Post World War 2: The Spread of Communism, The Cold War, & The Korean War SS7H3E

The Yalta Agreement Here they drew up an agreement about how they would cooperate to put the world back together after Germany and Japan were defeated. The plan, called the Yalta Agreement, called for each country to temporarily occupy the lands where their troops were when the war ended. During the last months of WWII, leaders from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain met at a small resort on the Black Sea called Yalta.

Churchil, Roosevelt, and Stalin

UNITED NATIONS Each country would work to restore order and free elections would be held to let the people in each area decide what sort of government they would like to have. They also talked about how the proposed United Nations would be organized. All three countries (the United States, the Soviet Union &Great Britain) agreed they would join this new organization and work together to see that peace and order were restored to the world.

The Soviet Union- The Beginning of the Cold War However, when the war ended, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different goals. The Soviet Union had seen many of its major cities destroyed. Millions of its citizens had been killed and its farms and factories destroyed. The Soviet Union wanted to be sure they would never again have to face an invasion from Western Europe, so when they found themselves occupying most of the countries in Eastern Europe, they were reluctant to pull out even after peace was declared.

COMMUNIST STATE They wanted to be sure each of the new states was a communist state. The United States was angry and saw this as breaking the promises made at the Yalta meeting. Though the fighting from WWII was over, the United States and the Soviet Union found themselves engaged in a Cold War (no fighting), one where they competed with each other to get as many governments in place as they could around the world that were sympathetic to their own plans.

The KOREAN PENINSULA One place where this struggle was clearly seen was in the Korean Peninsula. At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union was in control of the northern half of the peninsula and the United States controlled the southern half. Though the peace treaty called for elections to be held to unify Korea into one country, the Soviet Union wanted a communist government, and the United States wanted a western style democracy.

The DOMINO THEORY Because they could never agree on how to hold elections, the country was simply divided into two countries. North Korea became a communist state allied with the Soviet Union. South Korea became a western style democracy allied with the United States. The United States insisted on supporting a free South Korea. They believed that if any additional countries in SE Asia went to a communist form of government, others would quickly follow. This idea was called the Domino Theory. If one country fell to communism, all others nearby would fall as well.

The Korean War War broke out between the two countries in 1950 and after three years of fighting a truce redrew the original boundary, where it remains today.

North Korea Today North Korea remains a communist country under the autocratic rule of Premiere Kim Jong-II. The country has heavy industry and a well-armed military, but there are many other problems, including poor farm production and frequent problems with famine. The country remains the ally of other communist countries including the People’s Republic of China. However, most other communist countries have moved away from the strict type of rule Kim Jong-II maintains.

SOUTH KOREA South Korea, with free elections and a democratic constitution, has been more prosperous because they have had trade and foreign aid from the United States & other wealthy western countries.

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