Beginnings of the Cold War

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Beginnings of the Cold War

• The Problems of Peace
• Potsdam Conference
• Allies agreed to temporarily divide Germany and
  Berlin into four zones of occupation
• Allies worked together to establish a plan to rid
  Germany of any remnants of the Nazi Party and
  Nazi beliefs through the Nuremberg trials
• Allies worked on a plan for Germany to pay
  reparations for the destruction caused by the war

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Beginnings of the Cold War

• The Allies conflicted over what to do with the
  rest of Europe
• Soviet Union believed they needed a buffer zone
  of friendly governments in Eastern Europe to
  guard against another such attack Stalin
  promised to respect the rights of people in
  Eastern Europe to choose their own governments
• American and British leaders believed that Stalin
  planned to establish pro-Soviet Communist
  governments

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Beginnings of the Cold War

• The Conflict Worsens
• Cold War an era of high tension and bitter
  rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union in
  the decades following World War II
• struggle of power and control between two nations
  with very different forms of government, economic
  systems and ways of life
• Cold War, in short, was a conflict between
  command ommunism and capitalist democracy
• Winston Churchill used the image of an iron
  curtain to describe the sharp division of Europe
  that was the result of Soviet actions

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Beginnings of the Cold War

• Truman Doctrine a pledge to provide economic and
  military aid to oppose the spread of communism
• US was committed to helping free peoples resist
  takeover by armed minorities or outside
  pressures
• US launched the Marshall Plan plan for the
  economic reconstruction of Europe after WWII

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Beginnings of the Cold War

• Cold War Confrontations
• containment involved resisting Soviet aggression
  in order to contain the spread of communism
• Western leaders began to plan for the creation of
  an independent democratic German nation to be
  formed from the three western zones of occupation
• Soviets blocked off all routes into West Berlin
  to prevent any supplies to come into the city
• Westerners organized the Berlin Airlift a
  massive effort to supply West Berlin by air

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Beginnings of the Cold War

• US, Canada and most of Western Europe joined
  together to in a military alliance
• NATO a defensive military alliance of twelve
  Western nations formed planned to establish a
  democratic government in West Berlin (Western
  military alliance)
• Warsaw Pact a military alliance of the
  Soviet-dominated countries of Eastern Europe

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Beginnings of the Cold War

• Allies agreed to temporarily divide Korea in half
• Soviets established Communist government in the
  northern half
• US supported a non-Communist regime in the
  southern half
• North Korea attacked South Korea in order to
  unite Korea under a Communist government
• Chinese communists gave aid to North Korea and
  able to push UN troops back out of North Korea
• war settled into a stalemate and then agreed to
  an armistice in 1953

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Superpower Rivalries

• The Arms Race Begins
• West received news of a successful Soviet test of
  an atomic bomb
• US tested the first fusion powered hydrogen bomb
• US and Soviets increased their stockpiles of
  nuclear weapons

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Superpower Rivalries

• Both sides used the strategy of deterrence
• the development of or maintenance of military
  power to deter, or prevent, an attack
• US and the Soviet Union were locked in an arms
  race
• a struggle between nations to gain an advantage
  in weapons
• Soviet Union launched Sputnik
• historys first artificial satellite

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Superpower Rivalries

• US government established the National
  Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA
• people built bomb shelters to protect them from a
  nuclear explosion
• Red Scare Americans feared possible Communist
  influence in the US government
• McCarthy led the effort to expose Communists in
  the American film industry and government,
  accusing many innocent people of Communist
  activities

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Superpower Rivalries

• Cold War Around the War
• Vietnam
• France sought to reestablish its former colonial
  control over Southeast Asia
• Communist rebels fought back forcing the French
  to give up control of Vietnam
• Vietnam was temporarily divided into northern
  (Communist controlled) and southern
  (anti-Communist) halves
• US supported the south and sent military aid

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Superpower Rivalries

• Berlin
• Soviets began to build the Berlin Wall
• also became a symbol of the brutality of the
  Communist system

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Superpower Rivalries

• Cuba
• rebels under the leadership of Fidel Castro
  overthrew Cubas dictator and installed a
  Communist government
• Castro established a centrally planned economy
  and forged close ties with the Soviet Union
• Bay of Pigs invasion the failed attempt of Cuban
  exiles backed by the US to overthrow the Cuban
  socialist government of Fidel Castro
• Cuban missile crisis confrontation between the
  US and the Soviet Union over the Soviet missiles
  in Cuba
• Soviet leaders removed the missiles when the US
  agreed to remove US missiles from Turkey and
  promised not to attack Cuba

