The Cold War Era - Wake Christian Academymelvinduckenfield.wakechristianacademy.com/files/2013/05/Chapter...The Cold War Era • After WWII ... Europe • “From Stettin in the Baltic

5/8/2013

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Chapter 23

THE COLD WAR ERA “An iron curtain has descended”

The Cold War Era • After WWII, Soviet Expansion threatened to enslave

Europe

• “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” – Winston Churchill

• Symbol of division: – Communist world, dominated by the Soviet Union

– Free world, led by the United States

• Decades of apprehension, hostility, and competition between the Soviet Union and the U.S. followed and became known as the Cold War – No actual fighting between the two super powers

Postwar Confrontation The World divided into three groups

• Industrialized nations

– North America

– Western Europe

– Japan

• Communist world

– Soviet Union

– Eastern Europe

– China

• Developing countries of:

– Africa

– Asia

– Middle East

• Collectively known as the Third World

A Heritage of Mistrust

• Relations between U.S. & U.S.S.R. characterized by suspicion and mistrust.

– Lenin withdrew from WWI & signed a separate peace treaty with Germany

– United States withheld diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union until 1933

– Soviets signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939

– Communists join Allies to fight a common enemy after Hitler invades Soviet Union in 1941

Communist Motives Three Motivations

• Fear of the West

– Stalin believed the Allies purposely delayed opening another front in France

– Claimed America intent on destroying the Soviet Union

• Zeal for their ideology

– Territorial expansion and spreading communist revolution were necessary

• Desire for power

– Increase empire’s wealth, power and prestige by adding territories

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Soviet Expansionist Policies Soviet Expansionist Policies • In wartime conferences at Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam, Allied

leaders wrestle with what to do with Germany

– Germany to be divided & occupied by Western & Soviet forces

• East Germany given to the Soviet Union

– Soviets allowed to keep territorial gains in Eastern Europe with understanding that free elections would be held eventually

– Red Army never leaves Eastern Europe • Poland • Romania • Bulgaria • Albania • Hungary • Czechoslovakia • In Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito (Marshal Tito) came to power and

established a communist government.

American Containment Policies • U.S. emerges from WWII as most powerful nation in the

World

– Only nation with atomic bomb

– Peacetime buildup of defense

– Clear sense of superiority and mission

– Spread democracy and promote free trade throughout the world

– Began to rebuild its defeated foes (unprecedented)

– Under Truman, U.S. adopts policy of containment

– U.S. would support any country threatened by Communist aggression – Truman Doctrine

– 1948, Truman signs the European Recovery Act, or Marshall Plan

U.S./Soviet Confrontation Germany

• Allies divided Germany into Zones

– France

– Great Britain

– United States

– Soviet union

U.S./Soviet Confrontation NATO:

• Regional military alliance formed by the Western powers in 1949

• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization

– U.S.

– Canada

– Great Britain

– France

– Greece & Turkey added in 1952

• Soviets reacted by creating the Warsaw Pact in 1955

Arms race 1949

• Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb

• Beginning of arms race

1950

• President Truman ordered the production of the hydrogen bomb (H-bomb)

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• During the postwar period, tension between the free world and the communist bloc (a group of nations united by treaty or agreement for mutual support or joint action) flared several times

– Limited wars

– North & South Vietnam in 1960’s & 1970’s

– Afghanistan in 1980’s

Spread of Communism Fall of China • After the defeat of Japan, a civil

war erupted in China

– Nationalist forces of Chaing Kai-shek

– Communist forces of Mao Zedong

• Americans supported the Nationalists

• By 1949 Communists forces captured China’s major cities

• Nationalists forces fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan)

• For the next 30 years, the U.S. recognized Taiwan as the “real” China

• Asia Remained a “hot spot” in the East-West confrontation when Communist North Korea invaded South Korea and sparked the Korean War (1950 – 53)

• At the close of WWII Korea had been divided, like Germany, into Communist and non-Communist occupation zones

The Korean War (1950-53)

• IN June 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea

• Example of Soviet expansion

• Truman appeals to U.N. for declaration of War.

