Transcript An Iron Curtain Falls

Chapter 17
Cold War Begins
SECTION 1
An Iron Curtain Falls
 At the heart of the Allied alliance stood
the United States and the Soviet
Union—two nations bound together by
a common enemy and mutual distrust
of each other. When the war ended,
the Soviets and the Americans looked
at the world through different eyes.
 The Soviets saw awful destruction. Nothing
was more important to them than protecting
their nation from a rearmed Germany and
rebuilding their shattered economy.
 The Americans, on the other hand, saw a
booming economy and a thriving democracy.
Many Americans felt they had a mission to
build a free world, with the United States
leading the way.
Turning Point at Yalta
 Near the end of the war, the Big Three—
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—met at the
Soviet city of Yalta to work out control of the
postwar world.
 At Yalta, Stalin agreed to support the United
Nations and to join the fight against Japan
after Germany surrendered. In exchange,
Stalin would receive territories in Asia.
 When agreement broke down over Germany
and Eastern Europe, the three leaders agreed
to joint control of Germany until a commission
could settle the issue of war payments. With
war still raging in the Pacific, Roosevelt and
Churchill had little choice but to accept Soviet
occupation of Eastern Europe.
 Roosevelt felt confident that he could win
Stalin’s trust and convince him to relax his iron
grip on Eastern Europe. However, he died
before he had a chance to test this belief.
Truman Comes to Power
 Truman, who had little international experience
when he assumed the presidency, stepped
forward to support formation of the United
Nations and to resolve control of Germany.
 Truman assumed a get-tough attitude at
Potsdam that would become a trademark of his
cold war diplomacy. Despite this attitude, the
leaders worked out an agreement to carve
Germany and the capital of Berlin into four
zones controlled by France, Great Britain, the
United States, and the Soviet Union. Each
occupying nation would take war payments
from its zone.
 As Truman’s and Stalin’s mistrust of one
another grew, they began to see the world as
divided into two camps—one dominated by
capitalism, the other by communism.
 In 1946 Stalin declared that capitalism was a
danger to world peace. Truman responded by
adopting the policy of containment suggested
by George Kennan. Churchill added fuel to the
fire with his “iron curtain” speech and urged a
show of strength against the Soviets.
Cold War is Declared
 The start of the cold war marked a long
struggle in which the United States and Soviet
Union would try to block each other’s goals
around the world, using all tactics short of allout war.
 The first test of containment came in Greece
and Turkey, which Truman believed might
soon fall under Communist influence. To
prevent Communist takeovers, he proposed
a plan to provide military and economic aid
to all free people who were “resisting
attempted subjugation by armed minorities
or outside pressures.”
 The so-called Truman Doctrine defined
United States foreign policy for the next 20
years. The cold war was not just a struggle
for territory but a fight between two opposing
world views.
 To prevent the Communists from making
gains in war-torn Europe, the United States
implemented the Marshall Plan, named after
Secretary of State George Marshall. The plan
provided massive amounts of financial aid to
help European nations rebuild their
infrastructures and economies.
 The Soviet Union, which was included in the
Marshall Plan, rejected the aid. Because the
money had to be spent on American goods,
Soviet leaders charged that the aid
strengthened United States capitalism at the
expense of European freedom.
Question 1
In Stalin’s view, possession of a ring of proSoviet satellite nations such as Poland was “not
a question of honor for Russia, but one of
life and death.” What may have prompted this
comment?
Question 2
 How did the Soviets take power in
Eastern Europe?
Question 3
 Do you think Roosevelt could have
negotiated more effectively with Stalin
had he lived?
Question 4
 What economic reasons did the United
States have for stopping the spread of
communism?
Berlin Crisis
 Since the end of the war, Soviet and
American plans for Germany had put the two
nations on a collision course. Unable to find
a common ground, the United States, Great
Britain, and France laid the basis for a free
West German state with strong economic
ties to the rest of Europe.
Berlin Crisis
 The introduction of a common currency in
the three western zones and West Berlin
enraged the Soviets, who demanded that
Western leaders scrap their currency
plan or accept a Soviet currency in
eastern Germany and all of Berlin.
