HIST 111 Lecture 20: Origins of the Cold War
Global
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Not binary
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Have to account for the "third world"
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Pay attention to how both the Soviet Union and the United States see
themselves as variances within modern society
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Why did the Soviet Union and the US distrust each other? (as they were allies in
WWII)
Soviet Union feared the US and their allies would try to "snuff out" this
experiment they had going within Marxism
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The US sent troops to Russia earlier to aid and abed the democratic whites
explicitly perhaps to "snuff out" the soviet experiment earlier on
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The Soviet Union had an opposing government set-up to the US; Democracy vs.
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Yalta, February 1945
Main focus on postwar world
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Stalin agrees to enter war against Japan after Germany was defeated
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Stalin seeks $20 billion in war reparations from Germany- Wants a crippled
Germany
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Germany split into 4 "zones of occupation"
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US sought free and open elections in Poland and Eastern Europe
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Each thought they had a grand idea to save the world for the future in their own
terms
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Each thought they were harnessing the correct money, weapons, means, etc. to
go about perfecting the performance of these plans
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Manhattan Project
Office of Scientific Research and Development- Vannevar Bush, J. Robert
Oppenheimer, Enrico Germi
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Major sites: Los Alamos, NM, Oak Ridge, TN, Hanford, WA- 129,000 workers, $2
bill
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Tokyo firebombing campaign, March 1945, 100,000 civilians killed, 300 B-29s
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Enola Gay
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What was the US strategy after World War II?
Spying and espionage designed to get insider details
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How did the US assess the Soviet threat?
Were "looking at a black box" at the time persay, because they really had no
idea what was truly going on
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Containment
George F. Kennan
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The Long Telegram, February 22, 1946 9 PM Moscow
No possible permanent compromise, and that the Soviet Union will
attempt to disrupt the internal harmony in the US because of its
opposition to capitalism
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Soviets could not be reasoned with (facts would not reason them) and the
best way to deal with them would be force
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Believed Communism was not the problem everywhere, but rather the
Soviet Union was the problem
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The Truman Doctrine, March 12, 1947- "support free peoples who are resisting
attempted sub junction by armed minorities or by outside pressures"
In a balanced budget climate of 1946, we should strategically deploy the
US resources into specific areas (not containment?)
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Aware that much of the battle between the US and the Soviet Union
would be fought much in the mines and would shape people's
understanding of the world
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Need to shape public perception into a positive and constructive picture
of the future (democracy and the country)
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"The greatest danger is that we allow ourselves to become like those with
whom we are coping"
Do not become like the Soviet Union because of this rivalry
§
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The Marshall Plan, June 1947- $13 billion
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Notes
Germany divided, Berlin divided
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Berlin Airlift 1948-1949
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NATO, 1949
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Warsaw Pact, 1955
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Berlin Wall, 1961
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NSC-68 1950, and Korean War
Perceptions
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Periphery as important as center
The invasion of South Korea by North Korea affirmed everything that
seemed to be predicted in NSC-68
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The Korean War validated this prediction
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Also had implications well beyond the Korean conflict
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Kremlin "grand design" "fanatic faith"
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Outspend Soviets
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38th parallel
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Misc. Notes
China fell to communism, which shook their strategies and expectations as they
viewed them as falling to the Soviets
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Also, there was more concern in this war because the Soviets had the first
atomic weapon in 1949 (this changed the psychological terrain)
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New Look
John Foster Dulles "brinksmanship"
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Domino theory
If one place falls to communism, the other places around it will as well
and it will be unstopable
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Asymmetrical response
A threat here will be met with a nuclear bomb in Moscow (not here but
there/in a different spot)
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Covert operations
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Could contain the Soviet Union without getting "bogged down in Korea"
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CIA-Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954
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Origins of the Cold War
Monday, March 5, 2018
1:33 PM
