An Introduction to the Cold War

A. Introduction to the Cold War

(below)

B. Cold War Case Studies

C. Analysis of Vietnam War

Documents

Introduction to the Cold War

Timelines

The Cold War and decolonization happened in roughly the same period of time and were, to many people, one experience rather than two. Because the Cold War and decolonization occurred around the same time, and were equally global in their impact, each influenced the way that the other developed. For these reasons, we tend to study these two trends together.

In many ways, the Cold War began before the Second World War even ended. The leaders of the big victorious powers, especially the United States and the Soviet Union, but also Great Britain, met several times during the last years of the Second World War to try to figure out what the post-war world would look like. The last meeting between the Allied powers during the war was held in Yalta, Russia in February 1945. The US, the USSR, and Great Britain attended. It became clear to many people that this meeting was really about dividing much of the world into two separate spheres, one communist and Soviet-dominated, the other capitalist and US-dominated.

Some leaders, like US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, believed that a hard division could be avoided, at first anyway. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was less optimistic. After WWII was over, Churchill declared in a 1946 speech that he saw an "Iron Curtain'' descending across Europe as Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin began to establish governments he wanted to control throughout Eastern Europe.

The Cold War Timeline

In 1947, US President Harry Truman said he would support anti-communist governments anywhere in the world. What followed were a series of confrontations, beginning with a Soviet blockade in Berlin, Germany in 1949. The victory of communist forces in China in 1949 helped spread this conflict to Asia, resulting in the Korean War of 1950-1953. Also in 1953, US-supported military leaders overthrew the Prime Minister of Iran, whom they suspected of supporting the Soviet Union. In early 1959, communist rebels in Cuba overthrew a US-aligned government, and the conflict quickly expanded in Central America and the Caribbean.

Throughout the 1960s, US-supported forces and Soviet forces faced each other across the border between eastern and western Europe. Meanwhile, conflict spread to Southeast Asia with US forces supporting southern Vietnam as communist China and the Soviets supported northern Vietnam. In the late 1970s, Cold War confrontations really flared in southern Africa, but also picked up steam in the Americas. Both of these regional conflicts continued into the 1980s. The communist governments of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union collapsed between 1989 and 1991.

The Decolonization Timeline

At the same time, much of the world was decolonizing. That is, societies everywhere were rejecting their colonizers to become independent, self-ruling nation- states. Movements to end colonialism had been in motion for a long time, but they only really took hold at the end of the Second World War. When Italy was defeated in 1945, some former Italian colonies—including Libya—became independent. Similarly, the former Japanese colony of Korea became two independent countries, although dominated by the US (in South Korea) and the Soviet Union (in North Korea).

In the late 1940s, a few other countries began to win their independence, including the Dutch colony of Indonesia in 1949. Probably the biggest change was the successful independence of the British colony of India in 1948, along with a partition that allowed Pakistan to be its own country. In 1954, in the French colony of Indochina—made up of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—a Vietnamese force defeated the French military at Dien Bien Phu. Vietnam became independent with elections planned for 1956.

Colonized people everywhere took heart from these events, especially in North Africa where decolonization movements gained power. In 1957, Ghana became the first independent sub-Saharan African country. The "year of Africa"—1960—saw seventeen colonies gain independence from the British, French, and Belgian imperial powers. Then over in the Caribbean, Jamaica won its independence in 1962, as did many other islands soon after. But the process was slowed where there were European settlers, and in southern Africa, in particular, it continued into the early 1990s.

STOP! Use the above reading to answer questions in Part 2: Timelines.

Understanding the Cold War

What was the Cold War?

The destruction of World War II reduced many European cities to rubble. It also led world leaders to seek new ways to protect against future attacks. While the United States and the Soviet Union had worked together to defeat the Axis powers, their partnership quickly turned to a 50-year-long confrontation. They disagreed about how to rebuild Europe, and their efforts to increase their own security often conflicted. This fierce conflict is called the "Cold War" since the two superpowers never directly engaged in combat ("hot war"). Instead, they increased their military capabilities, tried to expand their global influence, and undermined the other's way of life in the eyes of the world. While the United States believed in a capitalist system of free markets and multiple political parties, the Soviet Union was founded on a communist system controlled by a centralized state and a single political party.

The Cold War came down to some basic differences between the world-views of the United States and the Soviet Union. Communist societies believed in redistributing wealth (taking from the rich and giving to the poor) and promoted workers and state-run economies. These resulted in low unemployment rates but sometimes led to the unequal distribution of consumer goods. They also viewed organized religion as dangerous. The US capitalist system let free markets determine the production and distribution of goods, and promoted freedom of religion. This led to more productivity but often created massive economic inequalities. Both sides also used propaganda to paint a negative picture of their enemies. From 1945 until the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, these two nations competed for global influence in the areas of military, economics, politics, and even culture.

During the Cold War, the US Department of Defense released a series of “informational” films intended to educate the public about the dangers of Communism and the Soviet Union. Freedom and You, released in 1957, was an anti-communist short presented as an education film about the nature of Communism. The film was later released to American television and to American schools as an education film under the title, The Red Nightmare.

PLEASE WATCH THE EXCERPT BEFORE MOVING ON.

STOP! Use the above reading and video to answer questions 1 and 2 in Part 3: Understanding the Cold War (you'll answer the rest later!)

Three key features defined the Cold War:

1) the threat of nuclear war,

2) competition over the allegiance (loyalty) of newly independent nations,

3) the military and economic support of each other's enemies around the world.

