COLD WAR BASICS - REVIEW

WHAT WAS THE COLD WAR?

The war against Hitler had united America and Russia, but post-war splits appeared.
They stopped short of full-scale war because of the development of the Atomic bomb.
It turned into a battle for world domination.

CAUSES OF THE COLD WAR

Beliefs:
Russia was (3 things) America was (3 things)
1. a Communist country, 1. a capitalist
2. ruled by a dictator 2. democracy,
3. who cared little about human 3. which valued freedom.
rights.

Aims:
Stalin wanted (2 things)
1. reparations from Germany
2. a buffer of friendly states.
Britain and the USA [led by President
Truman] wanted (2 things)
1. to help Germany recover
2. to prevent large areas of Europe from
coming under Communist
control.

Resentment about history

The USSR did not trust Britain and the
USA (2 reasons)
1. They had tried to destroy the
Russian Revolution in 1918.
2. Stalin thought they had not helped
the USSR enough in WW2.
Britain and the USA did not trust the
USSR (1 reason)
• Stalin had signed the Nazi-Soviet pact
in 1939.

YALTA CONFERENCE (4 things)

1. February 1945
2. Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt agreed to (5 points):
a. Divide Germany into 4 zones occupied by France, Britain, USA,
USSR.
b. Hold free elections in Eastern European countries.
c. Give the USSR territory in Manchuria in return for their help against
Japan.
d. Set up the United Nations.
e. Set up a government of Communists and non-Communists in Poland.
3. On the surface, everything seemed friendly
4. Tension behind the scenes

POTSDAM CONFERENCE (4 things)

1. July 1945
2. At Potsdam the tensions surfaced.
3. Stalin, Truman and Atlee agreed to (2 things):
a. Bring Nazi war criminals to trial.
b. Divide Germany into 4 occupied zones.
4. There were also disagreements over (3 things):
a. Soviet policy in Poland.
b. The size of German reparations.
c. Stalin’s demands for a naval base in the Mediterranean.
SALAMI TACTICS (2 things) 1945–48
1. ‘Slice-by-slice’,
2. Stalin ensured 7 Eastern European countries had Communist governments.
Albania (1945)
– the Communists took power after the war without opposition
Bulgaria (1945)
– the Communists executed the leaders of all the other parties.
Poland (1947)
– the Communists forced the non-Communist leaders into exile.
Hungary (4 things) (1947)
a. Russian troops stayed there. Stalin allowed elections
(noncommunists won a big majority). The Communists were led
by the pro-Russian Rakosi.
b. Rakosi demanded that groups which opposed him should be
banned.
c. He got control of the police, and arrested his opponents.
d. He set up a secret police unit, the AVH.
Romania (1945–1947)
– the Communists gradually took over control.
Czechoslovakia (1945–48)
– in 1948, the Communists banned all other parties and killed
their leaders.
East Germany (1949) 28
– the Russians turned their zone into the German Democratic
Republic.

CHURCHILL’S FULTON SPEECH (5 things)

1. March 1946
2. Churchill described the Soviet bloc as an ‘iron curtain’.
3. Stalin believed this was necessary to maintain the safety of the USSR.
4. After Fulton, the Cold War worsened.
5. Russia called the speech a declaration of war.

GREECE (2 things)
1. February 1947
2. The USA supplied arms and money to defeat the Communists in Greece.

TRUMAN DOCTRINE (2 things) THE MARSHALL PLAN (3 things)

1. March 1947
2. The USA implemented a policy of
‘containment’ towards the USSR – to
prevent Communism spreading any
further.
1. June 1947
2. Marshall believed poverty was a
breeding ground for Communism.
3. American introduced ‘Marshall Aid’ –
$17 billion to get Europe’s economy
going.

COMINFORM (3 things)
1. October 1947
2. Stalin forbade Communist countries to accept Marshall Aid.
3. Cominform was set up to control all Communist countries in Europe.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA (3 things)
1. March 1948
2. Communists took control
3. Panicked the US Senate into granting Marshall Aid (31 March 1948)
THE BERLIN BLOCKADE

Causes - Cold War was beginning to bite – created tension.

Aims
USA and Britain wanted Germany to recover
Stalin wanted to destroy Germany and was looting German industrial capacity.

Bizonia
USA, Britain and France merged their zones into West Germany which became
more prosperous than the Soviet zone.