• UN secured South Korea

– Drove communist forces across 38th parallel

• Primarily an American effort

• General McArthur proposes major assault

• Truman did not want to provoke “the wrong war”

The Korean War The Korean War

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The Korean War

The Vietnam War (1963-75)

French Colonial Possessions French Indochina


• In September 1940, the Japanese invaded French Indochina in order to prevent the Republic of China from importing arms and fuel through French Indochina along the Sino-Vietnamese Railway

• The fighting took place in the context of the ongoing Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

• French authorities reach agreement with Japanese.

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• After WWII, the French wanted to recover their colony

• Vietnamese Communist Ho Chi Minh declared his country’s independence

• Struggle ensued

• French defeated in Battle of Dien Bien Phu

• Settlement negotiated in Geneva, Switzerland

– Vietnam divided at 17th parallel

– Communist North & non-Communist South


1954

• Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) formed to oppose Communist aggression

• Presidents Eisenhower & Kennedy send limited number of military advisors to help S. Vietnam

1964

• North Vietnamese torpedo boats attack American Destroyer

• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

• American military personnel jumps from 23,000 in 1964 to 542,000 in 1969


1968

• Viet Cong initiates Tet (New Year) offensive

• Communists temporarily occupied many major cities in the South

• Communists temporarily occupied many major cities

• American & South Vietnamese forces drove Communists back

• Americans at home disillusioned


• President Johnson does not run for 2nd term

• Richard Nixon won presidential election in 1968

• Began a gradual American withdrawal from Vietnam

• Turned the burden of the fighting over to the South Vietnamese

– Vietnamization

Lyndon Johnson

Richard Nixon

Communism in Africa

• A number of African countries gained their independence from European colonial rule

• Many countries turned to the Soviets for assistance

– Ethiopia

– Mozambique

– Angola

Communism in Latin America

• Some Latin American countries looked to the Soviets instead of United States for economic assistance

• “Yankee imperialism”

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• In 1959, Communist dictator Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba and allied his country with the Soviet Union

• Cuban exiles supported by CIA attempted an invasion to oust Castro in 1961

• President Kennedy aborted American support & mission failed

• Bay of Pigs fiasco

Fidel Castro John F. Kennedy


• Communism threatened the Central American countries of Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama

• In 1979, the Sandanistas captured power in Nicaragua

• Ruled for 10 years

• U.S. shows stronger resolve in dealing with communism in Latin America

• Dominican Republic - 1965

• Chile – 1973

• Grenada - 1983

III. Showdown Between the Superpowers

• Relations between U.S. and U.S.S.R. improve during the 1950s

• Stalin died

• Nikita Krushev became new Soviet leader

• President Dwight Eisenhower pursued a course of “peaceful coexistence”

“Coexistence” and Tension

Krushev Stalin

Eisenhower

1957

• Russians launched Sputnik, the first man-made earth satellite

• Americans became alarmed

• America responded:

• strengthen education

• acceleration of its own space program

• Kennedy pledges to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s


Sputnik launch


May 1960

• An American U-2 spy plane piloted by Gary Powers was shot down over Russian territory

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• Khrushev used the “U-2 incident” as an excuse to break off talks at the Paris summit

• Powers was captured, tried, and imprisoned

• He was released in 1962 in a prisoner exchange

Krushev

Francis Gary Powers


Berlin

• Constant flow of refugees from East Germany into Western Europe

1961

• Concrete-and-barbed-wire wall built to separate East Berlin from west Berlin

– Berlin Wall

• 400 – 800 people died attempting to escape from East Berlin

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

1918 - 2008


• U.S. discovered that the Soviets were installing missiles in Castro’s Cuba

– Cuban Missile Crisis

“Thaws” in the Cold War Early 1970s

• President Nixon became the first American president to visit mainland China

• His Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, worked toward a policy of détente with the Soviet Union

– Relaxing of tensions

• Nixon visited the Soviet Union and signed the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks treaty (SALT)

Henry Kissinger

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December 1979 – Renewed confrontation

• Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan

• U.S. entered the 1980s in a weakened position

– Economy weak

– Military had been downsized

• Ronald Reagan elected in 1980

– Built up U.S. military

– Initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

• Relations deteriorated further when a Korean passenger plane was shot down by the Soviets. American congressman on board.

