Cold War Test Flashcards
Truman Doctrine
On March 12, 1947, Truman asked Congress for $400 million in economic and military aid for Greece and Turkey. In a statement that became known as the Truman Doctrine, he declared that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Congress agreed with Truman and decided that the doctrine was essential to keeping Soviet influence from spreading.
Marshall Plan
In June 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that the United States provide aid to all European nations that needed it, saying that this move was directed “not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” The Marshall Plan revived European hopes. Over the next four years, 16 countries received some $13 billion in aid. By 1952, Western Europe was flourishing, and the Communist party had lost much of its appeal to voters.
Occupational Zones in Germany
At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into four zones occupied by the United States, Great Britain, and France in the west and the Soviet Union in the east. In 1948, Britain, France, and the United States decided to combine their three zones into one nation. The western part of Berlin, which had been occupied by the French, British, and Americans, was surrounded by Soviet-occupied territory.
Berlin Airlift
Although the three nations had intended to unify their zones, they had no written agreement with the Soviets guaranteeing free access to Berlin by road or rail. Stalin saw this loophole as an opportunity. If he moved quickly, he might be able to take over the part of Berlin held by the three Western powers. In June 1948, Stalin closed all highway and rail routes into West Berlin. As a result, no food or fuel could reach that part of the city. In an attempt to break the blockade, American and British officials started the Berlin airlift to fly food and supplies into West Berlin. For 327 days, planes took off and landed every few minutes, around the clock. West Berlin survived because of the airlift. In addition, the mission to aid Berlin boosted American prestige around the world. By May 1949, the Soviet Union realized it was beaten and lifted the blockade.
East and West Germany
The western part of Germany officially became a new nation, the Federal Republic of Germany, also called West Germany. It included West Berlin. A few months later, from its occupation zone, the Soviet Union created the German Democratic Republic, called East Germany. It included East Berlin.
NATO
The Berlin blockade increased Western European fear of Soviet aggression. As a result, ten Western European nations— Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal—joined with the United States and Canada on April 4, 1949, to form a defensive military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The 12 members of NATO pledged military support to one another in case any member was attacked. For the first time in its history, the United States had entered into a military alliance with other nations during peacetime.
Warsaw Pact
The Soviets recognized West Germany and concluded peace treaties with Austria and Japan. However, in 1955, when West Germany was allowed to rearm and join NATO, the Soviet Union grew fearful. It formed its own military alliance, known as the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact linked the Soviet Union with seven Eastern European countries.
Difference between the Soviet Union and the US
The Soviet Union and the US had different plans for the future. The Soviets wanted a future where the state controls all property and economic activity and the Communist Party established a totalitarian government with no opposing parties. The US wanted a future where private citizens can control almost all economic activity and people can vote, elect a President and a Congress from competing political parties.
Creation of the United Nations, What did it replace?
Nations met in San Francisco to establish the United Nations (UN). June 26th, 1945 delegates signed the charter establishing this peacekeeping body. Five great powers were given permanent seats on the security council—the US, the Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France. Designed to keep the peace, it became an arena for the two superpowers, the (United States and the Soviet Union), to spread their influence over others. The UN replaced the League of Nations.
The differences in the Soviet Union and the US when spreading influence
The Soviet Union expanded its influence by creating the Eastern Bloc across states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Stalin set up puppet communist governments that he could control. He repressed anyone who resisted. The US expanded its influence by helping many countries in hopes they’ll side with the US.
Soviet Buffer Zone
Stalin wanted to create a buffer zone in Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union suffered 22 million deaths, many civilians - and had been attacked by the West (Germans) twice in 30 years. To stop invasions, they felt justified to claim this region in Eastern Europe. Stalin installed Communist governments in: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Poland, and these are known as satellite nations - countries dominated by the Soviet Union.
China’s Fall to Communism
After WW2, Generalissimo Jiang became an unreliable partner who rejected US advice. His government had become corrupt, inefficient, and out of touch with discontented peasants, whom communists enlisted with promises of land reform. Jiang also subverted American efforts to negotiate a cease-fire and a coalition government. Mao decided to “lean” to the Soviet side in the Cold War. Because China always maintained a fierce independence that rankled the Soviets, before long a Sino-Soviet schism opened. Mao deeply resented the Soviets’ refusal to aid the communists during the civil war. After Mao’s victory in September 1949, Jiang fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), and Beijing (formerly Peking) Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Truman hesitated to extend diplomatic recognition to the new government.
