Cold War 1

1. Yes, I agree that the Cold War was a result of military developments, wartime agreements, and longstanding political differences. Great Britain, very similar to the United States, had been Russia’s enemy since its tsarist days. They had different religions (Britain—Protestant, Russia—Eastern Orthodoxy) and thus different cultures. Both Britain and America were ma-ritime powers based on trade and commerce while Russia was a bureaucratic and land-based power that expanded from its center. Britain came to fear Russia’s power, so it checked its growth by supporting the Crimean War to slow Russian expansion. Also, Russian expansion would have endangered British possessions in the Middle East. In the Russian Revolution of 1917, communism, the opposite of capitalism, had reigned supreme. Also, the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, withdrawing from World War I prematurely. The U.S. support of the White Army in the Russian Civil War added to Soviet mistrust of the capitalists. After the Bolsheviks won, they proclaimed a worldwide challenge to capitalism. The United States did not recognize the Soviet Union until 1933. Economically, the Soviet Union used autarchy rather than trade, state planning rather than private enterprise. Also, communism was atheistic, concerning many Americans. Western appeasement of Hitler an-gered the Soviets. The secret agreement to split up Poland with Germany angered Ameri-cans. During World War II, the Russians and the Anglo-Americans disagreed on military tac-tics, especially the question of opening a second front against Germany in Western Europe. While the western Allies prepared for war, the Russians suffered heavy casualties. After the war, the United States wanted to rebuild Germany to create a strong and wealthy Europe and thus make the United States richer. The Soviets were concerned with future security. When the Big Three met in February 1945 at Yalta, Soviet armies were within a hundred miles of Berlin. The Red Army occupied Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, part of Yugos-lavia, and much of Czechoslovakia. American and British forces had not yet crossed into Germany. It was agreed that Germany would be divided into zones of occupation and would pay reparations to the Soviet Union. As for Poland and other eastern European countries, their governments were to be freely elected but pro-Russian, giving the Soviet Union great power over them. However, Bulgaria and Poland had already been controlled by commun-ists from the Red Army. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, pro-Soviet government formed, leav-ing the top positions for Moscow-trained communists.

2. At the Potsdam Conference of July 1945, the newly President Truman demanded immediate free elections throughout eastern Europe. Stalin refused this, saying they would be anti-Soviet and thus non-allowable. This was because Stalin wanted a buffer zone against Ger-many because it had invaded the Soviet Union twice in three decades. Stalin believed that only communist countries could be trusted. In May 1945, Truman cut off all aid to the Soviet Union. In October, he declared that the United States would never recognize any govern-ment established by force against the free will of its people. In March 1946, former British prime minister Churchill declared an iron curtain divided Europe. Emotional, moralistic de-nunciations of Stalin and the Soviet Union began a part of American political life. The United States believed its atomic bomb gave them superior power, so they brought 10.5 million out of 12 million soldiers home by 1947.

3. Because of the Soviet Union’s exportation of communism to Europe, the United States re-sponded with the Truman Doctrine, which aimed at containing communism to areas already occupied by the Red Army. Truman wanted to help free people who are resisting attempted control by armed minorities or by outside pressure. Thus, Truman asked Congress for mili-tary aid to Greece and Turkey, and then in June, Secretary of State George C. Marshall pro-vided the Marshall Plan to help Europe rebuild. Stalin refused the plan for all of eastern Eu-rope, and instead replaced the last remaining noncommunist elements from the coalition governments of eastern Europe and established Soviet-style, one-party communist dictator-ships. After brutally seizing power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, Stalin tried to block all traffic through the Soviet zone of Germany to Berlin. However, the Western allies flew hundred of planes to West Berlin, giving them aid. After almost a year, the Soviets backed down, and in 1949, the United States formed an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments, NATO. Stalin tightened his hold on his satellites, forming the Warsaw Pact. Af-ter communists prevailed in China in late 1949, Russian-backed communists of northern Ko-rea invaded southern Korea in 1950. Truman responded by calling for a United Nations at-tack.

1. After World War II, the European economic conditions were the worst in generations, and many feared that economic depression would strike the United States. There was runaway inflation, black markets, severe shortages, and hardships. After Poland gained the far east-ern part of Germany after the war, 13 million Germans were driven from their homes in eastern Germany and forced to resettle in a reduced Germany. The Russians seized facto-ries and equipment as reparations, tore up railroad tracks, and sent them to the Soviet Un-ion. The Western allies also treated the German population with great severity. However, by the spring of 1947, Germany appeared to be on the verge of collapse and threatened to drag down the rest of Europe. However, more people were willing to change and experi-ment, and new groups and new leaders guided these aspirations, particularly the Christian Democrats. In Italy, they were powerful and became the leading party in the first postwar elections in 1946, and in early 1948, they won an absolute majority in the parliament. The winner, Alcide De Gasperi, was committed to political democracy, economic reconstruction, and moderate social reform. In France, the Catholic party provided great postwar leaders. In radically purified West Germany, Catholics were a new and able leadership, with Konrad Adenauer in 1949 starting a successful democratic rule. The Christian Democrats became West Germany’s majority party for a generation. The Christian Democrats were inspired and united by a common Christian and European heritage and rejected authoritarianism and narrow nationalism in favor of democracy and cooperation. Socialist and communists emerged with increased power and prestige, especially in France and Italy. They provided fresh leadership and pushed for social change and economic reform with great success. Welfare measures like family allowances, health insurance, and increased public housing were established throughout continental Europe. In Britain, Churchill was thrown out in fa-vor of the Labour party, which nationalized industries and provided free medical service.

