Chapter 27

Development of the Cold War

Beginning The division between Western Europe and the Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe was the beginning of the Cold War The Soviet Union feared the capitalist West The United States feared communism Stalin feared that the Eastern European nations would be anti-Soviet if they were allowed free elections

Truman Doctrine In early 1947, President Harry S. Truman issued the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the U.S. would give money to countries threatened by Communist expansion The U.S. was concerned that communism would spread throughout the free world if left unchecked

Marshall Plan In June 1947, the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan, began This program was set up to rebuild war-torn Europe The Soviet Union and its Eastern European states refused to participate in the Marshall Plan

Response to the Marshall Plan In 1949, the Soviet Union set up the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) as a response to the Marshall Plan COMECON was established to help the economies of Eastern European states

Containment Policy In 1947, the U.S. adopted the policy of containment to keep communism within its existing boundaries and prevent further Soviet aggressive moves

Berlin Blockade By 1948, Great Britain, the United States, and France worked to unify the three western sections of Germany and Berlin and create a West German government The Soviets opposed the creation of a West German state, so they tried to prevent it by setting up a blockade of West Berlin

Berlin Air Lift The United States and Great Britain set up the Berlin Air Lift to fly in supplies to West Berlin The Soviets ended the blockade of West Berlin in May 1949

Berlin Divided The Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, was formally created in September 1949 A month later, the German Democratic Republic was set up by the Soviets Berlin was divided into two parts

Arms Race Chinese Communists took over the government of China in 1949 As a result of the fall of China to communism and the Soviet Union’s explosion of its first atomic bomb in 1949, the Soviet Union and the U.S. began an arms race This is where both countries built up their armies and weapons

NATO In April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed This military alliance included Great Britain, France, the U.S. and Canada These nations agreed to provide mutual help if any one of them was attacked

Warsaw Pact In 1955, the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania formed the military alliance called the Warsaw Pact

Korean War The Korean War began in 1950 when the Communist government of North Korea, allied with the Soviet Union, tried to take over South Korea As a result, the U.S. extended its military alliances around the world By the mid-1950s, the U.S. was in military alliances with 42 nations

Sputnik In 1957, the Soviets sent Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, to orbit the earth Americans feared there was a missile gap between the Soviet Union and the United States

Berlin Wall In August 1961, on the order of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the East German government began to build a wall between West and East Berlin This was done to stop the flow of East Germans escaping into West Berlin

Cuban Missile Crisis In 1959, President Kennedy approved a secret plan for Cuban exiles to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and revolt against the Soviet-supported Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro The invasion failed The Soviet Union sent arms and military to Cuba In 1962 Khrushchev began to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to counteract U.S. nuclear weapons place in Turkey (close to the USSR)

In October 1962, President Kennedy found out that Soviet ships carrying nuclear missiles were headed to Cuba So he ordered a blockade of Cuba to stop the ships from reaching Cuba Khrushchev agreed to send the ships back and remove nuclear missiles in Cuba if Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba Kennedy agreed This was a close call for nuclear war

Vietnam and the Domino Theory The Vietnam War had an important impact on the Cold War Its purpose was to keep the Communist government of North Vietnam from gaining control of South Vietnam U.S. policy makers applied the domino theory to the Vietnam War

According to this theory, if South Vietnam fell to communism, then other countries in Asia would fall like dominoes to communism An antiwar movement escalated in the U.S. as a result of the growing number of American troops sent to Vietnam and the mountain destruction of the war, which was brought into American homes by television

President Johnson decided not to run for reelection because of public opinion against his handling of the war Former Republican vise-president Richard Nixon won the election with the promise to end the war and reunite the American people In 1973, Nixon reached an agreement with North Vietnam allowing the U.S. to withdraw its troops Within 2 years, Vietnam was forcibly reunited by Communist armies from the North

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

The Reign of Stalin The economy of the Soviet Union was devastated by WWII To create a new industrial base, goods were produced almost exclusively for export The money from export goods was used to buy machinery and Western technology

By 1950, the Soviet Union had built new power plants, canals, and giant factories Heavy industry increased The testing of the hydrogen bomb in 1953 and the launch of the first space satellite, Sputnik, in 1956 made the Soviet Union a world power In 1946, the Soviet governments said that all literary and scientific work must conform to the political needs of the state Stalin died in 1953

Joseph Stalin

The Khrushchev Era After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev became the chief policy maker in the Soviet Union Under his leadership, de-Stalinization was put in place This was the process of eliminating some of Stalin’s ruthless policies Khrushchev loosened government controls on literature

He tried to increase the production of consumer goods and agricultural output Khrushchev’s attempts to increase agricultural output failed, and the industrial growth rate also decline In 1964, he was forced into retirement

Nikita Khrushchev

Reforms After Stalin’s death, many Eastern European stats tried to make reforms The Soviet Union, however, made it clear that it would not allow its Eastern European states to become independent

Revolt In 1956, revolts against communism erupted in Poland and a series of reforms were adopted Fearful of a Soviet armed response, however, the Poles pledged to remain loyal to the Warsaw Pact Hungary declared itself a free nation Three days later, Soviet troops attacked Budapest and reestablished control of the country

Western Europe and North America

Economic Growth The Marshall Plan helped the countries of Western Europe recover relatively rapidly from the devastation of WWII The 1950s and the 1960s were period of dramatic economic growth and prosperity in Western Europe

Move Toward Unity After WWII, many Europeans wanted European unity Nationalism, however, was too strong from European nations to give up their sovereignty Instead the countries focused on economic unity

U.S. in the 1950s Between 1945 and 1970, the ideals of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal determined the patters of American domestic politics Prosperity at home and Cold War struggles abroad characterized the 1950s in the U.S. Between 1945 and 1973, real wages (actual purchasing power of income) grew an average of 3% a year

Red Scare The Cold War led to widespread fear that Communists had infiltrated the U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy charged that hundreds of communists were in high government positions This created a massive “Red Scare”

John F. Kennedy Kenney, the youngest elected president of the U.S., was assassinated in 1963 Vice President Lyndon Johnson became president and was elected in a landslide victory to another term in 1964 President Johnsons’ Great Society programs included health care for the elderly, measure to fight poverty, and aid to education

John F. Kennedy

Lyndon Johnson

Civil Rights The U.S. civil rights movement began in 1954 with the Supreme Court ruling that made racial segregation in public schools illegal

Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march on Washington, D.C. for equality He advocated the use of passive disobedience in gaining racial equality

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Discrimination President Johnson worked for civil rights In 1964 the Civil Rights Act helped end segregation and discrimination in the workplace and in public places The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made it easier for African Americans to vote in southern states

Race Riots After the assassination of MLK in 1968, race riots began in the Watts district of Los Angeles Riots broke out in over a hundred cities in the United States

President Nixon As the Vietnam War continued through the second half of the 1960s, antiwar protests throughout the U.S. grew Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected president based on his “law and order” campaign in 1968

Richard Nixon

Postwar Western Society Changing social structure Mangers and technicians joined the middle- class groups The number of people in farming declined dramatically The number of industrial workers declined as white-collar workers increased A consumer society developed as real wages increased

Women Women in many Western countries had gained the right to vote after WWI Women in France and Italy gained voting rights in the 1940s Women who had worked during WWII returned to traditional roles

Baby Boom Birthrates rose, creating a “baby boom” in the late 1940s and 1950s By the end of the 1950s, birthrates declined Married women entered the workforce Women earned much less than men did for equal work Many women worked and raised families at the same time