Chapter 27: Cold War and Postwar Changes

Development of the Cold War

Confrontation of the Superpowers

• Once the Axis Powers were defeated, the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union became clear.
• Stalin still feared the capitalist West, and U.S. (and other Western) leaders continued to fear communism.
  • Because of its need to feel secure on its western border, the Soviet government was not prepared to give up its control of Eastern Europe after Germany’s defeat.
• Eastern Europe was the first area of disagreement
• A civil war in Greece created another area of conflict between the superpowers.
• President Harry S Truman of the United States, alarmed by the British withdrawal and the possibility of Soviet expansion into the eastern Mediterranean, responded in early 1947 with the Truman Doctrine.
  • The Truman Doctrine was followed in June 1947 by the European Recovery Program.
• Proposed by General George C. Marshall, U.S. secretary of state, it is better known as the Marshall Plan.
  • The Marshall Plan was not meant to shut out the Soviet Union or its economically and politically dependent Eastern European satellite states.
• In 1949, the Soviet Union responded to the Marshall Plan by founding the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) for the economic cooperation of the Eastern European states.
• By 1947, the split in Europe between the United States and the Soviet Union had become a fact of life.
  • In July 1947, George Kennan, a well-known U.S. diplomat with much knowledge of Soviet affairs, argued for a policy of containment to keep communism within its existing boundaries and prevent further Soviet aggressive moves.
• The fate of Germany also became a source of heated contention between the Soviets and the West.
• The foreign ministers of the four occupying powers met repeatedly in an attempt to arrive at a final peace treaty with Germany but had little success.
• The Soviets opposed the creation of a separate West German state.
• In September 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, was formally created.
  • Its capital was Bonn.
• Less than a month later, a separate East German state, the German Democratic Republic, was set up by the Soviets.
• East Berlin became its capital.
• Berlin was now divided into two parts, a reminder of the division of West and East.

The Spread of the Cold War

• In 1949, Chinese Communists took control of the government in China, strengthening U.S. fears about the spread of communism.
• All too soon, the United States and the Soviet Union were involved in a growing arms race, in which both countries built up their armies and weapons.
• Nuclear weapons became increasingly destructive.
  • Both sides came to believe that an arsenal of nuclear weapons would prevent war.
• The search for security during the Cold War led to the formation of new military alliances.
• In 1955, the Soviet Union joined with Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania in a formal military alliance known as the Warsaw Pact.
  • New military alliances spread to the rest of the world after the United States became involved in the Korean War
• To stem Soviet aggression in the East, the United States, Great Britain, France, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
• The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), which included Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Great Britain, and the United States, was meant to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding to the south.
• The Soviet Union had set off its first atomic bomb in 1949.
  • Both the United States and the Soviet Union now worked to build up huge arsenals of nuclear weapons.
• In 1957, the Soviets sent Sputnik I, the first human made space satellite, to orbit the earth.
  • Nikita Khrushchev, who emerged as the new leader of the Soviet Union in 1955, tried to take advantage of the American concern over missiles to solve the problem of West Berlin.
• Khrushchev realized the need to stop the flow of refugees from East Germany through West Berlin.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

• During the administration of John F. Kennedy, the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union reached frightening levels
• After the Bay of Pigs, the Soviet Union sent arms and military advisers to Cuba.
• The United States was not willing to allow nuclear weapons within such close striking distance of its mainland.
• In October 1962, Kennedy found out that Soviet ships carrying missiles were heading to Cuba.
• The Cuban missile crisis seemed to bring the world frighteningly close to nuclear war.
  • Indeed, in 1992 a high-ranking Soviet officer revealed that short-range rockets armed with nuclear devices would have been used against U.S. troops if the United States had invaded Cuba, an option that Kennedy fortunately had rejected.

