THE COLD WAR: HOW DID IT START? HOW DID IT END? THE COLD WAR WAS A CONFLICT AFTER WORLD WAR II BETWEEN THE U.S. AND SOVIET UNION. THE SUPER- POWERS NEVER FOUGHT EACH OTHER, BUT BACKED OPPOSITE SIDES IN “HOT WARS,” OFFERED AID TO INFLUENCE NEUTRAL COUNTRIES, AND COMPETED Wikimedia Commons IN A DANGEROUS NUCLEAR ARMS The three Allied leaders — Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin (left to right) RACE. IT LASTED 45 YEARS, BUT — sit for photographers at the Yalta Conference, February 1945. FDR died two months later. ENDED SURPRISINGLY FAST. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Eastern European nations as long as operate from within to gain control Harbor in 1941, the United States re- free elections were held. of the powers of government. alized that the Atlantic and Pacific In April 1945, Roosevelt died and In March 1946, Winston Churchill oceans could no longer protect the na- Harry Truman, the U.S. vice presi- delivered a speech in the United tion from an enemy’s air and sea dent, became president. In July, the States, warning that Stalin was rap- power. American leaders concluded American and British leaders met idly transforming the Eastern Euro- that the U.S. must have a military de- again with Stalin, this time in Pots- pean countries into communist fense superior to all other nations and dam, Germany. Stalin wanted to per- states. He said, “an iron curtain has never again permit a hostile power to manently weaken Germany to ensure descended across the continent” that dominate Europe or East Asia. it would never again invade the So- separated Europe between the demo- When the Germans invaded the viet Union. The three leaders agreed cratic and capitalist West from the to- Soviet Union in 1941, it lost more to divide Germany and Berlin into talitarian and communist East. than 20 million soldiers and civilians. American, British, French, and Soviet In early 1947, a Greek communist Russia had also been invaded by occupation zones. minority was fighting a guerilla war Napoleon early in the 19th century The next month, the U.S. dropped against Greece’s government, which and by the Germans in World War I. atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, the British had long helped to defend. Soviet leaders concluded they must which quickly led to Japan’s surren- The British informed President Tru- secure their national borders and der. Stalin believed that the U.S. used man that they no longer could afford never again suffer an invasion. the atomic bombs to intimidate the to provide military and economic aid The capitalist U.S. and commu- Soviet Union after the war. He called to Greece or its neighbor Turkey. nist Soviet Union were allies in World it “atomic blackmail.” Truman quickly decided to take War II. But their conflicting world Truman and Churchill soon wor- on the role of defending Greece and views and national security concerns ried that Stalin wanted to expand So- Turkey in order to block possible So- soon drove them into a Cold War. viet power and communism into viet control of this strategic area near Western Europe. By early 1946, Tru- the oil-rich Middle East. Truman and How Did the Cold War Start? man had dropped Roosevelt’s plan to his advisers believed Stalin was be- In early 1945, American and So- withdraw all American troops from hind the Greek communists. But viet armies pushed toward the Nazi Europe in two years. Josip Broz Tito, the communist capital of Berlin. The Soviets occu- Stalin believed that communism leader of neighboring Yugoslavia, pied the Eastern European countries would eventually overcome capital- was their chief supporter. of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, ism. His top priority, however, was to In March 1947, Truman ad- Bulgaria, Romania, and the eastern secure the Soviet Union’s borders dressed Congress and asked for mili- part of Germany. from attack. To protect his western tary and economic aid, but no U.S. The chief Allied leaders (Franklin border, he wanted not only a weak troops, for Greece and Turkey to pre- Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Germany but pro-Soviet Eastern Eu- vent them from falling under Soviet Joseph Stalin) met in the Crimean re- ropean governments. control. “It must be the policy of the sort city of Yalta (in the Soviet Union) At first, Stalin was satisfied with United States,” he declared, “to sup- in February 1945. Roosevelt and communist and non-communist port free peoples who are resisting at- Churchill agreed to recognize pro- coalition governments. He believed tempted subjugation by armed Soviet governments in each of the the communists would gradually minorities or by outside powers.” U.S. HISTORY 5 (c) 2014 Constitutional Rights Foundation http://www.crf-usa.org Central Intelligence Agency divided and Germany was split into two countries: West Germany, demo- cratic and independent; East Ger- many, communist