Cold War: Superpowers
The Big Idea
The opposing economic and political philosophies of the United States and the Soviet Union led to global competition.
Why It Matters Now
The conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union played a major role in reshaping the modern world.
Key Terms and People
United Nations
Iron curtain
Containment
Truman Doctrine
Marshall Plan
Cold War
NATO
Warsaw Pact
Brinkmanship
Face Off: Setting the Stage
In late 1943, leaders from the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union met in Tehran to discuss a joint strategy for defeating Germany and setting national borders after the war.
Starting in June 1944, the Soviet army marched west, and the American army, joined by European allies, marched east.
On April 25, 1945, the two forces met at the Elbe River in Germany.
Competing political philosophies led to a nearly half-century of conflict called the Cold War.
Long-term Consequences of World War II
World War II was the most destructive war in history, with a death toll of military personnel and civilians in Europe, Africa, and Asia reaching over 60 million.
The total represented almost 3 percent of the world's population at the time.
Massive land and property destruction, environmental changes, social issues, and problems involving hunger and disease also occurred.
Demographic and Social Consequences of World War II
World War II was the first war in which civilian deaths outnumbered military ones.
Several ethnic groups, such as Jews and Roma, were singled out for destruction.
The fighting and destruction as well as changes in national borders caused millions of civilians to abandon their homes and property and move to new areas.
Families were often split up, and many fathers died.
Medical experts noted increased incidences of diabetes, depression, and heart disease following the war.
Many soldiers and civilians also suffered adverse health effects as a result of exposure to chemical, biological, and atomic weapons.
Economic and Environmental Consequences
Tank battles and bombing raids during the war caused a great deal of destruction both to the infrastructure (buildings, bridges, and roads) of countries and to the physical environment.
Forests were depleted, and farmland was destroyed.
Countries began rebuilding soon after the war, and economies improved in most Western European nations.
Countries under Soviet control took longer to rebound during the Cold War.
Allies Become Enemies
Even before World War II ended, the U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union had begun to unravel.
The United States was upset that Joseph Stalin, as the Soviet leader, had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939.
Later, Stalin blamed the Allies for not invading German-occupied Europe earlier than 1944.
Driven by these and other disagreements, the two allies began to pursue opposing goals.
Yalta Conference: A Postwar Plan
In February 1945, the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union met at Yalta.
They agreed to divide Germany into zones of occupation controlled by the Allied military forces.
Germany also would have to pay the Soviet Union to compensate for its loss of life and property during the war.
Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan once Germany surrendered.
He also promised that Eastern Europeans would have free elections.
The Soviet Union under Stalin never permitted free elections.
Creation of the United Nations and Geneva Conventions
In June 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union joined 48 other countries in forming the United Nations (UN).
The UN's purpose was to protect the members against aggression and was to be based in New York.
The UN included a large General Assembly, in which each UN member nation could vote on a broad range of issues.
An 11-member body called the Security Council had the real power to investigate and settle disputes.
Its five permanent members were Britain, China, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union (now Russia).
Each could veto any council action.
Many nations also joined together after the war in adopting a series of treaties on the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war (POWs), and those injured during wartime, known as the Geneva Conventions.
The treaties were adopted in 1949, added to in later years, and are still in force today.
Differing U.S. and Soviet Philosophy and Goals
The United States and the Soviet Union split sharply after the war.
The two "superpowers" were leaders both in military strength and in political and economic influence among the world's nations.
The United States promoted the capitalist economic philosophy, while the Soviet Union promoted communism.
The United States suffered 400,000 deaths, but its cities remained intact.
The Soviet Union had at least 50 times as many fatalities, and many Soviet cities were demolished.
These contrasting situations, as well as political and economic differences, affected the two countries' postwar goals and decisions.
Superpower Aims in Europe
United States
Encourage democracy in other countries to help prevent the rise of Communist governments
Gain access to raw materials and markets to fuel booming industries
Rebuild European governments to promote stability and create new markets for U.S. goods
Reunite Germany to stabilize it and increase the security of Europe
Soviet Union
Encourage communism in other countries as part of a worldwide workers' revolution
Rebuild its war-ravaged economy using Eastern Europe's industrial equipment and raw materials
Control Eastern Europe to protect Soviet borders and balance the U.S. influence in Western Europe
Keep Germany divided to prevent its waging war again
Eastern Europe's Iron Curtain
A major goal of the Soviet Union was to shield itself from another invasion from the west.
Because it lacked natural western borders, Russia fell victim to each of its neighbors in turn.
As World War II drew to a close, the Soviet troops pushed the Nazis back across Eastern Europe.
At war's end, these troops occupied a strip of countries along the Soviet Union's own western border.
Stalin regarded these countries as a necessary buffer, or wall of protection.
He ignored the Yalta agreement and installed or secured Communist governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and Yugoslavia.
Truman pressed Stalin to permit free elections in Eastern Europe, but the Soviet leader refused.
In a speech in early 1946, Stalin declared that communism and capitalism could not exist in the same world.
An Iron Curtain Divides East and West
Europe now lay divided between East and West.
Germany had been split into two sections.
