Download Confrontation of Superpowers

Confrontation of Superpowers  After World War II Stalin feared the Capitalists in

the West and the U.S. feared communism.  Superpower- countries whose military power is combined with political influence

Rivalry in Europe  Eastern Europe was the first area of disagreement.  The U.S. believed that Eastern Europe should freely

determine their own governments.  Having freed the Eastern Europeans from Nazi control the Soviet army stayed in the conquered areas preventing the free elections.  In Greece, the Communist People’s Liberation Army and the anti-communist forces supported by Great Britain were fighting a civil war for control of Greece.  Great Britain was forced out because of economic problems.

Truman Doctrine  Harry S. Truman was alarmed by the British

withdrawal from Greece and feared the possibility of Soviet expansion into the eastern Mediterranean.  The Truman Doctrine stated that the United States would provide money to countries threatened by Communist expansion.  If the Soviets were not stopped in Greece then the United States would have to face the spread of communism throughout the free world.

The Marshall Plan  The Marshall Plan was designed to rebuild the

prosperity and stability of war-torn Europe.  Underlying the Marshall Plan was the belief that Communist aggression was successful in countries where there were economic problems.  The Soviets saw the Marshall Plan as an attempt to buy the support of countries.  Policy of Containment- to keep communism within its existing borders and prevent further Soviet aggressive moves. This became U.S. policy.

The Division of Germany  The fate of Germany also became a source of heated

contention between the Soviets and the West.  At the end of the war, the Allied Powers divided Germany into four zones, each occupied by one of the Allies—the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France.  Berlin, located deep inside the Soviet zone, was also divided into four zones.

 The three western powers planned to unify the three

Western Sections of Germany and Berlin and create a West German government.  The Soviets opposed the creation of a separate West German state and attempted to prevent the unification by creating a blockade.  To prevent another World War the Allies began the Berlin Air Lift.  For more than 10 months American and British planes brought supplies to the Allied zone of Berlin.

 In September 1949, the Federal Republic of

Germany, or West Germany, was formally created.  The German Democratic Republic was set up by the Soviets on the Eastern Side of Germany with East Berlin as its capital.  Berlin was now divided into two parts.

The Spread of the Cold War  In 1949, Chinese Communists took control of the

government in China, strengthening U.S. fears about the spread of communism.  The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949.  All too soon, the United States and the Soviet Union were involved in a growing arms race, in which both countries built up their armies and weapons.  Nuclear weapons became increasingly destructive.

MAD  Both sides came to believe that an arsenal of nuclear 

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weapons would prevent war. They believed that if one nation attacked with nuclear weapons, the other nation would still be able to respond and devastate the attacker. According to this policy, neither side could risk using their massive supplies of weapons. Deterrence- huge arsenals of nuclear weapons on both sides prevented war. Mutually Assured Destruction.

New Military Alliances  The search for security during the Cold War led to

the formation of new military alliances.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization-All the powers agreed to provide mutual help if any one of them was attacked.  Soviet Union signed the Warsaw Pact in response to NATO.  Europe was once again divided into hostile alliance systems, just as it had been before World War I.

A Wall in Berlin  Nikita Khrushchev, who emerged as the new leader

of the Soviet Union, realized the need to stop the flow of refugees from East Germany to West Germany.  The East German government began to build a wall separating West Berlin form East Berlin.  The Berlin Wall became a striking symbol of the division between the two superpowers.

The Cuban Missile Crisis  During the John F. Kennedy administration, the

Cold War Confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union reached frightening levels.  Fidel Castro overthrew a Cuban dictator to set up a Soviet supported totalitarian regime in Cuba.  Kennedy approved a secret plan for Cuban exiles to invade and overthrow Castro, but was unsuccessful at the Bay of Pigs.  The Soviet Union then sent nuclear missiles to Cuba to counteract the United States placement of missiles in Turkey.

 Kennedy ordered a blockade of Cuba to prevent

missiles from reaching Cuba.  Krushchev and Kennedy agreed that if the U.S. would not invade Cuba the Soviet Union would remove the missiles.  A Soviet officer revealed that if the United States would have invaded Cuba, they would have launched the missles.

Vietnam and the Domino Theory  In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson increased the number of

U.S. troops in Vietnam.  Their purpose was to keep the Communist regime of North Vietnam from gaining control of South Vietnam.  Domino Theory- if one country falls to Communism other countries would fall as well.  Despite the massive superiority in equipment and firepower of the American forces, the United States failed to defeat the determined North Vietnamese.

 The increasing numbers of troops in Vietnam created

an antiwar movement in the U.S.  The mounting destruction of the conflict, brought into American homes every evening on television, also turned American public opinion against the war.  President Johnson was condemned for the his handling of the costly war and decided not to run for reelection.  Richard Nixon won the election with his pledge to stop the war and bing the American people together.

 Nixon reached an agreement with North Vietnam to

remove American troops, eventually uniting Vietnam under a Communist regime.  The domino theory proved unfounded because of a split between Communist China and Communist Russia.  Under Nixon, American and Chinese relations were improved opening a new age of American-Soviet Relations.

