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Chapter 25: Origins of the Cold War (1945–1960)
Important Keywords
Satellite countries: Eastern European countries that came under the control of the Soviet Union after World War II; the Soviets argued that they had liberated these countries from the Nazis and thus they had a right to continue to influence developments there.
Iron Curtain: Term coined by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a March 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri; Churchill forcefully proclaimed that the Soviet Union was establishing an “iron curtain” between the free countries of Western Europe and the Communistcontrolled countries of Eastern Europe.
Containment Policy: Policy devised by American diplomat George F. Kennan; Kennan believed that the United States needed to implement longterm military, economic, and diplomatic strategies in order to “contain” the spread of communism. Kennan’s ideas became official U.S. government policy in the late 1940s.
Truman Doctrine: Articulated in 1947, this policy stated that the United States would support any democratic nation that resisted communism.
Marshall Plan: American plan that spent $12 billion for the rebuilding of Western Europe after World War II; the plan helped produce an economic revival and helped stave off the growth of Communist influence.
Berlin Airlift: American effort that flew in supplies to West Berlin after the Soviet Union and the East German governments blocked the roads to that city beginning in June 1948; American airplanes flew in supplies for 15 months, causing the Soviet Union to call off the blockade.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): A military alliance between the United States and Western European countries that was formed in April 1949.
Warsaw Pact: military pact formed in 1955 between the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite countries.
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC): In 1947 this committee began to investigate the entertainment industry for Communist influences.
Blacklist: List created by HUAC and various private agencies indicating individuals in the entertainment industry who might be Communists or who might have been influenced by Communists in the past; many individuals named in the blacklist could not find work in the industry until the 1960s.
McCarthyism: Term used to describe the accusations by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and his supporters in the early 1950s that certain people in government, academia, and the arts were secret Communists. McCarthy’s charges were largely unsubstantiated.
Domino theory: Theory that if one country in a region fell under Communist rule, then other countries in the region would follow; this theory would be used to justify American involvement in Vietnam.
Sputnik: First artificial satellite, launched in 1957 by the Soviet Union; the fact that the Soviets launched a satellite before the United States shocked many in the American scientific community.
Key Timeline
1945: Yalta Conference
Harry Truman becomes president
Potsdam Conference
1946: Winston Churchill gives “iron curtain” speech
Article by George Kennan on containment
1947: HUAC begins probe into movie industry
Introduction of Federal Employee Loyalty program
President Truman articulates Truman Doctrine
1948: Berlin Airlift
Implementation of Marshall Plan
Creation of nation of Israel
Alger Hiss implicated as a Communist
1949: NATO established
Soviet Union successfully tests atomic bomb
Mainland China turns Communist
1950: Joseph McCarthy gives speech on Communists in the State Department
Alger Hiss convicted of perjury
McCarran Internal Security Act enacted
Beginning of Korean War
1952: Dwight Eisenhower elected president
1953: CIA orchestrates return of Shah of Iran to power
Death of Joseph Stalin
Execution of the Rosenbergs
1954: Army-McCarthy hearings Government in Guatemala overthrown French defeated at Dien Bien Phu Geneva Conference
1955: Creation of the Warsaw Pact
1956: Hungarian Revolt suppressed by Soviet Union
Suez crisis
1957: Sputnik launched by Soviet Union
1959: Castro comes to power in Cuba; United States halts trade with Cuba
1960: U-2 incident
John Kennedy elected president
The Beginnings of the Cold War
From 1945 through 1991, the cold war shaped US foreign policy.
The Cold War shaped American internal politics as well.
American business relied on defense.
Politicians needed to show they were not "soft on communism."
Cold war historians have questioned its causes.
American historians initially blamed the USSR for the cold war.
In the 1960s, "revisionist" historians claimed that US activities caused the Soviet Union to become aggressive after the war.
Later, "post-revisionist" historians argued that US-Soviet tension was unavoidable and that neither side was wholly to blame for the cold war.
Source of Tension: 1945
The US, UK, and USSR defeated Nazi Germany in World War II, but US-UK ties were far tighter than those with the USSR.
The US and UK were democratic, but the USSR was a totalitarian tyranny.
By the Yalta Conference, wartime allies were tense.
After World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin promised democratic elections in Poland, but he meant to convert Eastern European nations his soldiers had seized into a circle of Communist satellite republics barring Western invasion routes.
Franklin Roosevelt felt he could "understand" and manage Stalin.
Truman, a diplomatic neophyte whom Roosevelt had not informed on Soviet relations, took control after Roosevelt's death.
At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Truman met Stalin.
After Winston Churchill's election, Clement Atlee represented Britain.
