Chapter 33 - Restructuring the Postwar World

33.1 - Cold War: Superpowers Face Off

• In February 1945, the conflict was still going on.

• However, the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union gathered in Yalta, a Soviet Black Sea resort. 

  • They agreed to partition Germany into occupation zones under the direction of Allied armed forces.

• Despite their agreement at Yalta and their membership in the Security Council, the US and the Soviet Union broke significantly after WWII. 

  • They had experienced the conflict in quite different ways. 400,000 people died in the United States, the world's richest and most powerful country. 
  • However, the cities and factories remained unharmed.
  •  At least 50 times as many people died in the Soviet Union.

• One out of every four Soviets was injured or killed.

• As World War II came to an end, Soviet forces pushed Nazi forces back across Eastern Europe.

• These troops occupied a strip of countries along the Soviet Union's western border at the end of the war. 

  • These countries were seen by Stalin as a vital buffer, or wall of protection. 
  • In Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and Yugoslavia, he defied the Yalta agreement and imposed or secured Communist administrations.

• Europe was now separated into two parts: East and West. Germany was divided into two parts. 

  • The Soviets ruled the eastern half of Germany, including half of Berlin. 
  • East Germany was renamed the German Democratic Republic under a Communist government. 
  • In 1949, the western zones of Germany established the Federal Republic of Germany.

• The United States and its allies struggled with the Soviet Union over Germany as Europe began to reconstruct. 

  • The Soviets wanted their former adversary to remain weak and fragmented. 
  • However, in 1948, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States decided to remove their soldiers from Germany and enable their respective occupation zones to merge into a single nation. 
  • The Soviet Union retaliated by kidnapping West Berlin.

• The Cold War was heating up to the point that it threatened to destroy the globe when these alliances formed. 

  • The United States already possessed nuclear weapons.
  •  The Soviet Union detonated its own nuclear bomb in 1949.

• President Truman was hell-bent on developing a more lethal weapon than the Soviets. In 1950, he approved the development of a thermonuclear weapon.

  

33.2 - Communists Take Power in China

• From 1946 through 1949, a fresh civil war erupted. Initially, the Nationalists held the upper hand. 

  • Their force exceeded the Communist army by a factor of three. In addition, the US continued to help the country by contributing over $2 billion in aid.
  •  The Nationalist forces, on the other hand, had limited success in gaining popular support. 
  • Thousands of Nationalist soldiers deserted to the Communists when China's economy collapsed.

• The US assisted Jiang Jieshi in establishing a Nationalist administration on Taiwan after he fled China. The Republic of China was its name. The Soviet Union provided Communist China with financial, military, and technical assistance. 

  • Furthermore, the Chinese and Soviets agreed to defend each other if one of them was attacked. 
  • The US attempted to block the Soviet Union's expansion in Asia.

• Chinese armies invaded Tibet, India, and southern, or Inner, Mongolia in the early years of Mao's leadership. 

  • Mongolia's northern, or outer, regions, which bordered the Soviet Union, remained part of the Soviet sphere of influence.

• The Communists began to strengthen their grip on China after seizing power. The 4.5 million members of the party accounted for less than 1% of the population. 

  • They were, nevertheless, a well-organized group. 
  • The Chinese Communists, like the Soviets, established two parallel organizations: the Communist Party and the National Government. 
  • Both were led by Mao until 1959.

• Mao was adamant about transforming China's economy into one based on Marxist socialism.

• Eighty percent of the population resided in rural areas, yet the majority did not own any land. Instead, 70% of the farmland was held by 10% of the rural people. 

  • Mao took these landlords' estates during the Agrarian Reform Law of 1950.

• In the late 1950s, China was dealing with both external and domestic issues. The spirit of cooperation between the Soviet Union and China began to wane. 

  • Each aspired to be the leader of the global Communist movement. 
  • They faced numerous territorial disputes because they shared the world's longest border.

