Unit 23 How Did The Cold War Was Different From Previous Hot Wars? What Was the Cold War? (????????)????????The Cold War: Crash Course US History #37 (????

Unit 23 How Did The Cold War Was Different From Previous Hot Wars? What Was the Cold War? (????????)????????The Cold War: Crash Course US History #37 (????????)????????Cold War in 9 Minutes (????????)???????? Unit 23: The United States and the Cold War, 1945–1953
Lecture
On September 16, 1947, the 160th anniversary of the Constitution’s signing, the
Freedom Train opened to the public in Philadelphia. The train, containing dozens of
the most significant historical documents in American history, including the
Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg address, toured the nation. Visitors
were asked to affirm American ideals by taking a Freedom Pledge and signing a
Freedom Scroll. More than 3.5 million visited the train, and even more attended the
educational programs and parades that accompanied it.
Beneath the surface of the train’s exhibits lay conflict over the meaning of American
freedom. Archivists who proposed the initial list of documents for the train intended
to include the Wagner Act, which granted workers the right to organize unions, and
President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, in which he articulated “freedom from
want.” The conservative American Heritage Foundation, to which the Truman
administration had given the train, eliminated these documents from the exhibit.
The foundation also would not include the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,
which had established equal and civil political rights regardless of race during
Reconstruction. The train did not mention unions or social welfare, and only a few
documents, such as the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment
(which outlawed slavery), spoke to black Americans’ history.
The train showed how the Cold War affected America. Just before the train opened
to the public, President Truman declared that the United States would adopt a policy
of containing Soviet power across the world, and that disloyal Americans would be
removed from government jobs. Government officials soon praised the train for
contributing to the fight against communist subversion, and the FBI even reported
on those who criticized the exhibit. The Freedom Train’s history shows how the
Cold War transformed freedom by imbuing it with anti-communism, advocacy for
“free enterprise,” and support for the status quo in American society.
After World War II, the United States possessed enormous industrial capacity, the
largest navy and air force (the army was demobilized). and the only atomic bomb in
the world. This made it the most powerful nation on earth. Roosevelt had wanted to
avoid a return to the isolationism of the post–World War I era and believed the
United States should lead efforts to establish cooperation, democracy, and
prosperity across the globe, in part through new institutions such as the World Bank
and United Nations. U.S. leaders believed that America’s security depended on
stability in Europe and Asia and that American prosperity required the rebuilding of
economies worldwide. The chief obstacle to American leaders’ visions for the
postwar world seemed to be the Soviet Union, whose victorious military occupied
much of eastern Europe and eastern Germany. The Soviet Union’s triumph over
Germany and its claim that communism modernized Russia appealed to colonized
1
peoples who desired national independence, and like the United States, the USSR
intended to reshape the world in its own image. Though Americans knew the Soviet
military was too weak to directly threaten the United States, they accurately
recognized Soviet intentions to dominate eastern Europe.
The wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union was formed
only to defeat Hitler. Clashes between American and Soviet interests and values
were bound to resurface after the war. The Cold War’s first event occurred in the
Middle East, where Soviet troops occupied parts of northern Iran in with rich oil
fields. Pressured by Britain and the United States, the Soviets withdrew troops from
Iran but simultaneously installed pro-communist governments in Poland, Romania,
and Bulgaria, a move they compared to U.S. domination in Latin America. To many
Americans, Stalin seemed to violate his promise at Yalta for free elections in Poland.
Soon thereafter, U.S. diplomat George Kennan, in his famous Long Telegram, told the
Truman administration that communist ideology made the Soviet government
inherently and permanently aggressive. Only America, he wrote, could prevent the
extension of Soviet communist rule in the world. This was the basis for the policy of
“containment,” in which the United States aimed to check all Soviet attempts to
expand its power in the world.