– “Evil Empire”

Jimmy Carter

Ronald Reagan

Collapse of the Soviet Empire

Reasons for Soviet Decline • Growing unrest of people in Eastern Europe • Demonstrations • Uprisings • Rising discontent among Soviet satellite countries • Internal weakness within Soviet state • Aging leadership

• “They keep dying on me.” Ronald Reagan

1917 1971 1982 1985

Lenin Brezhnev Khrushchev Stalin Andropov Chernenko

Younger Soviets recognize need for reform

• Soviet economy:

– Central planning

• No incentives

• Low productivity

• Arms race ultimately bankrupted the Soviet Union

• Western economy:

– Market driven

• Incentive to benefit from hard work

• Competition to innovate and get ahead

• Maintaining control in Eastern Europe

• Assisting insurgents in Africa and Latin America

• War in Afghanistan

• Too costly

Perestroika and Glasnost Mid 1980s

• New Soviet Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, calls for wide range of social, political, and economic reforms called perestroika or “restructuring”

– Increase industrial productivity

– Stimulate technological development

– Restructure bureaucracy

– Decentralize management of the economy

– Experiment with free-market system

– Needs financial assistance from the West

Gorbachev

Glasnost • Gorbachev linked perestroika to the

concept of glasnost

– “openness”

– Hoped to create a more democratic atmosphere

• People did not want reform; they wanted to abolish communism

– Momentum could not be reversed

Gorbachev

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Unrest in Eastern Europe

• Gorbachev’s reforms led to wave of protests in Eastern Europe:

– Poland

• Solidarity labor union

• Lech Walesa, first non-Communist prime minister since WWII

– Hungary & Czechoslovakia open their borders to the West

– East Germans express discontent

• Mass exodus through Hungary & Czechoslovakia

– Soviets react too late

Berlin Wall Falls

Hungary

Czechoslovakia

Unrest in the USSR • Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Armenia, Azerbaijan

• Boris Yeltsin lead opposition to Gorbachev – Supported reform & elected president of

Russia

1991

• Hard-line communists make a last stand

• Gorbachev detained – “ill”

– Six-month state of emergency declared

• Yeltsin led general strike against hard-liners

• Army refuses to obey orders to fire on the crowds.

• Coup collapsed

Yeltsin

December 1991

• Eleven Soviet republics declare independence from the Soviet Union

• The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is established

• Gorbachev resigns

• The Soviet Union is dissolved into independent republics

• Communism is repudiated

Gorbachev

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• Some former republics wanted little to do with their former overlords – Estonia

– Latvia

– Lithuania

• Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia Wanted little to do with former overlords

• Belarus • Ukraine • Russia

Prosperous & Industrious

Largest

• Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia

• Russia granted seat on UN Security Council

• Inflation and unemployment increased

• Antiquated technology

• Poor transportation system

• Worthless currency

• President Boris Yeltsin Criticized

– Had little to do with Russia’s problems

• Poland & Hungary

– Transition without violence

• Romania

– Violent revolution

• Czechoslovakia

– Divides peacefully into two halves

• Yugoslavia

– Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Muslims

– Violent breakup

– Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzoegovina, Serbia and Montenegro

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• Special reminder that the collapse of the Soviet Union did not mean the end of totalitarian communism

• Mao Zedong

– Cruel dictatorship

– Thousands sent to prison camps

• Nationalists, intellectuals, businessmen, Christions

– “Great Leap Forward” to improve agriculture and industry – failed

– “Cultural Revolution” to stir up zeal for Communism – civil chaos & economic decline

– Died in 1976

Zedong Xiaoping Yaobang

1989

• Students demonstrate in Tiananmen Square

• More than 2,000 people killed in government crackdown

• Demonstrations reveal strong dissent still existed within Communist China

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The Cold War Era - Wake Christian Academymelvinduckenfield.wakechristianacademy.com/files/2013/05/Chapter...The Cold War Era • After WWII ... Europe • “From Stettin in the Baltic