Vietnam and the Domino Theory

• By that time, the United States had been drawn into a new struggle that had an important impact on the Cold War—the Vietnam War
  • U.S. policy makers saw the conflict in terms of a domino theory.
• Despite the massive superiority in equipment and firepower of the American forces, the United States failed to defeat the determined North Vietnamese.
• President Johnson, condemned for his handling of the costly and indecisive war, decided not to run for reelection.
  • Finally, in 1973, President Nixon reached an agreement with North Vietnam that allowed the United States to withdraw its forces.
• Despite the success of the North Vietnamese Communists, the domino theory proved unfounded.
• Above all, Vietnam helped show the limitations of American power.

The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

The Reign of Stalin

• World War II devastated the Soviet Union.
  • To create a new industrial base, Stalin returned to the method that he had used in the 1930s.
• Economic recovery in the Soviet Union was spec- tacular in some respects.
• By 1950, Russian industrial production had surpassed prewar levels by 40 percent.
• New power plants, canals, and giant factories were built.
  • Heavy industry (the manufacture of machines and equipment for factories and mines) increased, chiefly for the benefit of the military.
• The Soviet people, however, were shortchanged.
• Stalin remained the undisputed master of the Soviet Union.
• Stalin’s suspicions added to the increasing repression of the regime.

The Khrushchev Era

• A group of leaders succeeded Stalin, but the new general secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev, soon emerged as the chief Soviet policy maker.
• At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, Khrushchev condemned Stalin for his “administrative violence, mass repression, and terror.”
  • The process of eliminating the more ruthless policies of Stalin became known as de-Stalinization.
• Khrushchev loosened government controls on literary works.
• Khrushchev tried to place more emphasis on producing consumer goods.
• Foreign policy failures also damaged Khrushchev’s reputation among his colleagues.

Eastern Europe: Behind the Iron Curtain

• At the end of World War II, Soviet military forces occupied all of Eastern Europe and the Balkans (except for Greece, Albania, and Yugoslavia).
• The timetable of the Soviet takeover varied from country to country.
• Albania and Yugoslavia were exceptions to this pattern of Soviet dominance.
  • In Yugoslavia, Josip Broz, known as Tito, had been the leader of the Communist resistance movement.
• Between 1948 and Stalin’s death in 1953, the Eastern European satellite states, directed by the Soviet Union, followed Stalin’s example.
• Communism did not develop deep roots among the peoples of Eastern Europe.
• After Stalin’s death, many Eastern European states began to pursue a new course.
  • In 1956, protests erupted in Poland.
  • In response, the Polish Communist Party adopted a series of reforms in October 1956 and elected Wladyslaw Gomulka as first secretary.
• Developments in Poland in 1956 led Hungarian Communists to seek the same kinds of reforms.
• Khrushchev was in no position at home to allow a member of the Communist group of nations to leave, however.
• The situation in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s was different.
  • There, the “Little Stalin,” Antonin Novotny, had been placed in power in 1953 by Stalin himself and remained firmly in control.
• In January 1968, Alexander Dubcek was elected first secretary of the Communist Party.
• The euphoria proved to be short-lived, however.
• To forestall the spreading of this “spring fever,” the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968 and crushed the reform movement.

Western Europe and North America

Western Europe: Recovery

• With the economic aid of the Marshall Plan, the countries of Western Europe recovered relatively rapidly from the devastation of World War II.
  • This economic recovery continued well into the 1950s and 1960s.
• The history of France for nearly a quarter of a century after the war was dom- inated by one man — the war hero Charles de Gaulle.
  • Unhappy with the Fourth Republic, de Gaulle withdrew from politics.
  • In 1958, de Gaulle drafted a new constitution for the Fifth Republic that greatly enhanced the power of the president.
  • As the new president, de Gaulle sought to return France to a position of great power.
• During de Gaulle’s presidency, the French economy grew at an annual rate of 5.5 percent, faster than that of the United States.
  • Nevertheless, problems remained.
• Large government deficits and a rise in the cost of living led to unrest.
• The three Western zones of Germany were unified as the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.
• Under Adenauer, West Germany experienced an “economic miracle.”
  • Adenauer resigned in 1963, after 14 years of guiding West Germany through its postwar recovery.
• Ludwig Erhard succeeded Adenauer as chancellor and largely continued his policies.
• An economic downturn in the mid-1960s opened the door to the Social Democratic Party, which became the leading party in 1969.
• The end of World War II left Great Britain with massive economic problems.
• The Labour Party had promised far-reaching reforms, especially in the area of social welfare.
• Under Clement Attlee, the new prime minister, the Labour government set out to create a modern welfare state—a state in which the government takes responsibility for providing citizens with services and a minimal standard of living.
• In 1946, the new government passed the National Insurance Act and the National Health Service Act.
  • The cost of building a welfare state at home forced Britain to reduce expenses abroad.
  • Continuing economic problems brought the Con- servatives back into power from 1951 to 1964.