 When Western leaders went ahead with their
plan, the Soviets imposed a blockade around
Berlin. Taking advantage of a 1945
agreement to keep three air corridors open to
Berlin, Truman organized a massive airlift into
West Berlin.
 World opinion turned against the Soviet
Union for starving innocent people to achieve
its ends. The United States, on the other
hand, won the goodwill of many West
Germans, melting wartime hatreds.
 In 1949, with cold war tensions rising, the
United States, Canada, and 10 European
nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a military alliance to
prevent Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
 In 1955 the Soviet Union matched NATO
with the Warsaw Pact—a Soviet-Eastern
European alliance planted squarely across
the iron curtain.
The Cold War in Asia
 World War II caused nations throughout Asia
to seek independence. Stretched thin by the
job of rebuilding at home, Great Britain gave
in to demands for freedom in India and
Pakistan—which later split into Pakistan and
Bangladesh. The Dutch did the same in
Indonesia.
 Meanwhile, a civil war raged in China
between the Nationalist forces of Jiang
Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) and the Communist
forces of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung).
 The war grew, in part, out of broken
promises by the Nationalists to institute land
reforms when they took power in 1910. Only
the Japanese invasion during World War II
had caused a temporary alliance between
the warring armies.
 Late in 1945 Truman sent George Marshall
to find a way to end the fighting, but both
Mao and Jiang wanted to control China
alone. Truman made a decision to back the
Nationalists, but the aid came too late.
Corruption and refusal to enact land reforms
made Jiang’s war-tattered army vulnerable
to defeat.
 In December 1949 the Nationalists fled to
the island of Taiwan, which seemed in the
eyes of many to be a failure of containment.
The National Security Council urged the
President to support the remaining friendly
governments in Asia, including Vietnam.
 Events in Berlin and China unnerved
everybody—including Truman. A high-level
defense study—National Security Council
Report NSC-68— suggested beginning a
massive buildup of weapons to stay ahead
of the Soviet Union. The nation now
embarked on a dangerous arms race.
War Flares in Korea
 Korea, which had been brutally ruled by
Japan since 1910, suffered a fate much like
Germany. At the end of the war, it was
divided at the 38th parallel, leaving a
Communist government in the north and a
pro-Western government in the South.
 On June 25, 1950, North Korean troops
followed Soviet-made tanks across the 38th
parallel. Truman, who saw the assault as a
test of containment, ordered air and naval
forces to Korea without the approval of
Congress. He then sought help from the UN.
 With the Soviet delegate absent from the
Security Counsel, the UN backed Truman’s
request. UN troops, led by the United States,
drove the North Koreans back to the 38th
parallel. Smelling victory, MacArthur persuaded
Truman to let him attempt to unify Korea.
 With North Korean troops pinned against the
Chinese border at the Yula River, MacArthur
ignored warnings from Mao to back off and
crossed into China. The action drew Chinese
troops into the conflict, which pushed UN
forces back across the 38th parallel.
 During the ensuing stalemate, MacArthur
openly criticized Truman for refusing to
use nuclear weapons against North Korea.
Truman defended his policy of limited war
and fired MacArthur.
 Fighting in Korea dragged on until the next
President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, oversaw
a ceasefire.
 The Korea War settled little. Korea remained
divided geographically and politically in much
the same way as before the war.
 However, the war had long-lasting effects on
the United States. It convinced Americans to
back a huge military buildup and to overlook
the fact that Truman had never sought a
formal declaration of war from Congress—a
fact that greatly enhanced the power of the
presidency.
1. How did United States membership in
NATO mark a departure from its
traditional pre-World War II foreign
policy?
2. What was the link between the
Communist victory in China and the
arms race?
3. Why do you think Truman jumped so
quickly into the Korean conflict?
4. What precedent did Truman set for the
future?
Cold War in the
Atomic Age
Chapter 17
Section 3 notes
Living With Fear
 The atomic age terrified Americans. To help calm the
public Truman organized the Federal Civilian
Defense Administration to show people they could
survive a nuclear war.