In a speech in Missouri, former British prime minister Winston Churchill declared
that an “iron curtain” had fallen over Europe, dividing the free West from the
communist East. This reinforced emerging beliefs that a long-term struggle between
the United States and the Soviets was at hand. In March 1947, Truman announced
that the United States was now engaged in a global conflict with the Soviet Union.
This new policy came to be called the Truman Doctrine.
When he became FDR’s vice-president in 1944, Truman was an obscure senator
from Missouri with little foreign policy experience, and as president he soon faced
daunting foreign policy challenges. He did not trust Stalin and believed the United
States had to assume world leadership. Truman decided to embrace containment
when Britain signaled it could no longer afford military aid to Greece, where a
monarchy faced a communist-led revolt, and to Turkey, where the Soviets wanted
joint control of the crucial straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
Britain asked America to step in. Though unrest in Greece and Turkey was mostly
homegrown and incited by corrupt and undemocratic governments, these states
were strategically important as doors to southern Europe and the oil-rich Middle
East.
To win Congress’s support for containment, Truman was told to frighten the
American populace, and he repeatedly invoked the nation’s responsibility to defend
freedom at home and abroad. Truman’s rhetoric laid the framework for how
Americans viewed the postwar world, and it became the “guiding spirit of American
foreign policy.” Republican and Democratic support for Truman’s policy initiated a
long period of bipartisan backing for containment. And his speech showed the
extent to which the Cold War was an ideological conflict, in which both powers
claimed their social system was a model for other nations and that they advanced
2
freedom and social justice while defending their own security. Congress’s approval
of military aid to Turkey and Greece rescued these governments and checked Soviet
power. Truman’s speech and policy committed the United States to a permanent
responsibility in the world and set a precedent both for U.S. support of
undemocratic, anti-communist regimes and for the creation of military alliances
against the Soviets. The Truman administration soon established new “national
security” agencies, such as the National Security Council and Central Intelligence
Agency, which were removed from congressional oversight.
Potential military action was only one element of containment. Secretary of State
George C. Marshall outlined another in a speech in June 1947, in which he
committed the United States to spending billions of dollars to finance Europe’s
economic reconstruction. The destruction caused by the war, food scarcity, and
inflation plagued the continent, and these crises expanded support for communist
parties in France and Italy, which American leaders feared might go communist. The
Marshall Plan promoted the idea that capitalism, even after the Great Depression,
would flourish, and it defined as a threat to American security, not just Soviet
military power, but the economic and political instability that nourished
communism. The Marshall Plan gave a positive meaning to containment, making
freedom more than just anti-communism. It represented a kind of New Deal for
Europe that would establish mass industry and mass consumption in order to
provide employment and a high standard of living for Europeans. In only a few
years, production in Europe exceeded pre-war levels. But the plan exacerbated
tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, which refused to support a
plan that would consolidate U.S. influence in Europe. With 23 other nations, the
United States simultaneously created the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs
(GATT) to foster more free trade and create larger markets for American goods and
investments.
In Japan, General Douglas MacArthur administered a U.S. occupation that ended in
1948 with a new, democratic constitution and land reform. The new constitution
gave women the vote and affirmed that Japan would never again wage war and
would only maintain a small military force for self-defense. The United States
supervised Japan’s economic recovery, as well. Though the nation considered
dissolving the giant industrial corporations that had enabled Japanese aggression,
this idea was scrapped when U.S. policymakers determined that a strong Japanese
economy would check communism in Asia. By the 1950s, Japan’s economy was
booming.
The Cold War rapidly intensified. At the end of World War II, each winning power
occupied and administered parts of Germany and its capital, Berlin, which was
located far inside the Soviet zone. In June 1948, when the United States, Britain, and
France started a process that would lead to a new West German government allied
with them, the Soviets responded by blocking all traffic from the American, British,
and French zones to the city. Western planes began an 11-month airlift of supplies
to West Berlin. Stalin lifted the blockade, but two nations—East and West
3
Germany—took form, each allied with a side in the Cold War, and Berlin stayed
divided. West Berlin survived as an isolated city surrounded by communist East
Germany, and only in 1991 was Germany reunified. In 1949, the Soviet Union also
first tested an atomic bomb, thus ending the U.S. monopoly on nuclear arms. That
year the United States, Canada, and 10 nations in western Europe created the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact in the event of Soviet
aggression in Europe. Many Europeans applauded when West Germany joined
NATO, because they hoped it would prevent future German aggression and defend
against Soviet advances. In turn, the Soviets in 1955 formed the Warsaw Pact, their
own military alliance in Eastern Europe.
