ENGL 583 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Lavrentiy Beria, Georgy Malenkov, Kuril Islands

• School: University of Victoria
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL 583
• Professor: David Dolff

Document Summary

Nato was the primary western alliance for fighting the cold war. They wanted to keep the russians out, the us in and the germans down. The key to nato : attack against all countries in the. The edges of the arms race : atomic power. The us have monopoly on the atomic bomb until 1949. When the soviets got the bomb in 1949 it was a huge surprise for the us even if it shouldn"t be. They think that there was a conspiracy, espionage : the soviets stole the secret of the bomb. Two were executed : julius and ethel rosenberg. There is a huge concern among the americans that they are under siege. Truman"s government decides to be harder against the soviets. April 1950 : truman decides to accept a document called nsc-68 on security issues. It alleges that the soviets only understand force, there won"t be negotiations so the us can only build their own force.