  

33.3 - Wars in Korea and Vietnam

• North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel in a surprise attack on South Korea on June 25, 1950. 
• North Korean troops had advanced well into the south in just a few days. 
  • President Truman was persuaded that the aggressors in North Korea were repeating Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese in the 1930s. 
• Truman's containment strategy was being put to the test. And Truman was determined to assist South Korea in its fight against communism.
• The retreating North Koreans were followed by UN troops across the 38th parallel into North Korea. 
  • They pushed them practically to the Chinese border's Yalu River. The majority of the UN forces were from the United States. 
  • These forces, as well as an American ship stationed off their coast, made the Chinese feel endangered. 
  • They dispatched 300,000 troops into North Korea in October 1950.
• Korea remained split after the war. The two countries were divided by a demilitarized zone, which still remains. 
• Kim Il Sung, the dictator of North Korea, constructed collective farms, promoted heavy industry, and strengthened the military. Kim Jong Il, Kim's son, ascended to the throne after his father's death in 1994. 
• North Korea, which was communist at the time, produced nuclear weapons but had major economic issues under his rule. 
  • South Korea, on the other hand, prospered, due in part to significant funding from the US and other countries.
• To combat the French soldiers, Vietnamese nationalists and communists banded together. Although the French controlled the majority of major cities, the Vietminh enjoyed considerable support in the countryside. 
  • To keep the French in the cities, the Vietminh adopted hit-and-run tactics.
  •  People in France began to question whether their colony was worth the blood and money expended in the battle. 
  • At Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the French suffered a major military loss. They handed themselves over to Ho.
• North Vietnamese patrol boats assaulted two US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, President Lyndon B. Johnson told Congress in August 1964. 
  • As a result, Congress gave the president authority to send US soldiers to Vietnam to fight. By late 1965, more than 185,000 American troops were fighting in Vietnam. 
  • North Vietnam has also begun to be bombed by US jets.
• More than half a million American soldiers were fighting in Vietnam by 1968.
• Following their victory in 1975, the triumphant North Vietnamese put strict limitations on the South Vietnamese. 
  • Thousands of people were transported to "reeducation camps" to learn about communist ideology. Industry was nationalized, and firms were rigorously regulated. 
  • They also renamed Saigon, the previous capital of the South, to Ho Chi Minh City.

33.4 - The Cold War Divides the World

• Other developing countries required support as well. They played a crucial role in the Cold War rivalry between the US, the Soviet Union, and, later, China. 
  • However, not all Third World countries wanted to be part of the Cold War. 
  • As previously stated, India has pledged to remain neutral. Indonesia, a populous Southeast Asian island nation, likewise fought to remain uninvolved.
  •  It hosted the Bandung Conference in 1955, which brought together numerous leaders from Asia and Africa.
• Many people commended Castro at initially for introducing social changes and strengthening the economy to Cuba.
• Castro, on the other hand, was a brutal dictator. He halted elections, imprisoned or executed his opponents, and maintained strict control over the media.
• Castro took over U.S.-owned sugar mills and refineries when he nationalized the Cuban economy. 
  • In retaliation, Eisenhower imposed a trade blockade on Cuba. Castro then sought economic and military assistance from the Soviet Union.
• The unsuccessful invasion of the Bay of Pigs persuaded Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that the US would not oppose Soviet expansion in Latin America. 
  • As a result, in July 1962, Khrushchev began secretly building 42 missile locations in Cuba. An American surveillance plane found the sites in October.
• Khomeini's domestic policies were governed by strict commitment to Islam. But, because of the US's support for the shah, hate of the US was at the center of his foreign policy. 
  • Young Islamic revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, with the ayatollah's permission. 
  • They kidnapped more than 60 Americans and demanded that the US bring the shah to justice.
• The majority of the hostages were held captive for 444 days before being released in 1981.

33.5 - The Cold War Thaws

• While many satellite countries fought communism, China was a firm believer in the system.

  •  In reality, in 1950, Mao and Stalin signed a 30-year friendship treaty to strengthen connections between Communist powers. 
  • Their attitude of cooperation, on the other hand, wore thin before the pact was signed.

• During the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, the brinkmanship doctrine led to a series of horrific crises. 

  • Despite the fact that these crises occurred all throughout the globe, they were linked by a common fear. Nuclear war appeared to be a distinct possibility.

• Nixon's new approach marked both a personal and a national political transformation for him. 

  • His staunch anti-Communist stance propelled him to political prominence in the 1950s. 
  • He became the first US president to visit Communist China twenty years later.

• Ronald Reagan, a staunch anti-Communist, was elected president of the United States in 1981. 

  • He kept moving away from the truce. He expanded defense spending, putting economic and military pressure on the Soviets at the same time. 

• Reagan also introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983, a program designed to safeguard the United States from foreign missiles. 

  • It was never implemented, but it became a symbol of anti-Communist fervor in the United States.

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