Unit VII:The Cold War & Cuba

OriginsHeirs to Traditional Power Politics:

Fear & Misinterpretation:• West’s role in 1919 & the 30s• Failure to open a second front, halting Lend-Lease, & refusing a 6 billion dollar loan• Stalin was bitter at Potsdam• Security was the issue!

Ideological differences:• economic imperialism vs. international socialism

Early Stages1946: Iron Curtain Speech• Kennan’s Long Telegram

1947: communist revolutions threaten Turkey & Greece• Truman Doctrine

1948: Marshal Plan• West Germany founded• Berlin Blockade & Airlift

1949: NATO created • Soviets counter w/ Warsaw Pact• Soviet A-bomb & Red China• arms race & the Red Scare Berliners cheer US planes

Post-war USSR

1945-53: spectacular recovery• Five Year Plans again• purges & gulags• falling out w/ Tito’s Yugoslavia

1953: Stalin died; destalinization

1953-63: Nikita Khrushchev• Secret Speech (1956)• inspired Hungarian Uprising• attempted economic reforms• removed after Cuban Missile Crisis

The Korean War1950-53: • Korea divided post-WWII

• the North invaded in order to unite the peninsula

• Chinese enter when US forces approached the Chinese border

• a stalemate by 1951

• limited war; containment

Hungarian Uprising

1956: Hungarian Uprising• began as a student revolt;

fired upon by troops

• Hungarian communist gov’t collapsed

• Imry Nagy promised free elections & withdrawal from Warsaw Pact

• Soviets invade & crush the movement; Nagy executed

Hungarian Uprising

Berlin Wall

1961: Berlin Wall built• over 100 miles of wall

• wall sickness

• greatest symbol of the Cold war

Cuban Missile Crisis

1962: Cuban Missile Crisis

• reaction to the Bay of Pigs

• threatened “mutually assured destruction”

• missiles removed from Cuba (and Turkey), a hotline established & Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Prague Spring1968: Prague Spring• Alexander Dubcek introduced

freedom of speech, press and travel

• “Communism with a human face”

• reformers wanted more and withdrawal from Soviet bloc

• Soviets invade & crush movement Prague 1968

Vietnam War1959-75: Vietnam War

• French colony, Japanese occupation & French colony again

• US supported the Diem regime in South Vietnam

• Strong nationalistic regime in the north led by Ho Chi Minh

• limited war• guerilla war; no front line

Fall of Saigon - 1975

Monolithic Communism?

Korea vs. Vietnam• frontline

• UN resolution

• S. Korea wanted US help

• civilians not directly attacked

• guerilla war

• unilateral campaign

• S. Vietnam wanted US out

• civilians indistinguishable from the enemy; atrocities

The Post-war WestDecolonization:

Christian Democrats:• combined capitalism, socialism & Christianity

West Germany:• Adenauer’s “economic miracle”

France:• De Gaulle & the Fifth Republic• Algerian Independence

1968 – student protests

Great Britain:• the national welfare state• Margaret Thatcher (1980s) Student protestors in Paris

Culture & SocietyEducation:

The Women’s Movement:• De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex• Friedan’s N.O.W.

Catholic Church:• reaction to Pius XII’s conservatism; Vatican II (1962)

Permissive Society:• homosexuality, pornography, divorce & abortion became legal

Simone de Beauviour

Culture & Society

Existentialism: Camus & Sartre“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

Art: Pollack’s abstract expressionism & Warhol’s pop-art

Technology: jet travel, television & nuclear energy

Pollack’s Lavender Mist