2. The United States provided economic aid, in the form of the Marshall Plan, and military protection, in the form of NATO and permanently stationed troops, to support western Europe. With the help of the Marshall Plan, the economies of western Europe began to recover around 1948. The Korean War in 1950 further stimulated economic activity, and Europe entered a period of rapid economic progress until the late 1960s. Economic growth became a basic objective of all western European governments. Governments thus accepted Keynesian economics to stimulate their economies, in addition to other imaginative and successful strategies. German Minister of Economy Ludwig Erhard advocated a free-market economy while maintaining the social welfare network from the Hitler era. He believed that capitalism was more efficient and that political and social freedom could only happen if there were real economic freedom. He reformed the currency and abolished rationing and price controls in 1948. In France, a planning commission under Jean Monnet set ambitious but flexible goals for the French economy and used the nationalized banks to funnel money into key industries. In most countries, there were many people ready to work hard for low wages and the hope of a better future. Consumer goods were a great potential demand, which the economic system moved to satisfy. Western European nations abandoned protectionism and moved toward a large unified market, or the Common Market.

3. After the war, republics were reestablished in France, West Germany, and Italy. Constitu-tional monarchs were restored in Belgium, Holland, and Norway. Democratic governments, with multiple parties and shifting parliamentary coalitions, came back. With these political reforms came civil liberties and individual freedom. The Christian Democrats and other groups were committed to building Europe and that only unity could prevent future Euro-pean conflict and reassert western Europe’s influence in world affairs. This led to the crea-tion of the Organization of European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and the Council of Eu-rope in 1948. European federalists hoped that the Council of Europe would quickly evolve into a true European parliament with sovereign rights, but this did not happen. Britain, old-fashioned continental nationalists, and communists felt that this gave up real political pow-er. European federalists then turned toward economics as a way of working toward genuine unity. French statesmen Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman called for a special international organization in 1950 to control and integrate all European steel and coal production. West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg accepted France in 1952, creat-ing no national tariffs or quotas for the goods and binding the six member nations so closely together that war would become unthinkable. In 1957, these nations signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community, or the Common Market. The treaty was designed to reduce all tariffs among the six to create a single market as large as the United States. It also wanted the free movement of capital and labor and common econom-ic policies and institutions. Despite the progress of economic and political union, in the 1960s France became involved in traditional nationalism. During a colonial war in Algeria, the French turned in 1958 to General de Gaulle, who established the Fifth Republic and ruled as president until 1969. He withdrew all French military forces from NATO command, allowing for France to develop its own nuclear weapons. In the Common Market, he refused to allow the scheduled advent of majority rule.

4. The basic cause of decolonization was the rising demand of Asian and African peoples for national self-determination, racial equality, and personal dignity. Knowledge and education spread after World War I and formulated the basis of countries rebelling. However, the na-tions of Asia and Africa were committed to Western ideas and achievements while at the same time denouncing them. Because European empires were based on a power differen-tial between the rulers and the ruled, the European control of the colonies was quite shaken after World War II. Europeans had believed it self-confidence and self-righteousness, with technical, military, spiritual, and moral superiority. World War II destroyed these ideas. If subjugated countries did go to war, the home countries would have to fight expensive wars. Indian independence was a crucial example of decolonization. The Labour party was determined to give India its freedom when it was elected in 1945. With British socialists op-posing imperialism and the heavy cost of governing India, India was granted freedom in 1947, and most Asian colonies achieved independence shortly. France tried to reassert co-lonial rule in Indochina but were defeated in 1954, and it tried it Algeria but were defeated in 1962. In sub-Saharan Africa, decolonization went smoothly. Beginning in 1957, Britain’s colonies received independence peacefully and became part of the British Commonwealth of Nations. In 1958, de Gaulle offered the leaders of French Africa the choice of a total break with France or independence within a French commonwealth, of which only one country did not choose to do so. The French saw themselves as continuing their civilizing mission in Africa and also saw in Africa untapped markets for their industrial goods, raw materials for their factories, markets for profitable investment, and good jobs for their engineers and teachers. Western European countries managed to increase their economic and cultural ties with their former African colonies in the 1960s and 1970s. They used special trading privileges and investment in French- and English-language education to enhance a powerful Western presence in the African states. This led to the created of neocolonialism on the former colonies to perpetuate Western economic domination and undermine the promise of political independence.