The Nazi leadership was tried for war crimes.
Nuremberg was the most renowned trial.
Truman privately notified Stalin of the successful atomic bomb test.
He was unaware that Soviet spies informed Stalin of US atomic progress.
Western and Soviet ideologies diverged at the Potsdam Conference.
Europe and the Cold War
The Emergence of the Iron Curtain
In 1946 and 1947, the Soviet Union occupied Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia.
Stalin failed to provide free and fair elections.
Communists loyal to Stalin ousted non-Communists from these regimes.
Repression and violence governed the nascent Stalinist governments.
In March 1946, Winston Churchill announced at a small college in Fulton, Missouri, that the Soviet Union had erected an iron curtain over Europe, separating the Communist East from the non-Communist West.
One of the first acknowledgments of Europe's cold war was Churchill's speech.
The Truman administration's cold war doctrine was clarified by American diplomat George Kennan.
In a 1946 "long cable" from the U.S. embassy in Moscow and an anonymous essay in Foreign Affairs magazine in July 1947, Kennan contended that Marxist-Leninist doctrine and historic Russian fear drove the Soviet leadership to attack the West and increase its power.
Long-term containment was the appropriate answer to Soviet aggression, he believed.
If Communism was restrained, Kennan felt it would collapse in the Soviet Union and abroad.
For the rest of the cold war, American policy toward the Soviets was containment.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, containment initially took shape.
Because they wanted to control the Dardanelles Strait near Istanbul, the Soviets were exerting pressure on Turkey.
Controlling this crucial waterway would allow them to quickly transport battleships from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.
Communist insurgents fought the government in Greece.
The Turkish and Greek administrations had British help until 1947.
The British warned the Truman administration in February that they could no longer play this role because they were fatigued after World War II.
In a major departure from conventional American foreign policy, the US became increasingly involved in international affairs.
In March, the president declared the Truman Doctrine, which pledged US assistance for any nation endangered by Communist assault or subversion.
After Truman's statement, Congress approved $400 million for Greece and Turkey.
The Marshall Plan
Most Americans backed the Truman Doctrine of containment.
Americans believed that the unfettered emergence of aggressive totalitarian regimes in the 1930s had caused World War II and that the US should promote postwar stability.
Many scholars felt Hitler's ascension was caused by Germany's political and economic instability. Helping rebuild war-torn Europe seemed prudent.
This would boost global growth and weaken Western European Communist parties.
In June, Congress approved and financed the Marshall Plan in 1948 after Secretary of State George Marshall presented it in June 1947.
Stalin rejected it and forced the Soviet satellite republics to do likewise.
17 Western European nations received Marshall Plan funding.
The Marshall Plan encouraged Western Europeans to combine their economic efforts.
This plan revived Western Europe and benefited the US as Europeans became vital commercial partners.
The Berlin Airlift
In 1948, the Americans, British, and French merged their German occupation zones into the Federal Republic of Germany.
West Berlin, under Western rule, was to join the new Federal Republic.
West Berlin, a possible escape route for Easterners escaping Communism in the Soviet occupation zone, already irritated Stalin.
Stalin ordered Soviet and East German forces to block West Berlin highways in June, angered at Western intentions.
Stalin believed the Western allies would retreat from West Berlin.
Truman's Berlin Airlift challenged the embargo.
American and British aircraft sent enough food and supplies to West Berlin for over 15 months. Stalin lifted the embargo in May 1949.
After then, Germany became independent.
The Berlin blockade concerned Western allies.
They were concerned about Eastern Europe's many Soviet forces.
The US, Canada, and 10 western European nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to counter the feared Soviet threat.
This collective security treaty required signatories to defend attacking members.
The NATO pact changed American diplomacy.
Since 1800, the US had not joined an alliance.
For decades, the US kept considerable troops in Europe.
In 1955, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact.
Communist Victories
Two incidents rattled Americans in 1949.
The Soviet Union declared an atomic bomb detonation in September.
American atomic weapons monopoly ended.
In the 1950s, Americans had to accept the risk of a nuclear conflict.
The hydrogen bomb, many times more powerful than the atomic bombs fired on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was authorized by President Truman.
After WWII, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and Mao Tse-tung's communists fought a civil war in China.
Chiang Kai-shek received massive arms shipments from the US.
Despite this aid, the Nationalists fell behind the Communists.
On October 1, 1949, Communist armies took Peking and declared the People's Republic of China.
Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists fled to Formosa (now Taiwan).
For years, the US recognized Formosa's Chiang Kai-shek dictatorship as China's genuine government.
The US would politicize "who lost China."
Republicans accused President Truman and Democrats for Communism's rise in the world's most populous country.