Also in 1949, Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong won the civil war in that
country, dealing a heavy blow to U.S. containment policy. The Truman
administration, criticized by Republicans for having “lost” China to communism, did
not recognize the new People’s Republic of China and prevented it from taking its
seat in the United Nations. Until the 1970s, the United States defended the exiled
regime in Taiwan as China’s legitimate government.
In 1950, the National Security Council responded to the growing tensions in
Germany, China’s new government, and the Soviet atom bomb with a policy of
permanent military armament. The document expressing this new policy, called
NSC-68, depicted the Cold War as an epochal conflict between “the idea of freedom”
and the “slavery” of the Soviets that would determine whether the “free world”
survived. NSC-68 spurred monumental increases in military spending.
The Cold War turned “hot” not in Europe, but in Asia. In 1945, Korea was split into
Soviet and American zones. These became two governments: a communist North
Korea, and the anti-communist and undemocratic South Korea, aligned with
America. In June 1950, North Korean troops invaded the south in an attempt to
unify the peninsula under communist rule, and they nearly conquered all of South
Korea. Truman interpreted the invasion as a Soviet challenge to US containment
policy, and the UN authorized military action. American troops led by General
Douglas MacArthur launched a campaign that resulted in US occupation of most of
North Korea. But in October 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed
the border and pushed UN forces back down the peninsula. When MacArthur
demanded the right to use nuclear weapons to repel the Chinese and perhaps even
invade China, Truman declined. MacArthur’s refusal to recognize the president’s
civilian control of the military led to his dismissal. The war stalemated, and in 1953,
an armistice left the two prewar nations intact without any formal peace treaty.
More than 33,000 Americans, 1 million Korean soldiers, 2 million civilians, and
hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops died. The Cold War that began in Europe
now became global in scope. Events since 1947 suggested that the world had not
found peace, as had been hoped in 1945 when the UN was founded. Instead of one
world living in harmony, the world was split between the US, which led what
became known as the West (including Japan), or the “Free World.” The US formed
4
more military alliances in Southeast Asia and the Middle east, effectively
surrounding the Soviet Union and China.
In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s brutal regime had jailed or murdered millions. Its
authoritarianism made the Soviet Union seem antithetical to “free enterprise” and
democracy. But some Americans argued that approaching the Cold War as a titanic
struggle between freedom and slavery was problematic. Even George Kennan, who
inspired containment policy, argued that US leaders should avoid ideological
decisions and view international crises on a case-by-case basis if they were to
determine if freedom or American interests were in danger. Walter Lippman
condemned turning foreign policy into an “ideological crusade” that required the US
to constantly intervene abroad and violate its own ideals by allying with
authoritarian anti-communist governments – many of which faced rebellions
sparked by domestic problems, not Soviet subversion. Lippman argued that
communists were bound to be part of the movements for national independence
that the US should itself support.
The war elevated awareness in the US about imperialism and decolonization, even
as anti-colonial movements used the Declaration of Independence to make claims
for self-government. Some liberals and black leaders pressed Truman to promote
decolonization, and in 1946, the US gave independence to the Philippines. But the
Cold War saw the US retreat from the pressure that FDR had exerted on America’s
European allies to grant sovereignty to their colonies. Britain and France hoped to
retain their possessions in Africa and Asia. While geopolitical and economic
interests influenced US foreign policy as much as ideas of freedom, US policymakers
used the language of freedom to justify actions that seemed to contradict freedom.
