Cold WarThe Essential

QuestionHow did the opposing ideologies of the US and the USSR affect political, cultural, and economic developments of the Third World?

What is so nifty about the

1950s?

What is so nifty about the 50s?

By the light of the atomic bomb

Better dead than Red!

1945 -1989

•Promise and Menace

•Baby boomers

•Fantastic standard of living

•Welfare state (elderly)

•Opportunities for women

•Welcome immigrants

•Civil rights and AAs

•Activist foreign policy PLASTICS! - great new inventions

What you should be aware of:

By raising educational levels and stimulating construction of the housing industry the GI Bill profoundly shaped the entire industry of postwar America. This would become the most highly educated generation in the world.

The Montgomery

GI Billgov’t loans with LOW interest rates for all veterans of WWII - used for education or to start new businesses or to buy homes

YaltaPotsdam

the United Nationsthe Iron Curtain

Atlantic Charter – estb. United Nations

Yalta – decided fate of Germany and E Europe after WWII

Potsdam – decided fate of East Asia and use of Atomic bomb in WWII

The United Nations

The United Nations

General Assembly

Security CouncilSecretary- General Ban Ki Moon

The United Nations

Iron Curtain• British prime minister Winston

Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech (1946) illustrated the division within Europe at that time. Following World War II, Europe had clearly been divided into two political and economic systems supported by two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the

United States.

• In his speech, Churchill described the conflict this way: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” Churchill was outlining the ideological conflict between Soviet Communism and democratic capitalism

Germany After WWII

Not only is Germany divided

but the capitol city Berlin (in the

Russian controlled communist section)

is also divided

Germany After WWII

•The Western Democratic side was united under a market economy.

The World 1948

• America decides to end its isolationist policy. No longer will they tuck their head in the sand and ignore what is going on in the world.

• now they will practice a policy of containment - to “contain” the communists to their side of the world/ iron curtain.

• this will entail lots of economic aid - lots and lots of money to help rebuild the economies- because poor countries where bread is rationed and there are no factories tend to go communist

Truman Plan•Pres. Truman decides to send

lots of money to Turkey and Greece.

•They were having civil wars and the communists might take over.

•We send $55 million to rebuild their economies and their gov’ts

Marshall Plan•American General and

Secretary of State Marshall developed this plan to help most of Europe

•Sent $17 billion to rebuild Europe in the hopes of holding off communism.

NATO and Warsaw

NATO•North Atlantic Treaty Organization

•military security pact made up of western European countries.

•Missile bases set up in Europe to point to USSR

WARSAW

•Communist version of NATO

•defensive military pact

TextBerlin Blockade and Airlift

Mao Zedong Takes China

Red ScareMcCarthyism in

America

McCarthyism or the Red Scare Joe McCarthy, a junior US senator, began a witch hunt for communists. Everyone was afraid of being turned in as a communist. People feared to be independent or different.

Joe McCarthy- Jr. Senator from Wisconsin - looking for a political cause

Wheeling, W. Va; speaking to the Women’s Republican ClubHolding up some papers and shouting: “I have here in my hand a list of 205- a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Dept.”Next day, in Salt Lake City, McCarthy claimed he had a list of 57 (numbers kept changing) such Communists in the State Dept.

Shortly afterward, on the Senate floor, he appeared with 100 dossiers from the State Dept loyalty files. The files were 3 years old and most of the people no longer worked for the State Dept but he claimed they were, “Communistically inclined” or active traveler became, “active Communist” and so on

Howard Zinn

He insisted: Communism won in China because of softness on Communism in the American gov’t

McCarthyism or the Red Scare

Congress created a special committee to investigate people. Especially the Hollywood people. It was called HUAC

The Red Scare ended when McCarthy accused the army of being communist (that was too much)

McCarthyismMickey Spillane published in 1951 One Lonely Night (3 million copies sold) in which the hero, Mike Hammer, says:

“I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it...They were Commies...red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago....”

A classical example of American containment policy

BombsRockets

Space Races

Race To Build Bigger, Better

BOMBS!

Hydrogen Bombs, Tsar Bombs, MAD -

Mutual Assured Destruction

DETERANCE

Tsar Bomb

Fears this will lead to a build up and then

it will be....

NORADNorth American Defense

Command

Eisenhower Doctrine

Eisenhower Doctrine

We reserve the right to protect the Middle East (and by that we mean Israel)

ANZUSand

SEATO

ANZUS

SEATO

South East Asian Treaty Organization

Sputnik

Sputnik - 1957 USSR launches the first space

satellite

Sputnik•Russians beat us to it - their technology must be good

• If they can put a satellite up in space then they must be able to shoot nuclear missiles all the way over to us!

• time to invest lots of money into US science and math programs so we can catch up with the Soviets

Leads To

More Bomb Testing

•testing on land outlawed.

•testing in air ok

•testing in water ok

•the nuclear race is on!

• lots of spying to find out what the other side has

U2 Plane Shot Down

Terms to Know

•Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles = ICBMs

•MAD - Mutual Assured Destruction

•detente - this means a “thawing of tensions” but it isn’t occurring yet....

Geneva Convention•Stalin finally died!

New ruler of USSR is Krushchev

•Krushchev (USSR) and Eisenhower (US) meet at Geneva, Switz to discuss “open skies”

•the idea was open skies would mean less spying...more transparency

•except....something embarrassing happened

U2 Crisis•Eisenhower was at the Geneva

summit with Russian Krushchev

•Discussing reducing nuclear stockpiles.