American Aid
Marshall Aid was voted 31 March 1948.

New Currency (3 things)

1. To get the Germany economy going, Britain and America introduced a new
currency.
2. This destabilised the East German economy
3. Stalin said that this was the cause of the blockade.

Events (6 points)
1. (24 June 1948) – Stalin closed all rail and road links from Berlin to West
Germany.
2. Lasted 11 months.
3. The Allies airlifted supplies to Berliners – 275,000 flights took 1.5m tons
supplies.
4. In winter, Berliners lived on dried eggs and potatoes/ 4 hours of electricity a
day.
5. US had B29 bombers on standby.
6. (12 May 1949) – Stalin re-opened the borders.

Results
1. Cold War - got worse.
2. East/ West Germany split.
a. West Germany = Federal Republic of Germany.
b. East Germany = German Democratic Republic.
3. NATO/ Warsaw Pact
a. NATO was set up in 1949 by the Western Allies as a defensive
alliance against the USSR
b. Warsaw Pact set up 1955 by Russia
4. Arms Race - The USA and USSR competed for world domination.

KOREAN WAR North Korea [Communist] invaded South Korea [Capitalist].

Causes
1. Domino theory
Truman thought that Far Eastern countries would fall like dominoes.
China became Communist in 1949. Truman feared Japan would follow.
He felt he had to stop this.
2. Undermine Communism
NSC 68 (April 1950) recommended that the US abandon 'containment'
and start to 'roll back' Communism.
3. Cold War
Truman and Stalin were in a battle for world domination – Korea was a
‘war at arm’s length’.
4. Kim Il Sung got Stalin’s and Mao tse Tung’s agreement to attack South Korea.
5. Syngman Rhee (1950) – boasted he would attack North Korea – gave an
excuse.
Events (5 phases)
1. By June 1950 the NKPA captured most of South Korea from the ROKs.
2. July 1950 UN troops, mainly Americans led by General MacArthur, drove the
Communists back to the Chinese border.
3. October 1950 (4 things)
a. China attacked
b. drove the Americans back
c. advanced into South Korea.
d. MacArthur called for use of atomic bomb.
4. March 1950 (3 things)
a. The Americans sent reinforcements and drove back the Chinese
(200,000 dead)
b. Truman told the troops to stop t the 38th parallel
c. Truman sacked MacArthur for criticizing his orders.
5. 1953 Truce: America claimed successful containment.

KHRUSHCHEV succeeded STALIN.

It seemed he would bring a thaw in the Cold War (4 reasons)

1. He advocated ‘Peaceful Coexistence’
2. He met Western leaders at summit meetings
3. He was friendly to Yugoslavia, telling Tito there were ‘different roads to
Communism’
4. He criticised Stalin, executed Beria, set free political prisoners and began to
de-stalinize the eastern bloc countries.

In fact 1955–1963 was the time of greatest tension in the Cold War (3 reasons)
1. Khrushchev used Russian troops when countries tried to leave Russian
control.
2. By peaceful co-existence, Khrushchev meant ‘peaceful competition’ (4
examples)
a. He loved to argue (Kitchen debate with Nixon)
b. He gave economic aid to countries like Afghanistan and Burma
c. Space Race (1957: Sputnik. 1961: Yuri Gagarin orbits the earth)
d. Arms Race (1953: Russia got the hydrogen bomb)
3. Warsaw Pact (1955: 8 countries)
a. USSR
b. Albania
c. Bulgaria
d. Czechoslovakia,
e. East Germany
f. Hungary
g. Poland
h. Romania

In retaliation, in America:
1. McCarthy conducted a 'witchhunt' for Communists
2. America entered the arms race with Russia
3. in 1955, NATO agreed to an army of half a million men in West Germany
4. America entered the space race with Russia
5. America rushed to put a man on the moon.
6. American U2 planes spied on Russia

HUNGARY (1956)

Causes (5 reasons)
1. Poverty: When most of Hungary’s food was sent to Russia.
 2. Russian Control (3 things)
a. The Hungarians were very patriotic
b. They hated censorship, the AVH, and Russian control of education.
c. They hated having Russian troops stationed in Hungary
3. Catholic Church - Communism tried to destroy religion, but most Hungarians
were devout Catholics
4. Help from the West: The Hungarians thought Eisenhower or the UN would
help.
5. De-Stalinisation: Led to protests against Rakoczy’s harsh government.