The United States showed its global military dominance when it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end the war. This act prompted the USSR to seek nuclear technology to discourage American aggression. The United States held other advantages as well. Having entered World War II late in the conflict, it lost far fewer soldiers and civilians. The USSR lost 8-10 million soldiers (25 million including civilians) yet the United States lost 400,000 in the war. While the Soviet Union faced a devastating invasion, most of the United States emerged unscathed from the war. Finally, the US economy expanded during the war as it made profits selling weapons and supplies to the Allied forces.

Map of Cold War military alliances. The Eastern Soviet “Warsaw Pact” areas are in red, and the Western NATO areas are in blue. CC BY-SA 3.0.

A Divided Europe

After a long history of enemy invasions, Soviet leader Josef Stalin wanted to expand its territory and build a buffer between the Soviet Union and Europe. He also wanted control in Central and Eastern European countries that the Soviets had helped liberate. As a result, Stalin quickly established strong communist parties that took power in Central and Eastern Europe (the Eastern Bloc). They took orders from the USSR. Meanwhile, the United States provided over $12 billion in aid for rebuilding Western European nations who agreed to open trade.

This divided Europe, breaking trade networks and splitting communities between East and West. These economic divisions spread to separate military alliances in each zone. This further divided Europe along an imaginary line called the Iron Curtain. Travel and cultural exchange across the Iron Curtain became increasingly difficult. It separated previously connected communities and created new ones living either under a communist or capitalist system.

In 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill traveled to Fulton, Missouri to warn the American people about what he saw as the imminent threat of spreading Communism and Soviet influence.

Map of Iron Curtain dividing the Eastern Bloc and USSR from Western Europe. The black dot in Germany represents the division between East and West Berlin. By Semhur, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Churchill's "Iron Curtain" Speech

Please watch the video before continuing.

STOP! Use the above reading to answer the rest of the questions Part 3: Understanding the Cold War.

Two Americans protest the Vietnam War in Kansas, 1967. Public domain.

The Cold War Around the World

The Cold War heats up around the world

The Cold War started in Europe. From 1945 to 1953, the USSR expanded its influence by creating the Eastern Bloc across states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Stalin set up puppet communist governments that he could control. He repressed anyone who resisted. The United States likewise began to meddle in the affairs of foreign nations where it feared communist regimes would gain control. This became known as a policy of containment.

In the 1950s, competition had spread to the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America, with each side trying to establish control. By the 1960s, the Cold War reached Africa. Many former colonies achieved independence from European empires (decolonization). These new nations sided with the Americans or Soviets to receive economic and military aid. Both superpowers supported dictatorships that came to power through violence and repressed their societies—all to gain an edge in the global Cold War.

Some of the most important Cold War conflicts took place in Asia. Communists took power in China in 1949, and the Americans feared other countries would soon follow. In 1953, Korea had been divided into two zones, with a communist government in the North and an American-leaning government in the South. To contain the spread of communism to South Korea, the US sent troops. The Chinese responded by sending their own troops to the border. The war killed nearly 5 million people but ended in a stalemate, leaving a divided Korea that remains today.

Perhaps no conflict illustrates the policy of containment better than Vietnam. Like Korea, Vietnam was divided into a communist north and pro-West south. To contain the communist north, the United States invaded in the 1960s. The Soviet Union sent money and weapons to the communist forces. By 1975, with the help of the Soviets and China, a small, poor nation defeated the strongest military superpower in the world. Over 58,000 Americans died in the conflict. The war divided Americans who were for or against the war. The US intervention in Vietnam exposed the hypocrisy of US policies that claimed to promote self-determination, and it inspired other small nations to determine their own futures.

After the Vietnam War, Cold War tension briefly decreased. The Americans' defeat in Vietnam, the threat of nuclear war, and new Soviet leadership led to open discussions between the sides. But much like the Americans had in Vietnam, the USSR intervened in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It wanted to ensure the victory of a communist-leaning group and sent troops to assist them. Just as North Vietnam received aid and military assistance from the USSR, the United States backed Soviet enemies in Afghanistan with money and weapons. Ultimately, the USSR was equally unsuccessful, and US-backed forces emerged victorious. After much infighting, Islamic extremists called the Taliban claimed power in the region, thanks to American aid.

The end of the Cold War

The Cold War finally ended in the 1990s. The USSR could no longer keep up with US military spending. Meanwhile, economic problems in the Eastern Bloc meant that goods were in short supply. To keep citizens from revolting, the new Soviet leader, Mikhael Gorbachev, proposed reforms to stimulate communist economies. The economic reforms were known as perestroika, or "restructuring." He also relaxed restrictions on freedom of expression, a policy called glasnost, or "openness." These reforms were too little too late.

In 1989, the most iconic symbol of the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, which divided the German city, was torn down by Germans on both sides seeking to unify Germany. Similar waves of anti-communism spread throughout the Eastern Bloc. The end of the Cold War was marked by the disintegration of the USSR into over a dozen independent nations.

Fear of a nuclear war likely prevented direct combat between the Americans and the Soviets. Though they did not engage in all-out warfare, the two superpowers supported many of each other's enemies in combat. They created a bi-polar system of global power that forced other nations to choose sides and ripped communities apart. The economic troubles created by the Soviet war in Afghanistan left the USSR unable to maintain control of the Eastern Bloc. Once self-determination was possible in the 1990s, many Eastern European countries chose a different path. They elected non-communist parties and joined the European Union. Outside of Europe, communists in places like Cuba and China have remained in power while other nations removed pro-US dictators. Whichever path nations have chosen since the collapse of the USSR, the Cold War has left a major imprint.

East and West Germans call for unification of the country and the removal of the Berlin Wall in the fall of 1989. By Sue Ream, CC BY 3.0.

STOP! Use the above reading to answer the question in Part 4: The Cold War Around the Word.

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