Western Europe: The Move toward Unity

• In 1957, France, West Germany, the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), and Italy signed the Rome Treaty.
• This treaty created the European Economic Community (EEC), also known as the Common Market.
  • The EEC was a free-trade area made up of the six member nations.
  • By the 1960s, the EEC had become an important trading bloc (a group of nations with a common purpose).

The United States in the 1950s

• Between 1945 and 1970, the ideals of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal largely determined the patterns of American domestic politics.
• The New Deal tradition in American politics was reinforced by the election of Democratic presidents— Harry S Truman in 1948, John F. Kennedy in 1960, and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
• An economic boom followed World War II.
  • Between 1945 and 1973, real wages (the actual purchasing power of income) grew an average of 3 percent a year, the most prolonged advance in American history.
• Prosperity was not the only characteristic of the early 1950s, however.
• This climate of fear produced a dangerous politi- cal agitator, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin.

The United States in the 1960s

• The 1960s began on a youthful and optimistic note. At age 43, John F. Kennedy became the youngest elected president in the history of the United States.
• President Johnson used his stunning victory to pursue the growth of the welfare state, begun in the New Deal.
  • Johnson’s other domestic passion was the civil rights movement, or equal rights for African Americans
• In August 1963, The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of a growing movement for racial equality, led a march on Washington, D.C., to dramatize the African American desire for equality.
• President Johnson took up the cause of civil rights.
  • Laws alone, however, could not guarantee the Great Society that Johnson talked about creating.
• In the North and West, blacks had had voting rights for many years.
• Antiwar protests also divided the American people after President Johnson sent American troops to war in Vietnam
• The combination of antiwar demonstrations and riots in the cities caused many people to call for “law and order.”

The Development of Canada

• For 25 years after World War II, a prosperous Canada set out on a new path of industrial development.
• Canada had always had a strong export econ- omy based on its abundant natural resources.
• Canadians also worried about playing a secondary role politically and militarily to the United States.
• The Liberal Party dominated Canadian politics throughout most of this period.

The Emergence of a New Society

• After World War II, Western society witnessed rapid change.
  • Postwar Western society was marked by a changing social structure.
  • Changes also occurred among the lower classes.
• At the same time, a noticeable increase in the real wages of workers made it possible for them to imitate the buying patterns of the middle class.
  • This led to what some observers have called the consumer society—a society preoccupied with buying goods.
• Women’s participation in the world wars had resulted in several gains.
  • During World War II, women had entered the workforce in huge numbers.
• By the end of the 1950s, however, the birthrate had begun to fall, and with it, the size of families.
  • These women, especially working-class women, faced an old problem.
  • They still earned less than men for equal work.
  • In addition, women still tended to enter traditionally female jobs.
  • By the late 1960s, women had begun to assert their rights again.
• In the late 1960s came renewed interest in feminism, or the women’s liberation movement, as it was now called.
• Of great importance to the emergence of the post- war women’s liberation movement was the work of Simone de Beauvoir
• Before World War II, it was mostly members of Europe’s wealthier classes who went to universities.
• After the war, European states began to encourage more people to gain higher education by eliminating fees.
  • There were problems, however.
• Many European university classrooms were overcrowded, and many professors paid little attention to their students.
• This student radicalism had several causes.
• Many of these protests were an extension of the revolts in U.S. universities, which were often sparked by student opposition to the Vietnam War.
• The student protests of the late 1960s caused many people to rethink some of their basic assumptions.