Events (3 key dates)

23 October Student riots – attacks on AVH and Russian troops
24 October – 3 NovemberReforming government led by Imre Nagy (4 things)
1. Democracy
2. Freedom of speech
3. Freedom of religion
4. Aimed to withdraw from Warsaw Pact.
4 November Soviets sent in 1000 tanks to crush the rebellion. Western powers
protested but didn’t send troops (didn’t want a war).

Results (7 things)
1. Janos Kadar put in control of Hungary
2. 4,000 Hungarians killed
3. Imre Nagy shot.
4. 200,000 Hungarians flee to West.
5. Many westerners leave the Communist party.
6. Russia stays in control behind the Iron Curtain.
7. Western leaders all the more determined to ‘contain’ communism.

U2 CRISIS

1 May 1960 Soviets shot down American U2 spy plane over USSR, and captured pilot
Gary Powers.
1. Americans had to admit he was a spy.
2. Khrushchev demanded apology + end to spying flights.
3. Eisenhower refused.

Results (5 things)
1. Khrushchev walks out of Paris summit (14 May 1960)
2. Eisenhower’s planned visit to Russia cancelled
3. Khrushchev demands that US leaves West Berlin
4. Americans came off badly – been caught lying- propaganda victory for USSR.
5. New American president Kennedy promises to get tough on Communism.

BERLIN WALL, 1961

Causes (3 Causes)
1. Growing tension (2 things)
a. U2 crisis
b. Kennedy finances anti-Communist forces in Laos and Vietnam
2. Refugees (3 things)
a. West Berlin enjoyed much higher standard than East Berlin.
b. 1945–1960: 3 million people crossed the border – a propaganda point
for the US
c. Most refugees were skilled workers
3. Sabotage: The Russians claimed that America used West Berlin for spies and
sabotage in east Germany.
Events (6 things)
1. 13 August 1961
2. East Germans erected a barbed wire wall overnight, later replaced with
stone.
3. All movement between East and West was stopped.
4. Wall was fortified with barbed wire and guns.
5. Western powers could do nothing.
6. Symbol of East /West division until 1989.

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, 1962

Causes (4 causes)
1. Superpower tension: U2 – Berlin Wall – Laos – Vietnam
2. Fidel Castro’s Cuba (3 things)
a. Cuba only 90 miles off coast of America.
b. Close relationship with USSR (oil, machinery and money in return for
sugar)
c. Cuba nationalizes American companies
3. Bay of Pigs (April 1961) – America sent in rebels in but they were defeated (a
humiliation).
4. Missile bases
14 October 1962 – USA U2 spy planes photographs Soviet missile sites
on Cuba.

Events (4 things)
1. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade and threatened invasion.
2. For 10 days the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
3. Kennedy promised to remove US missiles from Turkey
4. 28 October Khrushchev removed the missiles and the crisis was over

Results (4 things)

1. Khrushchev seemed to have failed

2. Kennedy became the hero of the Western world
3. Telephone hot line set up between Moscow and Washington.
4. (1963) – Nuclear test ban treaty signed.

The Slow Thaw

• End of WWII through Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford,
Carter, Reagan, and Bush, Cold War = central foreign policy concern
• Most film/TV villains were Soviets or communists; Indiana Jones and the Temple
of the Crystal Skull, which is set in the 1950s, pays homage to the use of Soviets
as villains.
• Better relations between communists countries and the US began with one of the
most hard-lined anti-communist presidents, Richard Nixon. In his “only Nixon
could go to China” trip, Nixon was the first US president to visit that communist
country.
• In 1969 Nixon began negotiations with USSR on SALT I, common name for the
Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty Agreement.
• SALT I froze the number of ballistic missile launchers at existing levels, and
provided for the addition of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)
launchers only after the same number of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
and SLBM launchers had been dismantled.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Interrupts Thaw

• In 1978, the USSR invaded Afghanistan and tried to set up a friendly
government.
• It became the USSR’s Vietnam, a long war with no clear victory possible and
many casualties and high costs.
• The US supported the Afghan rebels known as the mujahideen.
 • In 1989 the Soviets finally withdrew. Islamic extremists used the opportunity to
take over the country.
• The defeat weakened the Soviet’s economy and morale.