Korean War
In the early morning of June 25, 1950, a large military force of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) moved across the 38th parallel into the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Korea had been divided in two by the victorious powers after Japan’s defeat in 1945. Although the Soviets had armed the North and the Americans had armed the South, the Korean War began as a civil war. Both the North’s leader (Kim Ilsung) and the South’s leader (Syngman Rhee) sought to reunify their nation. Displaying the Cold War mentality of the time, however, Truman claimed that the Soviets had masterminded the North Korean attack. When the UN Security Council voted to defend South Korea against the invasion from the north, the Soviet representative was not even present to veto the resolution, because the Soviets were boycotting the UN to protest its refusal to grant membership to the People’s Republic of China. During the war, Moscow gave limited aid to North Korea and China, which grew angry at Stalin for reneging on the promised Soviet air power. Stalin, all too aware of his strategic inferiority vis-a-vis the US, did not want to be dragged into a costly war. The president first ordered General Douglas MacArthur to send arms and troops to South Korea. He did not seek congressional approval—he and his aides feared that lawmakers would initiate a lengthy debate—and thereby set the precedent of waging war on executive authority alone. At the beginning of the war, North Korean firepower was superior and sent the South Korean army into a retreat. The first American troops could not stop the North’s advance. Within weeks, South Koreans and Americans had been pushed into the tiny Pusan perimeter. General MacArthur planned a daring operation: an amphibious landing at heavily fortified Inchon, several hundred miles behind North Korean lines. After US firepower pounded Inchon, marines sprinted ashore on September 15, 1950. The operation was a success, and the troops soon liberated the South Korean capital and pushed North Koreans back to the 38th parallel. In September, Truman authorized UN forces to cross the 38th parallel. These troops drove deep into North Korea, and American aircraft began strikes against bridges on the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. The Chinese watched warily, fearing that the Americans would next stab at China. Mao publicly warned that China could not permit the bombing of its transportation links with Korea and would not accept the annihilation of North Korea itself. By 1951 the front had stabilized around the 38th parallel. A stalemate set in. The North-South borderline was set near the 38th parallel, the prewar boundary, and a demilitarized zone was created between the two countries.
Vietnam War
Since the late 1950s, hostilities in Vietnam had increased, as Ho Chi Minh’s North assisted the Vietcong guerrillas in the South to advance the reunification of the country under a communist government. Kennedy had stepped up to aid dollars to the Diem regime in Saigon, increased the airdropping of raiding teams into North Vietnam, and launched crop destruction by herbicides to starve the Vietcong and expose their hiding places. Kennedy also strengthened the US military presence in South Vietnam, to the point that by 1963 more than 16000 military advisors were in the country. Opposition to Diem’s repressive regime increased, and not just by communists. Peasants objected to programs that removed them from their villages for their own safety, and Buddhist monks, protesting the Roman Catholic Diem’s religious persecution, poured gasoline over their roves and ignited themselves in the streets of Saigon. Although Diem was personally honest, he countenanced corruption in his government and concentrated power in the hands of family and friends. He jailed critics to silence them. Eventually US officials encouraged ambitious South Vietnamese generals to remove Diem. He was murdered on November 1, 1963. In February 1965, in response to Viet Cong attacks on American installations in South Vietnam which killed 32 Americans, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing program planned that previous fall, which continued until October 1968. Then, on March 8, the first US combat battalions came ashore near Danang. The North Vietnamese would not give up. They hid in shelters and rebuilt roads and bridges with a perseverance that frustrated and awed American decision makers. They also increased infiltration into the South. The initiation of Rolling Thunder and the US troop commitment “Americanized” the war. What could have been seen as a civil war between North and South, or a war of national reunification, was now clearly an American war against the communist Hanoi government. Booby traps and landmines were a constant threat. Insects swarmed, and leeches sucked at weary bodies. Boots and human skin rotted from the rains, which alternated with withering suns. The enemy was hard to find, often burrowed into elaborate underground tunnels or melded into the population, where any Vietnamese might be a Vietcong. On January 31, 1968, the first day of Vietnamese New Year (Tet), Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces struck all across South Vietnam, capturing provincial capitals. During the carefully planned offensive, the Saigon airport, the presidential palace, and the ARVN headquarters came under attack. Even the American embassy compound in the city was penetrated by Vietcong soldiers. US and South Vietnamese units eventually regained much of the ground they had lost, inflicting heavy casualties and devastating numerous villages. Top presidential advisers sounded notes of despair. Clark Clifford, who succeeded Robert McNamara as secretary of defense, told Johnson that the war could not be won.
Suez Crisis
In Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser, a towering figure in a pan-Arabic movement to reduce western interests in the Middle East. Nasser vowed to expel the British from the Suez Canal and the Israelis from Palestine. In 1956 the US abruptly reneged on its offer to Egypt to help finance the Aswan Dam, a project to provide inexpensive electricity and water for thirsty Nile valley farmland. Secretary Dulles’s blunt economic pressure backfired, for Nasser responded by nationalizing the British-owned Suez Canal, intending to use its profits to build the dam. 75% of Western Europe’s oil came from the Middle East, most of it transported through the SUez Canal. Fearing an interruption in this vital trade, the British and French conspired with Israel to bring down Nasser. On October 29, 1956, the Israelis invaded Suez, joined two days later by British and French forces. Eisenhower feared that the invasion would cause Nasser to seek help from the Soviets. Eisenhower sternly demanded that London, Paris, and Tel Aviv pull their troops out, and they did. Egypt took possession of the canal, the Soviets built the Aswan Dam, and Nasser became a hero to Third World people. French and British influence in the region declined sharply.