The Middle East and the Cold War
British influence in the Middle East was longstanding.
US involvement in Middle Eastern politics increased as British dominance faded.
America still valued oil.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the US produced most of its oil, but diplomats knew Western Europe and Japan relied on Middle Eastern oil.
Truman strengthened US-Saudi ties.
American oil corporations invested in Saudi Arabia with U.S. government encouragement.
Truman pledged to defend Saudi Arabia against the USSR.
The US containment strategy in the Middle East relied on increasing American ties with the religiously conservative and undemocratic Saudi monarchy.
To keep the Soviets out, American authorities worked with several regional rulers.
The Cuban missile crisis arose from US nuclear missiles in Turkey in the late 1950s.
The United States and the Creation of Israel
After the Holocaust, pressure to create a Jewish state in Palestine increased.
Many surviving European Jews longed for a fresh life in the historic Jewish homeland.
Since World War I, Great Britain has controlled Palestine as a mandate, but it was unable to mediate a peaceful solution between Jewish settlers and Arab residents.
After Jewish and Arab assaults on its forces, Great Britain withdrew and gave Palestine to the UN.
United Nations diplomats advocated dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab nations.
This division was opposed by Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab governments.
They opposed a Jewish state in Arab-majority regions.
The U.S. State Department likewise rejected the UN proposal, saying it was in America's long-term interest to back the Arabs.
Despite his diplomats' opposition, President Truman supported a Jewish state.
As the British withdrew in 1948, war began.
Jewish settlers in Palestine founded Israel.
President Truman recognized the new country immediately.
Many Arabs evacuated their houses, either to prevent violence or to escape Israeli soldiers.
The Israelis defeated the Arab nations' invasions.
Israel was established, but the Arab world did not recognize it.
More conflicts followed.
The US was Israel's biggest international protector from the start. Israel relies on US diplomatic support and military aid.
The Arab world hates America because of its "special connection" with Israel.
The United States and Iran
In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower confronted fresh Middle East issues.
Arab nationalism was strong.
Corrupt monarchies enraged populations.
Eisenhower openly backed regional independence.
He advised against doing this "too rapidly" since instability may allow the Soviets to expand their influence.
In 1951, Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq nationalized British oil holdings.
British angered, they blocked Iranian oil shipments.
Mossadeq became a hero to Iranians by fighting the British.
As Mossadeq took power from the Shah, a close American ally, Washington became disillusioned.
The US originally opposed the British coup of Mossadeq.
Mossadeq had exhausted Americans by 1953, when Eisenhower came president.
Eisenhower authorized CIA overthrow of the Iranian prime minister. CIA demonstrations ousted Mossadeq.
The ex-prime minister was imprisoned.
The Shah ruled repressively until 1979. Iranians identified the US with the Shah, and the 1979 seizure of the US embassy was partly driven by 1953 resentments.
The Cold War at Home
Concerns about Communist influence at home increased as the cold war escalated and the U.S. adopted a containment campaign abroad.
Communists were prominent in the arts and labor movement in the 1930s and 1940s.
A succession of espionage cases fuelled accusations of extensive Communist infiltration of the government and other institutions as the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union turned into open enmity.
The Second Red Scare
President Truman created a Loyalty Review Board to address these issues and dispute Republican claims that his administration was "soft on communism."
Over 100 government employees were fired after three or four million were examined.
Homosexuals, who may be blackmailed, were among the fired staff.
Some American Communist Party leaders were prosecuted under the 1940 Smith Act by Truman.
Organizations that sought violent subversion of the US government were banned under the Smith Act.
Congress also probed Communists in the federal bureaucracy and the entertainment business.
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was founded in the 1930s to investigate Nazi infiltration into the US.
In the 1940s, it focused on the Communist menace.
In 1947, HUAC sponsored movie industry hearings. Actors, directors, and writers with Communist affiliations were investigated.
The danger was that left-wing campaigners were injecting Communist slogans into apparently inoffensive movies.
Filmmakers who portrayed our Soviet friends positively during World War II were also questioned by the committee.
The Hollywood Ten were Communist-affiliated writers and filmmakers.
They didn't answer HUAC queries.
For contempt of Congress, they received one-year imprisonment.
Hollywood's HUAC inquiry had profound effects on the film industry.
To show their patriotism, major movie studio executives created a blacklist of politically suspicious actors, writers, and directors.
The blacklist prevented American film workers from being employed.
Many industry professionals were damaged by this. Others worked abroad.
Using pseudonyms or "fronts," several banned authors continued to write. Broadway actors faced a similar blacklist.
Hollywood blacklisted until 1960.