Americans learned how to build bomb shelters,
how to keep from panicking, how to cope with
radiation injuries, and more.
Most Americans thought the best way to
prevent nuclear war was to have more and
better bombs than the Soviets. After a heated
debate, Truman ordered scientists to develop a
deadly hydrogen bomb, a superbomb.
Nuclear Suvival
Nuclear Survival
Question
 “ There is only one thing worse than one
nation having an atomic bomb,” said on
scientist in 1949. “ That’s two nations
having it.” How does this remark reflect
the thinking of Americans in the late
1940s?
Eisenhower Elected
 Eisenhower walked into the presidency at the
height of cold war tensions: China had just fallen,
the Korean War dragged on, and the H-bomb
heated up the arms race. Yet people trusted that
“Ike” would lead the country through dangerous
times.
 The death of Stalin and Eisenhower’s bluffs
about a nuclear attack led Communist delegates
to seek a resolution to the Korean War.
Eisenhower Elected
•Eisenhower found in John Foster Dulles a
secretary of state who equaled his own fierce
anti-communism and command of world affairs.
Question
 What advantages did Eisenhower have
over Truman in negotiating with
Communists?
A New Strategy
 Instead of depending on costly armies and navies
to limit wars as Truman did, Eisenhower relied on
cheaper air power and nuclear weapons. Under a
program called the New Look, he reduced the
manpower of the army and navy, while increasing
the number of air force personnel.
 To put teeth into the scaled-down military,
Eisenhower and Dulles pledged to meet aggression
with massive retaliation—an instant nuclear attack.
To back up this tough stance, they circled the
Soviet Union and China with American military
bases and allies.
A New Strategy
 Critics dubbed the new foreign policy
brinkmanship—the art of never backing down
from a crisis.
 It posed two dangers:
– (1) It gave the United States only two choices—either
fight a nuclear battle or do nothing.
– (2) It also led the Soviets to develop more powerful
bombs, creating what Churchill called a “balance of
terror. ”
Question
 What did Eisenhower mean when he told
Americans his defense plan provided “ a
bigger bang for the buck.”
Eisenhower Wages Peace
 While Eisenhower used the war machine to curb
Communist aggression, he also worked for peace.
– He approved the explosion of the biggest H-bomb
ever tested;
– He proposed the “atoms for peace” plan to the UN.
 The radioactive fallout from H-bomb tests led
people worldwide to clamor for a halt in the arms
race. Eisenhower met with Soviet leaders
Nikolay Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev in
Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss disarmament.
Although the conference yielded few results, the
two powers were talking again.
Eisenhower Wages Peace
 The radioactive fallout from H-bomb tests led
people worldwide to clamor for a halt in the arms
race.
 Eisenhower met with Soviet leaders Nikolay
Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev in Geneva,
Switzerland, to discuss disarmament. Although
the conference yielded few results, the two
powers were talking again.
Questions
 How did the arms race become a global
issue?
The Deep Freeze Returns
 Two events revived tensions:
– (1) In 1956 Khrushchev ordered troops to crush an
uprising in Hungary.
– (2) In 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik, leading the
United States to launch the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA)—the start of the space
race.
 Pressure to rein in arms production remained
strong. In 1957 a group of business, scientific,
and publishing leaders organized SANE—the
Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy—to lobby
for arms reductions. That same year the
publication of On the Beach whipped up public
support for a halt in H-bomb tests.
The Deep Freeze Returns
 Pressure to rein in arms production remained
strong.
 In 1957 a group of business, scientific, and
publishing leaders organized SANE—the
Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy—to lobby
for arms reductions.
 That same year the publication of On the Beach
whipped up public support for a halt in H-bomb
tests.
The Deep Freeze Returns
 In 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union
bowed to a growing world outcry and signed a
test-ban treaty prohibiting nuclear testing in the
atmosphere. However, the treaty permitted tests
underground and in outer space.
 By the end of his presidency, Eisenhower had
become deeply concerned about the power of the
military-industrial complex—the vast,
interwoven military establishment and arms
industry
Question
 What threats did the military-industrial
complex pose to democracy?