The Soviets controlled the eastern part, including half of the capital, Berlin.
East Germany was named the German Democratic Republic.
The western zones were occupied by forces and supporting personnel from the United States, Britain, and France.
In 1949, the united West German sectors officially became the Federal Republic of Germany.
Winston Churchill described the division of Europe following the war by referring to Soviet efforts to take control of its neighbors as establishing an "iron curtain."
Churchill's phrase came to represent Europe's division into mostly democratic Western Europe and Communist Eastern Europe.
In an interview with the Soviet press, Stalin responded that Churchill "now stands as a firebrand of war."
United States Tries to Contain Soviets
U.S.-Soviet relations continued to worsen in 1946 and 1947.
An increasingly worried United States tried to offset the growing Soviet threat to Eastern Europe.
President Truman adopted a foreign policy called containment, which was directed at blocking Soviet influence and stopping the expansion of communism.
Containment policies included forming alliances and helping weak countries resist Soviet advances.
The Truman Doctrine
Truman's support for countries that rejected communism was called the Truman Doctrine.
Congress authorized more than 400 million in aid to Turkey and Greece.
The Truman Doctrine established an ongoing U.S. commitment to offer assistance to protect other democratic countries when it was deemed to be in the best interest of the United States.
The Marshall Plan
In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that the United States give aid to needy European countries.
This assistance program, called the Marshall Plan, would provide food, machinery, and other materials to rebuild Western Europe.
As Congress debated the 12.5 billion program in 1948, the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia.
The plan was a spectacular success.
Even Communist Yugoslavia received aid after it broke away from Soviet domination.
The Berlin Airlift
The Soviets wanted to keep their former enemy weak and divided.
In 1948, France, Britain, and the United States decided to withdraw their forces from Germany and allow their occupation zones to form one nation.
The Soviet Union responded by holding West Berlin hostage.
Although Berlin lay well within the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, it too had been divided into four zones.
The Soviet Union cut off highway, water, and rail traffic into Berlin's western zones.
Stalin gambled that the Allies would surrender West Berlin or give up their idea of reunifying Germany.
American and British officials flew food and supplies into West Berlin for nearly 11 months.
In May 1949, the Soviet Union admitted defeat and lifted the blockade.
The Space Race
Beginning in the late 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for influence not only among the nations of the world, but in the skies as well.
Once the superpowers had ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) to deliver nuclear warheads and aircraft for spying missions, they both began to develop technology that could be used to explore-and ultimately control-space.
However, after nearly two decades of costly competition, the two superpowers began to cooperate in space exploration.
The Cold War in the Skies
The Cold War also affected the science and education programs of the two countries.
In August 1957, the Soviets announced the development of a rocket that could travel great distances-an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM.
On October 4, the Soviets used an ICBM to push Sputnik, the first unmanned satellite, above the earth's atmosphere.
In 1958, the United States launched its own satellite.
A German-born rocket scientist named Wehrner von Braun was the driving force behind the U.S. ballistic missile program.
In May 1960, the Soviets shot down a U-2 plane, and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured.
This U-2 incident heightened Cold War tensions.
Brinkmanship
Dwight D. Eisenhower became the U.S. president in 1953 and appointed the firmly anti-Communist John Foster Dulles as his secretary of state.
Dulles threatened that if the Soviet Union or its supporters attacked U.S. interests, the United States would "retaliate instantly, by means and at places of our own choosing."
This willingness to go to the brink, or edge, of war became known as brinkmanship.
Brinkmanship required a reliable source of nuclear weapons and airplanes to deliver them.
The United States strengthened its air force and began producing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
The Soviet Union responded with its own military buildup, beginning an arms race that would go on for four decades.
The H-Bomb
In 1952, the United States tested the first H-bomb on a group of coral islands in the Pacific.
It yielded an explosion equivalent to 10 million tons (10 megatons) of TNT, more than 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
The Soviets exploded their own H-bomb in 1953.
Assistance to Asian Nations
President Truman also initiated a similar program to provide technical assistance for non-European nations, such as those in Southeast Asia as well as Pakistan, Israel, and Iran, which had been impacted by the war.
The Point Four program provided technical expertise to help build up agriculture, public health, and education within affected countries.
The Cold War Divides the World
A cold war is a struggle over political differences carried on by means short of military action or war.
Much of the world allied with one side or the other.
Until the Soviet Union finally broke up in 1991, the Cold War not only dictated U.S. and Soviet foreign policy but influenced world alliances as well.
Superpowers Form Rival Alliances
As a result, in 1949, ten western European nations joined with the United States and Canada to form a defensive military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
An attack on any NATO member would be met with armed force by all member nations.
In 1955 The Soviet Union saw NATO as a threat and formed its own alliance called the Warsaw Pact.
In 1961, The East Germans built a wall to separate East and West Berlin and symbolized a world divided into rival camps.
Some, like India, chose not to align with either side.
China, the largest Communist country, came to distrust the Soviet Union and remained nonaligned.
Formed in 1948 The United States pushed for the formation of an organization of countries in North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean called the Organization of American States (OAS).
OAS hoped to bring peace and security to its member nations and to increase economic and social cooperation.