and controlled by the Soviet Union. The Cold War was well underway. What Happened? Beyond Europe The Cold War soon expanded well beyond Europe. Communists won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, but Stalin had done little to help them. The U.S. sent troops into the Ko- rean and Vietnam “hot wars.” The Soviets aided the communist side in each case, but did not send any troops as the Chinese did in the Ko- rean War. The Cold War was also a war of ideas. The world divided along ideo- logical lines into the communist bloc and the Western bloc. Each side pro- A CIA map, prepared during the Cuban Missile Crisis, shows the range of the Soviet missiles claimed the superiority of its system of stationed in Cuba: IL-28 (630 miles), SS-4 (1,020 miles), and SS-5 (2,200 miles). government and economic order. A number of unaligned nations, mostly Truman seemingly committed the Stalin viewed the Truman Doc- in the developing world, declined to U.S. to help defend “free peoples” trine and Marshall Plan as a threat. side with either superpower in their anywhere with aid and possibly even He feared these policies were an at- contest between capitalism and com- troops. Such a commitment had never tempt by the U.S. to draw Soviet-oc- munism. But the superpowers often before been made by a U.S. president. cupied Germany and Eastern Europe used economic and military aid in A few months later, U.S. diplomat toward Western Europe and away these countries to gain their support. and Soviet expert George F. Kennan from Soviet control. gave a name to the policy Truman had Stalin reacted by forbidding any Nuclear Arms Race announced. In a magazine article, Ken- of these countries, soon called “So- The Soviet Union successfully nan analyzed Soviet behavior. “In viet satellites,” to accept Marshall tested an atomic bomb in 1949. The these circumstances,” Kennan wrote, Plan aid. He also abandoned his pol- Americans and then the Soviets devel- “it is clear that the main element of any icy of favoring coalition governments oped a more powerful hydrogen bomb. United States policy toward the Soviet that included non-communists. Both superpowers eventually built Union must be that of long term pa- In February 1948, Stalin engi- thousands of long-, intermediate-, and tient but firm and vigilant containment neered the overthrow of Czechoslo- short-range nuclear ballistic missiles. of Russian expansive tendencies.” Tru- vakia’s coalition government, leaving Each carried one or more warheads man’s “containment policy” also be- only communists in power. Several many times more powerful than the came known as the Truman Doctrine. months later he blocked all ground atomic bombs dropped on Japan. In April 1948, Congress passed a access to the American, British, and Cuban Missile Crisis massive program of economic aid for French occupation zones in Berlin. In 1959, Fidel Castro led a suc- Europe to include Germany and even Truman countered with an airlift of cessful communist revolution in Cuba. the Eastern European countries occu- food and supplies that within a year The U.S. trained anti-communist pied by the Soviets. The Marshall Plan, defeated the Soviet blockade. Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and over- named after Secretary of State George In 1949, the U.S., Canada, and throw Castro, but this operation failed. C. Marshall who proposed it, had two countries in Western Europe created Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet purposes. One was to assist Europe’s NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organi- leader, believed the attempt to invade recovery from the destructive war. The zation), a military defense alliance. Cuba was a new American strategy other was to strengthen Western Euro- Stalin then formed his own military to overthrow existing communist pean governments, threatened by com- alliance of Eastern European Soviet governments. He decided to counter munists who appealed to many with satellites called the Warsaw Pact. this by secretly placing nuclear mis- promises of a better life. By the end of 1949, Europe was siles in Cuba aimed at the U.S. 6 U.S. HISTORY (c) 2014 Constitutional Rights Foundation http://www.crf-usa.org Excerpt from Mikhail Gorbachev’s President Kennedy demanded the Address to the U.N. missiles be removed. Khrushchev re- December 7, 1988 fused. During several tense days in October 1962, nuclear war became a The history of past centuries and millennia has been a history of real possibility. But Khrushchev almost ubiquitous wars and sometimes desperate battles, leading to mutual destruction. However, parallel with the process of wars, backed down after Kennedy agreed hostility, and alienation of peoples and countries, another process, Wikimedia Commons to dismantle NATO missiles in Turkey just as objectively conditioned, was in motion and gaining force: The Process of the aimed at the Soviet Union.