The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1954
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Topics of Consideration
1. Roots of the Cold War
2. Containment and the Truman Doctrine
3. The Marshall Plan
4. The Berlin Blockade and NATO
5. Tools of Containment
6. 1949: China and the Bomb
7. 1950-1953: The Korean War
8. 1950-54: The McCarthy Scare
1
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Roots of the Cold War
1. World War I: Russian Revolution (1917)
2. Ideological differences between US and USSR
3. 1917-1921: Red Scare in US
4. 1918-1920: US aided White armies
5. 1917-1933: US does not recognize USSR
6. 1939-41: Hitler-Stalin pact; Soviets invaded Finland
7. During WWII, Soviet frustration over second front
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Roots of the Cold War
8. US shared nuclear secrets with UK, but not USSR
9. Conflict over Poland: US liberal - USSR communist
10. After FDR‘s death, Truman more confrontational
11. At Potsdam conference, distrust obvious
12 US develops and uses atomic bomb
12.
13. End of World War II -- power vacuum -- US and USSR
2
"Coryphaeus of Science," "Father
of Nations," "Brilliant Genius of
Humanity " "Great
Humanity,
Great Architect of
Communism," "Gardener of
Human Happiness“
Historians working after the
Soviet Union's dissolution have
estimated victim totals ranging
from approximately 4 million to
nearly 10 million, not including
those who died in famines.
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Roots of the Cold War
14. Conflict over influence in former German territory.
15. USSR established satellite states in Poland,
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
16. US feared Soviet designs on Western Europe.
17. Churchill‘s Iron Curtain speech, 1946.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8_wQ-5uxV4
18. George F. Kennan‘s Long Telegram, 1946
19. Lessons of Munich appeasement
20. US fought WWII to prevent totalitarian control of Europe.
3
Answer to Dept’s 284, Feb. 3,11 involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange
to our form of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment
that I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I
feel would be a dangerous degree of oversimplification. I hope, therefore, Dept will
bear with me if I submit in answer to this question five parts . . . I apologize in
advance for this burdening of telegraphic channel; but questions involved are of such
urgent importance, particularly in view of recent events, that our answers to them, if
they deserve attention at all, seem to me to deserve it at once.
Kennan proceeded (in the first two sections) to posit concepts that became the
foundation of American Cold War policy:
The USSR perceived itself at perpetual war with capitalism;
Socialism and social democracy are enemies, not allies;
The USSR would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as allies;
Soviet aggression was fundamentally not aligned with the views of the Russian people
or with economic reality, but in historic Russian xenophobia and paranoia;
The Soviet government's structure prohibited objective or accurate pictures of internal
and external reality.
4
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Containment and Truman Doctrine
1. 1947: Greece and Turkey, UK asked US for help.
2. However, Congress inclined to cut back on spending
3. Truman Doctrine: “to support free peoples who are
resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities
or by outside pressures.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmQD_W8Pcxg
4. Global containment against USSR anywhere
5. Kennan -- Mr. X Article – elaborated on containment:
“unalterable counterforce at every point.”
5
“The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be a longterm, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies... Soviet
pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be
contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counterforce at a series of constantly
shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and manoeuvers of
Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.”
Mr. X, [George Kennan], The Sources of Soviet Conduct, Foreign Affairs, 1947
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
The Marshall Plan
1. Europe was the original theatre of the Cold
War and containment.
2. Marshall Plan 1947 to stabilize struggling
Western European economies.
3. Also offered to Eastern Europe, but rejected
under Soviet pressure.
6
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
The Marshall Plan
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Berlin Blockade and NATO
1. Berlin Blockade 1948.
2. Creation of Fed. Rep. of Germany 1949.
3. Foundation of NATO 1949
4. Rearmament of Germany 1952
5. Soviet Reactions: German Democratic
Republic 1949; Warsaw Pact 1955
7
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Berlin Blockade and NATO
8
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
Tools of Containment
1. 1947 National Securityy Act:
National Security Council
CIA (fully established 1951)
Department of Defense
2. House Un-American Activities Committee, 1938, 1947
3.Cultural Policies, academic exchanges to propaganda efforts.
Fulbright program to promote democracy. Radio Free Europe to
reach Eastern Europeans.
4. Memorandum NSC-68 (1950) called for massively enlarged
military budget: “the Kremlin seeks to bring the free world
under its dominion by the methods of the cold war. The
preferred technique is to subvert by infiltration and
intimidation.”
Allan Dulles, second
director of the CIA
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
1949: China and the Bomb
1. 1949: China become a Communist state
2. Monolithic communist threat?
3. 1949: Soviets get the A-Bomb
Mao Zedong (1893-1976)
9
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
1950-1953: The Korean War
1. Korea divided after WWII: North and South Korea
2. North Korean invasion of South, 1950
3. Due to Soviet boycott of UN, security council
backing for “police action.”
4. UN Forces -- Douglas MacArthur lands at Inchon
and re-conquers
re conquers lost territory
5. Decision to cross 38th parallel in an attempt to
reunify Korea under US aegis
10
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
1950-1953: The Korean War
6. As MacArthur came close to Yalu river, massive
Chinese intervention.
7. Stalemate fighting near 38th parallel
8. MacArthur criticized strategy of limited war,
demanded all-out war vs China
9 Truman fired MacArthur; Korean War stalled until
9.
settlement in 1953
10. Truce Line remains de facto border between
South and North Korea.
The Dawn of the Cold War, 1945-1953
1950-1954: The McCarthy Scare
1. Republican Senator, Wisconsin (1947-1957)
2. Investigated claims that there were Communist
and Soviet spies inside the federal government
3. Lincoln Day speech (Feb 9, 1950), Republican
Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.
4. Became most visible public face of antiCommunism.
5. McCarthyism coined in 1950 to condemn the
senator's methods, which were based on
unsubstantiated accusations.
6. 1953, McCarthy chairman of the Senate
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
7. Takes on Army, 1954; Edward R. Murrow, 1954
11
McCarthy's Support in Gallup Polls
Date
1951-August
1953 April
1953 June
1953 August
1954-Jan
1954-March
1954-April
1954-May
1954-June
1954-August
1954-Nov
Favorable
15
19
35
34
50
46
38
35
34
36
35
No Opinion
63
59
35
24
21
18
16
16
21
13
19
Unfavorable
22
22
30
42
29
36
46
49
45
51
46
Net Favorable
-7
-3
5
-8
21
10
-8
-14
-11
-15
-11
Source: Nelson W. Polsby, "Towards an Explanation of McCarthyism," Political Studies,
Vol. 8 (Oct 1962), p. 252
12