During the Second Red Scare, the Senate replied.
“Stop the spread of communism” measures were sponsored by Senator Pat McCarran.
The McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 forced all Communist or Communist-front groups to register with the government and barred members from working in national defense positions.
To avoid a "influx of communism" entering the US, the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 limited Asian and Eastern European immigrants.
Both legislation were vetoed by President Truman, but Congress passed them.
Soviet Espionage in the United States
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, discoveries regarding Soviet surveillance in the US sparked a Second Red Scare.
Alger Hiss, a former State Department employee and Franklin Roosevelt's Yalta Conference adviser, was probed by HUAC in 1948.
Hiss was suspected of being a Communist and spying for the Soviet Union by Time magazine editor Whitaker Chambers, a former Communist.
Chambers showed several stolen papers and Hiss disputed these claims.
Hiss was found guilty of perjury and imprisoned for four years.
The postwar finding that Soviet spies had stolen American nuclear secrets helped the Soviet Union advance its nuclear development.
In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were prosecuted for being part of a spy ring that gave the Soviets knowledge on the atomic bomb and other military systems.
In 1952, both Julius and his wife were found guilty of spying and executed.
Despite mercy requests, they were executed.
For years, Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs' supporters claimed they were innocent victims of anti-Communist hysteria.
Hiss and the Rosenbergs were Soviet spies, according to disclosed US and Soviet papers after the cold war.
Sympathy for Moscow motivated some American Communists to treason.
The Korean War
After World War II, the US and USSR divided Korea into occupation zones along the 38th Parallel.
South Korea became pro-American and anti-Communist, while North Korea became a Communist dictatorship.
In June 1950, North Korea deployed troops over the 38th parallel to reunite the peninsula.
South Korea received military aid from the UN Security Council.
The US had began deploying air and naval force in South Korea.
In the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur led UN troops.
The North Korean attack first pushed back the South Korean and quickly deployed American forces.
Then MacArthur arranged a stunning amphibious invasion at the Port of Incheon behind North Korean defenses.
After defeating the North Koreans, MacArthur's soldiers crossed the 38th parallel.
UN soldiers approaching China's border were resisted by Communist China.
MacArthur's soldiers were forced south by a major Chinese offensive in November.
In March 1951, UN soldiers counterattacked and drove back to the 38th parallel.
By this time, General MacArthur intended to extend the war by invading China alongside Chinese Nationalist soldiers and American aircraft.
This was too much for President Truman, who sought to restrict the Korean War and avert World War III.
In April 1951, Truman fired MacArthur. Armistice discussions started in July 1951 and lasted two years.
North and South Korea remained split along the 38th parallel when an armistice was reached in July 1953.
40,000 Americans died in this "forgotten conflict."
Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism
In 1949–1950, Americans' cold war frustrations launched Joseph McCarthy's stratospheric career.
In a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Wisconsin's junior senator claimed to have a list of 205 State Department Communists on February 9, 1950.
Over time, this list expanded and contracted. McCarthy's confusion didn't hurt. Rhetorically, his list mattered.
McCarthy's claims showed the American people that he shared their fears and was on their side against a political class that looked complacent in the face of the Communist danger.
In the Second Red Scare, McCarthyism became the phrase for accusing persons of Communism.
Four years of McCarthy's power.
Some senators who challenged his approach lost reelection.
McCarthy's claim that government Communists caused cold war reversals was simple to grasp and believed by many Americans.
His fellow Republicans realized the electoral importance of his popular anti-Communism, even though they were skeptical of his "investigations."
McCarthy was an attack dog who went where other politicians wouldn't.
McCarthy accused President Truman and former secretary of state George Marshall of being "unconscious" Communists.
President Eisenhower initially tolerated McCarthy.
The senator then stated in March 1954 that the U.S. Army was hiding Communists.
McCarthy's allegations were excessive.
He attacked a respected institution.
Senator McCarthy's Army probe was a PR catastrophe.
Two TV networks broadcast the Army-McCarthy Hearings live, attracting a significant daily viewership.
As the proceedings continued, McCarthy was shown to have lobbied the Army to favor one of his conscripted aides.
McCarthy was a bully during questioning, causing Army counsel Joseph Welch to remark, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Applause greeted Welch's famous retort.
Edward R. Murrow's CBS News show See It Now included a caustic profile on Senator McCarthy.
President Eisenhower quietly gathered Senate backing for McCarthy's censure.
McCarthy was censured in 1954.
Although he stayed in the Senate, McCarthy lost his investigative committee and political authority.
Three years later, he died. Joseph McCarthy is still divisive.
Defenders say he was right about certain Communists in the administration, but detractors say he blackened many people's names with baseless allegations, creating a political environment of fear and distrust.