The Reign of Stalin  World War II devastated the Soviet Union.  Stalin increased production and exports but at the

expense of the workers.  Heavy industry, the manufacture of machines and equipment, increased.  This allowed the Soviets to have the first space satellite, Sputnik I.

 Stalin remained the undisputed master of the Soviet

Union.  He distrusted competitors, exercised sole power, and had little respect for other Communist Party leaders.  He forced all literary and scientific work to conform to the political needs of the state.  A new series of purges seemed likely until his death in 1953.

 The growth rate for industry was three times that for

consumer goods.  The housing market took the biggest hit.  All Soviet families were forced to live in one bedroom apartments.

The Khrushchev Era  Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the General Secretary

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of the Communist Party, and took steps to undo some of the worst features of Stalin’s regime. Khrushchev condemned Stalin for his administrative violence, mass repression, and terror. The process of eliminating the more ruthless policies of Stalin became known as de-Stalinization. He loosened the government controls on literary works. Placed more emphasis on producing consumer goods and increased agriculture output.

 The failure of the agricultural projects, increased

military spending and the decrease in industrial output hurt the Soviet Union’s economy.  Foreign policy failures also damaged Khrushchev’s reputation.  While on vacation the Soviet leaders voted him out of power due to “deterioration health” which forced him to retire.

 After World War II, Soviet-controlled Communist

governments took control of Eastern European countries.  After World War II, Yugoslavia, led by Josip Broz or Tito, was an independent Communist state until Tito’s death in 1980.  After Stalin’s death many Eastern European states tried to make reforms. The Soviet Union, however, made it that it would not allow its Eastern European satellites to become independent.  In 1956 revolts against communism erupted in Poland and a series of reforms were adopted. Fearful of a Soviet armed response, however, the Poles pledged to remain loyal to the Warsaw Pact.

 In 1956, after calls for revolt from Soviet control,

Hungarian leader Imre Nagy declared Hungary a free nation. Three days later, Soviet troops attacked Budapest and reestablished control of the country.  In January 1968, Alexander Dub∨cek was elected first secretary of the Communist party in Czechoslovakia. He introduced reforms to the country, including freedom of speech and press. By August 1968 the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia and crushed the reform movement and reestablished Soviet control.

Western Europe: Recovery  With the aid of the Marshall Plan, the countries of

Western Europe recovered relatively rapidly from the devastation of World War II.

 After World War II, many Europeans wanted European

unity. Nationalism, however, was too strong for European nations to give up their sovereignty. Instead the countries focused on economic unity.  In 1957, France, West Germany, the Benelux countries, and Italy created the European Economic Community (EEC), also known as the Common Market. The sixmember nations would impose no tariffs on each other’s goods.  By the 1960s, the EEC was an important trading bloc—a group of nations with a common purpose.

The United States in the 1950s  Between 1945 and 1970, the ideals of Franklin

Roosevelt’s New Deal determined the patterns of American domestic politics.  Prosperity at home and Cold War struggles abroad characterized the 1950s in the United States.  Between 1945 and 1973 real wages—the actual purchasing power of income—grew an average of 3 percent a year.

Red Scare  The Cold War led to

widespread fear that Communists had infiltrated the United States.  Senator Joseph R. McCarthy charged that hundreds of communists were in high government positions. This created a massive “Red Scare.”

 President John F. Kennedy,

the youngest elected president of the United States, was assassinated in 1963.  Vice President Lyndon Johnson became president and was elected in a landslide victory to another term in 1964.  President Johnson’s Great Society programs included health care for the elderly, measures to fight poverty, and aid to education.

Civil Rights  The U.S. civil rights

movement began in 1954 with the Supreme Court ruling that made racial segregation in public schools illegal.  In 1963 the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., a leader of the civil rights movement, led a march on Washington, D.C., for equality.  He advocated the use of passive disobedience in gaining racial equality.

 In 1964 the Civil Rights Act helped end segregation

and discrimination in the workplace and in public places.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made it easier for African Americans to vote in southern states.

Domestic Issues in the United States  In 1965, race riots began in the Watts district of Los 

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Angeles. In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., race riots broke out in over a hundred cities in the United States. The race riots caused a “white backlash” and racial division in the U.S. continued. As the Vietnam War continued through the second half of the 1960s, antiwar protests throughout the United States grew. Republican Richard M. Nixon was elected president based on his ”law and order” campaign in 1968.

Post Cold War  By the 1970s, United

States-Soviet relations had reached détente—a relaxation of tension and improved relations.  By 1979, however, a new period of East-West confrontation began when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. They wanted to restore a pro-Soviet regime there.  The United States viewed this as an act of expansion.

 In 1980, President Ronald Reagan began a military

buildup and a new arms race with the Soviet Union. Reagan gave military aid to the Afghan rebels to fight the Soviets.  In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union.  In 1987 Gorbachev made an agreement with the United States—the Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty—to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

 Gorbachev changed Soviet

policy by stopping military support to Communist governments in Eastern Europe. This led to the overthrow of Communist regimes in these countries.  Germany was reunified in 1990– signaling the end of the Cold War.  In 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved.