be a space laboratory for study of
Earth's magnetic field and radiation belt. After its launch on May 15, 1958, it
remained in orbit for nearly two years.