APUSH Notes 4/7

The Cold War

Introduction:

  • The Cold War is an impossibly bad term to deal with!

  • Even before the defeat of Hitler, cracks in the so-called allies were already forming!

  • The year 1946 revealed that the Soviet Union had intentions beyond a return to a post-war peace and, imperialism was far from dead!

  • The 1945 Potsdam Conference ended with a level of tension that was symbolic of the Cold War.

The Future of Europe

  • At the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences 1944-1945 it was clear that the major powers had differing goals.

  • Stailn’s intention was to stay in the territories that the Red Army was already in, essentially taking the territories that were under German control.

The Kennan Letter

  • President Truman was faced with a stark reality: The USSR seemed bent on expansion

  • The Soviet Viewpoint: Russia only knows power and force and are Xenophobic

  • George Kennan: Article X (The Long Telegram)

  • The Soviets had refused to Withdraw from the following Areas: Iran, Eastern Europe, and Northern Korea… Synthesis Points anyone?

  • These were all violations of the Yalta and Potsdam Accords!

Eastern and Central Europe

  • The Soviets began propping up Communist Parties all over Eastern Europe and suppressing other parties.

  • Soon, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere had communist Majority governments.

  • The Soviets also supported failed uprisings in Greece and Turkey.

The “Iron Curtain” Speech

  • Soviet intensions laid out by Truman and Churchill

  • The 1947 Nat’l Security Act

  • Created the USAF and the CIA

  • NSC-68 (1950)

  • Committed the US to peace time militariy buildup… aka the “military industrial complex”

  • “From Stettin in the Batlic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across Europe.”

The Marshall Plan

  • The basis of the Plan

  • The Impact?

  • Was this the first step toward the EU?