The Roots of the Cold War in Asia & Europe
The Cold War had its roots in World War II, when the repeated delays in opening a second front in Europe made the Russians suspicious of the Western Allies’ motives. Those concerns were heightened when the United States discontinued lend‐lease aid to the Soviet Union soon after the war ended. Stalin’s commitment at Yalta to allow free elections in Eastern Europe was quickly broken. To ensure “friendly states” on its western borders, the USSR supported and helped install Communist‐dominated governments in Poland, Bulgaria, and Rumania (Romania) in the spring and summer of 1945. Within a year, as Winston Churchill told an American audience, an “iron curtain” had descended across Europe, separating the “free” democratic nations of the West from the “captive” Communist nations of the East.
Devastated by the struggle in which 20 million Soviet citizens had died, the Soviet Union was intent on rebuilding and on protecting itself from another such terrible conflict. The Soviets were particularly concerned about another invasion of their territory from the west. Having repelled Hitler’s thrust, they were determined to preclude another such attack. They demanded “defensible” borders and “friendly” regimes in Eastern Europe and seemingly equated both with the spread of Communism, regardless of the wishes of native populations. However, the United States had declared that one of its war aims was the restoration of independence and self-government to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Containment of the Soviet Union became American policy in the postwar years. George Kennan, a top official at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, defined the new approach in the Long Telegram he sent to the State Department in 1946. Pointing to Russia’s traditional sense of insecurity, Kennan argued that the Soviet Union would not soften its stance under any circumstances. Moscow’s pressure to expand its power had to be stopped through “firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. ...”
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The first significant application of the containment doctrine came in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. In early 1946, the United States demanded, and obtained, a full Soviet withdrawal from Iran, the northern half of which it had occupied during the war. That summer, the United States pointedly supported Turkey against Soviet demands for control of the Turkish straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In early 1947, American policy crystallized when Britain told the United States that it could no longer afford to support the government of Greece against a strong Communist insurgency.
In a strongly worded speech to Congress, Truman declared, “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Journalists quickly dubbed this statement the “Truman Doctrine.” The president asked Congress to provide $400 million for economic and military aid, mostly to Greece but also to Turkey. After an emotional debate that resembled the one between interventionists and isolationists before World War II, the money was appropriated.
Critics from the left later charged that to whip up American support for the policy of containment, Truman overstated the Soviet threat to the United States. In turn, his statements inspired a wave of hysterical anti-Communism throughout the country. Others, however, would counter that this argument ignores the backlash that likely would have occurred if Greece, Turkey, and other countries had fallen within the Soviet orbit with no opposition from the United States.
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Containment also called for extensive economic aid to assist the recovery of war-torn Western Europe. With many of the region’s nations economically and politically unstable, the United States feared that local Communist parties, directed by Moscow, would capitalize on their wartime record of resistance to the Nazis and come to power. “The patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate,” declared Secretary of State George C.Marshall. In mid-1947 Marshall asked troubled European nations to draw up a program “directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”
The Soviets participated in the first planning meeting, then departed rather than share economic data and submit to Western controls on the expenditure of the aid. The remaining 16 nations hammered out a request that finally came to $17,000 million for a four-year period. In early 1948 Congress voted to fund the “Marshall Plan,” which helped underwrite the economic resurgence of Western Europe. It is generally regarded as one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives in U.S. history.
Postwar Germany was a special problem. It had been divided into U.S., Soviet, British, and French zones of occupation, with the former German capital of Berlin (itself divided into four zones), near the center of the Soviet zone. When the Western powers announced their intention to create a consolidated federal state from their zones, Stalin responded. On June 24, 1948, Soviet forces blockaded Berlin, cutting off all road and rail access from the West.
American leaders feared that losing Berlin would be a prelude to losing Germany and subsequently all of Europe. Therefore, in a successful demonstration of Western resolve known as the Berlin Airlift, Allied air forces took to the sky, flying supplies into Berlin. U.S., French, and British planes delivered nearly 2,250,000 tons of goods, including food and coal. Stalin lifted the blockade after 231 days and 277,264 flights.
By then, Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and especially the Czech coup, had alarmed the Western Europeans. The result, initiated by the Europeans, was a military alliance to complement economic efforts at containment. The Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad has called it “empire by invitation.” In 1949 the United States and 11 other countries established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). An attack against one was to be considered an attack against all, to be met by appropriate force. NATO was the first peacetime “entangling alliance” with powers outside the Western hemisphere in American history.
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The next year, the United States defined its defense aims clearly. The National Security Council (NSC) –the forum where the President, Cabinet officers, and other executive branch members consider national security and foreign affairs issues – undertook a full-fledged review of American foreign and defense policy. The resulting document, known as NSC-68, signaled a new direction in American security policy. Based on the assumption that “the Soviet Union was engaged in a fanatical effort to seize control of all governments wherever possible,” the document committed America to assist allied nations anywhere in the world that seemed threatened by Soviet aggression. After the start of the Korean War, a reluctant Truman approved the document. The United States proceeded to increase defense spending dramatically.
The Atomic Age: Living with the Bomb
After the United States detonated the first atomic bombs in 1945, most Americans were simply happy that the war had ended. But as more was learned about the power and effects of atomic bombs, worry spread. When the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, worry turned to fear and panic.
Duck and Cover
To ease Americans’ fears, the U.S. Government produced films explaining the true nature of atomic bombs and demonstrating techniques for surviving an atomic attack. The film below, Duck and Cover, was shown to schoolchildren beginning in 1950. The cartoon turtle, the cheerful theme song, and the practical advice were supposed to reassure children who might worry about an atomic attack. Instead, the images of little Johnny diving off his bicycle convinced children that the bombs could fall at any moment and gave them nightmares.
Hydrogen Bomb
In 1952, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb, or “H-bomb.” The first atomic bombs were fission bombs. They unleashed the energy created by splitting atoms of uranium. (Fission is also the process used in nuclear reactors to produce energy for home and commercial use.) The hydrogen bomb uses fusion. A fusion bomb is used to compress atoms of hydrogen so tightly together that they fuse into heavier helium. Fusion releases far more energy than fission; it’s the most powerful force in nature, the force that powers stars.
The first hydrogen bomb, cheerily code-named “Mike,” was detonated on an island in the South Pacific in November 1952. Its “yield” was about 10 megatons — equivalent to 10 million tons of TNT, 50 times the power of the bomb used on Hiroshima. The shock wave was measured in Southern California. The Soviet Union tested its own hydrogen bomb a few years later, and soon the two nations were racing to build more and bigger bombs. The Soviet “Tsar Bomba,” yielded 50 megatons and was capable of 100.