Reagan and the renewal of the Cold War

1. became said president in 1980
2. He hated Communism, calling the USSR ‘the evil empire’. He thought that
détente had made American go soft on the Soviets.
a. doubling US defence spending,
b. deploying Cruise Missiles in Europe,
c. developing the neutron bomb and new MX ‘Peacekeeper’ missiles
which were much more accurate than existing ICBMs, and in 1983
starting work on a ‘star wars’ Strategic Defence Initiative, which
planned to destroy Soviet missiles by firing lasers from space.
d. Reagan sabotaged the planned Strategic Arms Reduction Talks
(START2) by 1982, he had terrified the Soviets into believing that he
wanted a nuclear war.

Solidarity in Poland
1. In 1980, the first crack in the Iron Curtain occurred in Poland. Shipyard workers
in the port of Gdansk (Danzig) formed the trade union Solidarity. Its leader was
Lech Walesa and it demanded, not just economic reforms, but political freedom.
Nine million Poles joined the union.
2. The Polish government, led by General Jaruzelski, imposed martial law,
arrested 10,000 political opponents (including Walesa) and banned Solidarity.
3. However Solidarity survived as a secret, underground, anti-government
organisation. And in 1982, Reagan and Pope John Paul II (a Pole) made an
alliance to destroy the Polish government (Polish priests worked as spies for the
CIA).

Weaknesses of the USSR

1. Soviet industry was inefficient and out-of-date, producing poor quality goods.
2. There was dreadful pollution – the Aral Sea had dried up, and in 1986 the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered a meltdown.
3. There were food shortages, poor housing and poor standards of living.
4. Meanwhile, the USSR was hugely in debt to the west.
5. The country could not afford the arms race and the war in Afghanistan, which
was costing 25% of the Soviet National Income.

Indeed, Afghanistan had destroyed the morale of the whole system. Many government
officials had lost hope. The Communist party corrupt; the police were powerless against
the Mafia. Ordinary citizens were angry at the KGB (secret police), censorship and the
lack of human rights. Protest groups (e.g. Helsinki Watch in Moscow and Charter 77 in
Czechoslovakia) produced underground pamphlets and radio broadcasts. Jokes against
the system were passed round secretly as a form of subversion.

Glasnost and Perestroika

In 1985 Mikhail Gorbechev was elected as the Soviet leader. He tried to reform Russia
by:
• Perestroika (‘restructuring) – reducing state control of industry, allowing free
enterprise.
• Glasnost (‘openness’) – ending state corruption and allowing freedom of speech.

Foreign Policy
1. He ended the Brezhnev Doctrine – telling the eastern bloc states in March
1989 that the Soviet Army would no longer support them.
2. Instead, to cut military spending, he met Reagan and cut offensive weapons
by 50% (Geneva Summit 1985), signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces
 treaty (1987) dismantling all short- and medium-range nuclear weapons, and
pulled out of Afghanistan (1989).
3. In 1989 he and the new US President George Bush announced the end of the
Cold War.

The end of Soviet control in Eastern Europe

Gorbachev hoped that these reforms would ‘save’ the USSR and keep the Communist
Party in power. Instead, they unleashed a flood of unrest and change in eastern
Europe.

Communist regimes toppled

1. Hungary,
2. Poland (where Solidarity won the elections and Walesa became President),
3. East Germany (where the Berlin Wall was pulled down in 1989),
4. Czechoslovakia (called the ‘Velvet Revolution’ it was so peaceful),
5. Romania (where the hated Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu was
executed, Bulgaria and Albania.

The USSR being dismembered

Even in Russia, Gorbachev’s reforms merely destabilised the government
1. In February 1990, the Baltic state of Lithuania declared independence; a half-
hearted attempt by the Red Army in January 1991 to quell the revolution there
failed.
2. Soon after, Latvia and Estonia also declared their independence from the
USSR.

Gorbachev proposed the New Union Treaty, hoping to replace the USSR with a
federation of independent republics.
1. To stop this happening, in August 1991, a group of generals and hard-
line Communist leaders (the ‘Gang of Eight’) tried to mount a coup
d’état
2. But this failed too, because Russian president Boris Yeltsin and
thousands of Moscow people went out to oppose it.
3. The coup collapsed, and Yeltsin banned the Communist Party and
disbanded the KGB.
4. By the end of 1991, all the republics of the USSR had declared
independence and Gorbachev resigned.