VIII. The Cold War

The United States emerged from the war in 1945 with the world’s strongest

military.• False• Thinking that our enemies had been

defeated, the U.S. quickly shrank its military from 12,000,000 soldiers to 1,500,000.

• Many former servicemen took advantage of the GI Bill to attend college. Soon, millions were getting married, buying houses and starting careers. The economy prospered and the Baby Boom began.

• What made the United States a “superpower” was

– Its prosperous economy.– The fact that it did not have to

rebuild from the ravages of war.– The reality that the United States

was the only nation in the world with the technology to build atomic bombs.

2. As World War Two came to a close, the United States decided to

permanently abandon its former policy of international isolation.

• True• In reality, Isolationism ended the

moment Pearl Harbor was bombed. The attack on Pearl Harbor demonstrated that the oceans would not protect the United States from carrier-launched airplanes.

• In 1946, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech. In this speech, he warned that the United States now had the obligation to become the leader of the Free World in the face of expanding communism.

• The United States took on this challenge by forming and joining the United Nations as well as military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

The Cold War eventually divided most of the world…

3. The Soviet Union emerged from the war with the world’s strongest economy.

• False

• As a communist nation, the USSR was still far behind economically and was struggling to catch up.

• However, it took only four years for the Soviets to build and test their own atomic bomb. This officially started the nuclear arms race, the most terrifying feature of the Cold War.

• Also, in 1945, despite huge casualty losses during World War Two, the Soviets emerged from the war with the world’s largest military.

4. The biggest cause of the Cold War was the Soviet

Union’s attempt to spread communism around the world.

• False• The perception in the United

States was that the Soviets were attempting to spread communism around the world.

• Setting up communist “puppet” governments in eastern Europe supported this perception. The communist takeover of China in 1949 by Mao Zedong also strengthened this view.

• However, Russia had a long history of invasions from the west (Napoleon, Germans, Nazis…), so in the minds of the Soviets, military security was their main goal.

5. Shortly after the war, the United States provided billions of dollars in economic aid to

help rebuild Europe.• True • True

• The European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan, involved 13 billion dollars in economic assistance to help rebuild the economies and the infrastructure of European nations after the war.

• While the Marshall Plan was considered to be humanitarian aid, it also helped to “immunize” these nations from communist revolutions.

• The Soviet Union did not allow any nations in eastern Europe to accept this aid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Marshall_Plan.png

6. The Cold War was characterized by a series of conflicts between the United

States and the Soviet Union that sometimes approached the brink of

nuclear war.

• True• Because of the fear of starting

World War Three and completely destroying the planet, the United States and the Soviet Union never fought a face-to-face war.

• Instead, they practiced the art of “brinkmanship”, which means they stood up to each other as much as possible without starting a nuclear war.

• Examples of these confrontations include the following:

– The Berlin Airlift – When the Soviets cut off West Berlin from West Germany, the United States brought in food and supplies on flights that landed every three minutes.

– When North Korea, which had become communist, crossed the 38th Parallel to invade South Korea in 1950, the U.S. sent troops to fight in the Korean War. However, while Americans fought North Korean and Chinese troops, they never fought against the Soviet military.

– The best example came in October, 1962 when Soviet missiles were discovered in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest that the world came to nuclear annihilation.

Berlin

Korea

Cuba

7. The Space Race was launched in the 1950’s when the United States became the first nation to successfully launch

an unmanned satellite.• False• Both the U.S. and the Soviets

began space programs right after the war for security purposes. However, the USSR took the lead in 1957 by launching Sputnik, the world’s first unmanned satellite.

• The United States responded with a wave of fear, the decision to put billions of dollars into math and science education and the determination to catch up.

• It was with much pride that the United States became the only nation to ever land a man on the moon in 1969.

8. Cuba in the early 1960’s became the site of the most dangerous Cold War

conflict.• True• In the late 1950’s, Fidel Castro led a

revolution in Cuba that brought in communism as well as a partnership with the Soviet Union.

• Shortly after President Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, he authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion to drive out the communists. This turned into an embarrassing disaster.

• When JFK learned about the presence of nuclear missiles in Cuba in October of 1962, he ordered a quarantine (blockade). After a secret deal was struck, the Soviets agreed to pull the missiles out. The world sighed with relief after two very stressful weeks.

9. Within the United States, the Cold War spawned an irrational fear of communism.

• True• In theory, communism is based on the

prediction that the working classes will violently revolt to create a classless society. Since the principles of free enterprise which are deeply-rooted in American society are very threatened by this idea, communism has been hated and feared from its beginning.

• To make matters worse, 1949 saw the spread of communism to China and the successful testing of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union. This combination of factors helped to spawn a “Red Scare” in the United States during the early 1950’s.

• At its height, the Red Scare included the “witch-hunt” tactics led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, restrictions on civil liberties and even the execution of a husband and wife, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, for treason.

10. The United States won solid victories during the Cold War by

effectively keeping communism out of China and Korea.

• False• Communists took control of

China in 1949 and are still in power.

• The Korean War ended as a stalemate in 1953, but North Korea is still communist today and is still a threat.

• The Cold War continued from the 1960’s through the end of the 1980’s. While there were “victories” (Berlin) and “losses” (Vietnam), many historians would say that the United States ultimately “won” the Cold War.

Europe in 1970

Collapse of the Soviet Union

Europe Today