President Eisenhower and the Cold War
The cold war shaped Eisenhower's worldview.
Although in command of his government, Eisenhower liked to work behind the scenes.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was the administration's foreign policy spokesperson. Secretary Dulles said that the US must "make communism withdraw" and move beyond containment.
The Eisenhower administration relied increasingly on its nuclear deterrence to reduce the military budget's high cost.
If a Communist force invaded the free world, Dulles threatened "massive vengeance."
Eisenhower hoped for a "new understanding" between the US and the USSR after Joseph Stalin's 1953 death, despite his subordinate's harsh statements.
Nikita Khrushchev, the new Soviet leader, spoke of "peaceful cohabitation" with the US.
In 1956, Khrushchev repressed the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule.
Dulles had publicly supported Eastern European "liberation" efforts until this point.
The US resisted the Hungarians' desperate struggle for independence because Eisenhower didn't want to risk war with the Soviets.
In Southeast Asia, Eisenhower was also reluctant to use military action.
Ho Chi Minh's nationalist insurgency in Vietnam has been fought by France since 1946.
The Truman administration gave the French a lot of military assistance after they convinced them they were fighting Communism.
The French lost in Dien Bien Phu in 1954. As Dien Bien Phu worsened, the French begged the US to intervene with military force, including atomic bombs.
Many in the US administration sympathized with the French, but Eisenhower refused to join the war.
The Geneva Accords concluded the Indochina War by dividing Vietnam into North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh and South Vietnam under anti-Communist Vietnamese.
Though preparing for conflict in Southeast Asia, President Eisenhower was interested in the area.
He believed in the domino hypothesis, which suggested that Southeast Asian countries would fall to Communism if one did.
US funding to South Vietnam increased.
International crises arose.
Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian commander building the Aswan Dam, received US support.
Nasser wants to buy plenty of American weapons.
Congress blocked a weapons transaction due to Nasser's anti-Israeli views.
Nasser purchased Soviet weaponry in frustration.
This outraged Western nations, and the US halted Egypt's funding.
The Suez Canal was nationalized by Nasser.
The British, French, and Israel attacked Egypt in October 1956 to depose Nasser.
The US was not involved in these preparations, and Eisenhower was appalled by his friends' activities, thinking they would inflame anti-Western sentiment in the Middle East.
Egypt's threat of Soviet intervention escalated the Suez Crisis.
When he convinced the British and French to leave Egypt, Eisenhower defused the situation.
The Middle East Communist danger alarmed Eisenhower and Dulles.
In January 1957, the president issued the Eisenhower Doctrine, which pledged military aid to any Middle Eastern nation endangered by Communism.
The Eisenhower Doctrine was executed in July 1958 when American soldiers were dispatched to Lebanon to support the pro-Western government.
The US was particularly concerned about Communism's growth in Latin America, where it had deep economic and geopolitical links.
Most Western Hemisphere states joined the Rio Pact, a collective security accord, in 1947.
The US policed the hemisphere when it feared Soviet supporters threatened American interests.
In 1954, President Eisenhower ordered a CIA coup to depose a Guatemalan president who had taken United Fruit Company territory.
In 1959, Cuban tyrant Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro.
Castro established a dictatorship and declared his aim to start a Communist revolution in Cuba.
Castro allied with the Soviet Union and confiscated American property.
In retaliation, the US cut diplomatic ties and placed a trade embargo on Cuba.
Tensions with the Soviet Union
In the 1950s, the US and USSR greatly expanded their nuclear arsenals.
By August 1953, both had detonated hydrogen bombs, several times more powerful than atomic bombs.
Each nation conducted underground and above-ground nuclear testing.
In 1958, Eisenhower and Khrushchev agreed to halt atmospheric testing due to nuclear fallout concerns.
Nuclear missiles were developed by the US and USSR.
The US worried that the Soviets were acquiring a missile advantage, creating a "missile gap."
In 1957, Americans were astonished to discover that the Soviet Union had launched the Sputnik satellite. American watchers saw Sputnik circling Earth.
To "keep up" with the Soviets, American schools emphasized math and science. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded in 1958 by President Eisenhower to further the American space program.
The Soviets shot down an American U-2 espionage aircraft in May 1960, embarrassing the U.S.
Initially, the Americans claimed that a NASA test jet in Turkey had gone missing, not an American plane spying over the Soviet Union.
Francis Gary Powers, the pilot, was released by the Soviets.
With the American cover narrative shattered, President Eisenhower claimed full responsibility for the U-2 spy operation.
The Paris peace meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev failed due to the U-2 incident.