Even extremely repressive governments were included in the “Free World” as long
as they were anti-communist. One such ally was South Africa, where an apartheid
regime preserved white supremacy and suppressed the black population.
The Cold War was an ideological conflict in which both sides sought to win support
across the world. Freedom was central to mobilizing public opinion, and in the
1950s freedom was a prominent theme in the academy, the media and mass culture,
and government. The Cold War set the boundaries for understanding freedom.
Culture and history were mobilized for the Cold War. Historians argued that the
American Creed of pluralism, tolerance, and equality had always defined American
life, and neglected the ways in which race and ethnicity had restricted freedom. The
federal government pressed Hollywood to make anti-communist films, from which
all references to racism were to be removed. The CIA and the Defense Department
patronized the arts, enlisting actors, dancers, and musicians to promote the
superiority of American values at home and abroad, and sponsoring magazines and
academic conferences. The CIA even funded the controversial abstract expressionist
art of painter Jackson Pollock, whose canvasses, created by dropping and splashing
paint, were said to embody cultural freedoms absent in socialist nations.
5
The Cold War’s other master concept was “totalitarianism.” First used in World War
II to describe fascist Italy and German as aggressive, ideological governments that
harshly controlled all of civil society and denied the rights and alternative values
that might lead to social change, totalitarianism soon came to describe the Soviet
Union and its allies. This concept helped spread the belief that powerful
governments were the greatest threat to freedom. Whatever the Soviet Union
supported was automatically deemed antithetical to freedom. The American Medical
Association launched the largest public relations campaign in history against
Truman’s proposal for national health insurance, calling it “socialized medicine.”
Soviet hostility to organized religion automatically made Christian worship a
bastion of freedom.
The Cold War also shaped the idea of human rights. The war’s atrocities and the
Four Freedoms and Atlantic Charter sparked calls for a new global order ruled by
universal rights for all of humanity. The war crimes trials of German officials
showed that the international community would hold individuals accountable for
violations of human rights. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which declared that all people should have
basic rights to freedom of speech and religion, should be free from arbitrary
government, and should enjoy social and economic entitlements such as housing,
education, health care, and an adequate standard of living. Though the document
could not be enforced anywhere, its assertion that governments were accountable
for the way they treated their citizens became widely accepted.
Debates over the UDHR showed the contradictions and tensions in the idea of
human rights. How much human rights should supersede national sovereignty, and
who or what should protect the human rights that governments violate, are still
unsettled questions. Both the US and the Soviet Union resisted the creation of a
mechanism to enforce the UDHR because they feared outside interference in
domestic and foreign policy. American leaders were particularly sensitive about
race relations, which they feared might invite UN action against the US. In the 1950s,
Cold War considerations limited human rights and both the US and the Soviet Union
used human rights for their own interests. The USSR claimed to provide its citizens
with social and economic rights, while the US criticized the Soviets for violating
democratic rights and civil liberties. Only in 1992 did Congress ratify the part of the
UDHR that covers “Civil and Political Rights”; it has not yet ratified the declaration’s
“Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.”
After the war, President Truman faced the monumental task of shifting America
from war to peace. The more than 12 million men still in the military in 1945
wanted to return to their families and jobs, and demobilization occurred rapidly.
While some veterans found civilian life difficult, others used GI Bill benefits to build
or buy homes, start small businesses, and go to college. Most veterans went into the
labor force, taking jobs from more than 2 million women workers. The government
dismantled wartime agencies that regulated industry and labor and set price
controls, which sparked immediate inflation.
6
Backed by Democratic liberals and unions, Truman in 1945 tried to revive New Deal
politics with a program he eventually called the “Fair Deal.” This would improve the
social safety net and raise living standards. Truman pressed Congress to hike the
minimum wage, create a national health insurance system, and increase public
housing, Social Security, and educational aid.
The year 1946 was one of labor revolt. The AFL and CIO launched Operation Dixie to
bring unions to the South and…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment