COLD WARDay 2

In 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb.

Both superpowers developed far more powerfulhydrogen bombs by the 1950s.

After the fall of China, North Korea, and Eastern Europe, the US and USSR began an arms race.

Each country built enough nuclear weapons to kill 500,000,000 people in the event of war, destroying all civilization and laying waste to the entire planet.

The policy was called mutually assured destruction.

In April 1949,the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed.

This military alliance,which included Great Britain, France, other Western European nations, and the United States and Canada,agreed to provide mutual helpif any one of them was attacked.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949)

1. United States

2. Belgium

3. Britain

4. Canada

5. Denmark

6. France

7. Iceland

8. Italy

9. Luxemburg

10. Netherlands

11. Norway

12. Portugal

13. 1952: Greece & Turkey

14. 1955: West Germany

15. 1983: Spain

In 1955, the Soviet Union and Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania formed the military alliance called the Warsaw Pact.

Warsaw Pact (1955)

1. U. S. S. R.

2. Albania

3. Bulgaria

4. Czechoslovakia

5. East Germany

6. Hungary

7. Poland

8. Rumania

The United States then extendedits military alliances around the world.

By the mid-1950s, the United States was in military alliances with 42 nations.

Stalin died in 1953.

After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchevbecame the chief policy maker in the Soviet Union.

Under his leadership, de-Stalinization, or the process of eliminating some of Stalin’s most ruthless policies, was put in place.

With Stalin gone, many Eastern European states tried to make reforms.

The Soviet Union, however, made it clear that it would not allow its Eastern European satellites to become independent.

Revolts against communism in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia were brutally crushed.

In August 1961, on the order of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the East German government began to build the Berlin Wall.

It was built to stop the flood of East Germans escaping to the greater freedom and prosperity of West Berlin.

The Berlin Wall Goes Up (1961)

CheckpointCharlie

In 1957, the Soviets sent Sputnik I,the first man-made space satellite, to orbit the earth.

In 1961, the Soviet astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, became the first man to orbit the Earth in space.

Americans feared there was a missile gapbetween the Soviet Union and the United States.

In the 1950s, a movement in Cuba led by Fidel Castro aimed to overthrow the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Castro’s revolutionaries captured Havana in 1959.

Many Cubans who disagreed with Castro fled to the US.

Relations between the US and Cuba quickly deteriorated as Castro began to receive aid and arms from the Soviet Union.

In October 1960, the US declared a trade embargo prohibiting trade with Cuba.

In January 1961, the US broke diplomatic relations with Cuba.

In April 1961, US President John F. Kennedy supported an attempt to overthrow Castro’s government.

The attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs failed.

In 1962, Khrushchev began to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to counteract U.S. nuclear weapons placed in Turkey, near the Soviet Union.

In October 1962, President Kennedy ordered a blockade of Cuba to stop Soviet ships carrying more nuclear missiles from reaching Cuba.

Khrushchev agreed to send the ships back and remove nuclear missilesin Cuba if Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba.

Kennedy agreed. Six months later, the US removed its missiles from Turkey.

The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to very close to the brink of nuclear war.

The American Mercury program succeeded in sending John Glenn to space in 1962.

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo project allowed American Neil Armstrong to become the first man to walk on the surface of the Moon.

After World War II, Communists in Vietnam under leadership of Ho Chi Minh fought for independence from France with rebels called the Viet Minh.

In 1945, Viet Minh rebels took control of most of Vietnam.

The French, however, refused to accept the new government and fought for control of the southern part of the country.

In 1954, France agreed to a peace settlement.

Vietnam was divided – the Communist north based in Hanoi and the anti-Communist south based in Saigon.

But by early 1965, South Vietnamese Communist guerrillas known as the Viet Cong were ready to seize control of the entire country.

U.S. policy makers applied the domino theory to Vietnam.

According to this theory, if South Vietnam fell to communism,then other countries in Asia would fall like dominoes to communism.

In March 1965, US President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to send American troops to South Vietnam to prevent a Communist victory.

By the end of the 1960s, the Vietnam War reached a stalemate – neither side was able to make significant gains.

The atrocities of the war were broadcast nightly on television.

A massive anti-war movement grew in the US as more American troops were sent to Vietnam.

President Johnson decided not to run for re-electionbecause of public opinion against his handling of the war.

Former Republican vice-president Richard M. Nixon won the election with the promise to end the war and reunite the American people.

In 1973, Nixon reached an agreement with North Vietnam that allowed the US to withdraw its forces.

Within two years, Vietnam was forcibly reunited by Communist armies.

By the end of 1975, Laos and Cambodia also had Communist regimes.

In Communist China, Mao believed that only permanent revolution, an atmosphere on constant revolutionary fervor, could produce the final stage of communism, a classless society.

In 1966, Mao started the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to create a working class culture.

The Little Red Book, a collection of Mao’s thoughts, provided knowledge in all areas.

The Red Guards were formed to eliminate the “Four Olds” – old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon became the first US President to visit the People’s Republic of China.

In 1979, China and the US established diplomatic ties.

By the 1970s, the Communist ruling classof the Soviet Union had become corrupt.

The Soviet economy was weakened by the government’s bureaucracy that discouraged efficiency and encouraged indifference.

Farmers and workers lacked incentive to work hard.

By 1980, the Soviet economy was seriously declining.

In 1985, the reformer Mikhail Gorbachevwas chosen to lead the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev’s basis of reform was perestroika, or restructuring, of the Soviet economy and government.

His willingness to rethink Soviet domesticand foreign policy led to a dramatic end to the Cold War.

In 1987 Gorbachev made an agreement with the United States - the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty –to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

Gorbachev changed Soviet policy by stoppingmilitary support to Communist governments in Eastern Europe.

This led to the overthrow of Communist regimes in these countries.

In 1988 unrest led many East Germans to flee their Communist country.

In 1989, mass demonstrations against the Communist regime broke out.