•With the U2 incident it was clear America was spying

•The Geneva summit was called off

•Cold War attitudes hardened

Berlin Wall

Space Raceto theMoon

Space Race to the Moon

http://www.hamovhotov.com/webcam/?p=18

Cuban Missile Crisis

First came the embarrassing incident of the Bay of Pigs invasion

Bay of Pigs Invasion US army with Cuban exiles plan what would be

a failed invasion of Cuba - trying to rid Cuba of the communist leader Fidel Castro

Second - CubanMissile CrisisOctober 1962

The world sat in tension for 13 days as there was a show-down between the US and the USSR ...in the country of Cuba

Kennedy Addresses the Nation

Movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis Thirteen

Days

Vietnam War

Vietnam - What Happened?

•Vietnam was known as IndoChina - a French colony since before World War I

•After WWII it was still a French colony...but there were problems.

•The French were suppose to give it up to the Vietnamese...there were suppose to be free elections.....but there were communist parties involved......

•Northern Vietnamese were communist - Southern Vietnamese were democratic

Vietnam - What Happened?•Things got worse

•Northern Communist Vietnamese were led by a man named Ho Chi Minh - he wanted to get rid of any other country’s influence..... (he had asked Woodrow Wilson back in WWI to allow free elections and rule by the Vietnamese people - he was turned down)

•Southern Vietnamese - the free, democratic ones - were horribly corrupt

•You couldn’t tell them apart by looks

•Things got worse

Vietnam - What Happened?•The elections went badly.

•The French were attacked in 1957

•The UN sent some support personnel

•The US didn’t get too heavily involved - we sent $ (under President Eisenhower)

•Things got worse

•The US sent $ and military advisors to support the democratic Vietnamese in their effort to defeat the communist Vietnamese (under President John F Kennedy)

Vietnam - What Happened?

•Things got worse

•Finally under Pres. Johnson in 1964 the

Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred.

•The boat USS Maddox took a hit from underwater missiles. It was in the international water zone just outside Northern Vietnam.

•It seemed the Northern/Communist Vietnamese had attacked the US

•Things got worse...

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Vietnam - What Happened?•By 1964 we are sending young men to fight.

•The draft has begun.

•It was young, Southern, black, undereducated men who made up most to the grunts and privates

•College boys could avoid the draft as long as grades were good

•Some men chose to move to Canada

•Things got worse...

Vietnam - What Happened?•This was a TV war

• Images every night were broadcasted on the evening news - everyone sat down to watch the evening news in the 1960s (there were only 3 TV channels)

•America was wondering why it was fighting for other people who didn’t want us there

•Muhammed Ali, “no Vietnamese ever called me nigger”

•The Civil Rights mov’t was tearing America apart - it looked like it would be the 2nd Civil War in America

•Things got worse...

Napalm

Vietnam- What Happened?•The American public

no longer supported the war in Vietnam

•By 1973 Nixon declared a gradual withdrawal - a “Vietnamization” of Vietnam

•Except he lied.

•things got worse

Vietnam- What Happened?•The Paris Peace Accords

were suppose to end the war

•Secretly Nixon ordered the Christmas bombings of Vietnam’s neighbor - Cambodia - because Communists were coming in to support the Communists in Vietnam

•things got worse

Vietnam- What Happened?•students protested at Kent State in

Ohio

Vietnam- What Happened?•Finally the Vietnam war was over

•The results:

•Vietnam became a communist country

•Cambodia fell to a CRUEL communist party called the Pol Pot regime led by the Khmer Rouge

• Millions were killed in the killing fields

•Americans no longer trusted their gov’t

•Solders who fought in the Vietnam war where mocked as “baby killers”

Six Day War in

Middle East1967

In the Six Day War of June 1967, Israel defeated the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, capturing the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. For Israel, it was a stunning triumph; for Arabs, a humiliating defeat.

Israel no longer occupies the Sinai or Gaza, but its continued hold over the other territories has stymied efforts to bring comprehensive peace to the Middle East.

Six Day War Junea.k.a. Arab-Israeli War 5-10,

1967•War b/w Israel & enemies Egypt, Jordan, Syria

•Egypt’s Nasser used Soviet false claim of Israeli forces gathering on Sinai penninsula to kick out the UN Emergency Force

•Both Egypt and Israel mobilized forces

Israel won control of Sinai penninsularesults of this war affect geopolitics of this

region even today!

Non Alignment Mov’t1955

still exists today

Non Alignment Mov’tThe movement was

originally motivated by the founder- member countries’ desire not to be drawn into the Cold War ideological and military confrontation. However, this idealistic obsession of these leaders soon gave way to the global realpolitik realities and all these countries became to be known as closely aligned with the former Soviet Union.Nasser of Egypt

Nehru of India

Tito of Yugoslavia

Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty

1968

Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty

1968Several major nuclear and even non-nuclear nations sign this treaty which is created to prevent the spread of nuclear technology.It did not prevent the spreadBUT - It was a success for people asking for arms controlbecause it did begin a serious mov’t to reduce arms

Cooperation is now the name of the game!

Detentea loosening or warming of relations and words

between Communists and Free World

one example is the true instance where President Nixon sent the US pingpong team to China for display during an athletic conference

SALT Treaty

SALT treatiesStrategic Arms Limitations

Talks

Berlin Wall Comes Down

Dissolution of U.S.S.R.

1945

End of WWII

1950

Korean WarMcCarthyism

1958-1970s

Vietnam WarGreat Society

FeminismCivil RightsWatergate

1980s

ConservatismRepublicanismTechnologiesComputers

Berlin Wall comes downDisco

20 years of economic success!