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Superpower Rivalries

• Other
• Egypt angered the West by taking over the Suez
  Canal
• Africa
• Central/South America
• nonaligned nations nations who refused to ally
  with either side in the Cold War between the US
  and the Soviet Union
• Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan
  all worked to promote the limitation of nuclear
  weapons through various methods Open Skies
  Treaty, Test Ban Treaty, détente, SALT I/II,
  Missile Defense System (Star Wars),
  Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
• Finally, the relationship between the Soviet
  Union and the US was beginning to improve

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Changing Society

• North America
• Economic Changes
• US citizens bought a lot of consumer goods
• During the 1970s there was inflation and high
  unemployment along with a spike in oil prices
• Unemployment dropped in the 1980s but the
  national debt grew sharply
• US companies closed factories which led to a loss
  of jobs but increased jobs in the service sector

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Changing Society

• Social changes
• GI Bill of Rights a law that helped millions of
  American veterans attend college and make a
  living
• baby boom occurred
• Truman ordered the military to desegregate
• Brown v Board of Education a court case that
  ruled schools needed to desegregated
• Civil Rights Movement
• womens movement emerged
• counterculture a rebellion of teenagers and
  young adults against mainstream American society

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Changing Society

• Western Europe
• Western Europe lay in ruins but due to the
  Marshall Plan they were able to restore to some
  economic power
• NATO helped unify many European nations in a
  strong military alliance with the US and Canada
• Western European countries undertook broader
  efforts to develop a single regional market free
  of trade barriers and with unified economic
  policies (European Economic Community or the
  Common Market)

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Changing Society

• Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
• Soviet Union had a centrally planned economy or a
  command economy
• command economy the government controls all
  economic decisions
• Khrushchev de-Stalinzed but continued it
• Soviet leaders put down several revolts and
  protests throughout Eastern Europe
• Poland used the Solidarity in order to protest
  Soviet control

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Changing Society

• Government planners set production goals without
  thinking about the needs of the state
• Gorbachev proposed two concepts glasnost and
  perestroika
• Gorbachev also pursued arms control agreements
  with the US, reduced central planning, introduced
  some free-market mechanisms and urged local
  leaders to adopt reforms to Communism

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Changing Society

• Eastern European countries soon began to revolt
• Velvet Revolution a quick, peaceful revolution
  that swept the Communists from power in
  Czechoslovakia
• Poland Solidarity movement led to free elections
• Romania was one location where there was
  bloodshed
• East Germans fled to Hungary in order to move
  back into West Germany, which led to the fall of
  the Berlin Wall in 1989

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After the Cold War

• The Breakup of the Soviet Union
• Soviet Union had 15 separate republics, who all
  wanted their independence
• Soviet leaders sought to end Gorbachevs reforms
  and preserve the Soviet Union by taking over the
  Soviet government in a coup detat
• Boris Yeltsin, leader of the republic of Russia,
  opposed this idea

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After the Cold War

• At the end of 1991 the Soviet government had
  ceased to function
• 12 of the republics eventually united in a loose
  confederation known as the Commonwealth of
  Independent States
• Soviet Union no longer existed and the Cold War
  was over, communism ended in the former Soviet
  republics

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After the Cold War

• Yeltsin began to reform the economy and make it
  more capitalistic
• He allowed private ownership of business and land
• Business owners and workers received more freedom
  to take advantage of economic opportunity
• Prices rose and most Russians could not afford to
  buy products
• Two main issues bubbled to the top Ethnic unrest
  and the need for new governments

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After the Cold War

• Europe after Communism
• Due to Communistic control, ethnic and religious
  tensions were suppressed in Yugoslavia
• Serbs tried to prevent the break-up of Yugoslavia
  but led to a larger conflict
• The most violent wars took place in Bosnia and
  Herzegovina because they declared independence
  from Yugoslavia
• Serbs used ethnic cleansing to get rid of Bosnian
  Muslims
• Ethnic cleansing the elimination of an ethnic
  group from society through killing or forced
  immigration
• US sent a diplomat to help resolve this conflict,
  which ended in 1995

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After the Cold War

• Soon another conflict emerged in Kosovo
• Serbs and ethnic Albanians fought over control of
  the area
• Peace negotiations failed and led to NATO bombing
  the area but Kosovo still remains a province of
  Serbia
• People started new businesses but many are not
  earning enough money to support themselves or are
  unemployed causing them to move to Western Europe
  to compete with others there for jobs
• Europe established the European Union, which is a
  political and economic union among the nations of
  Europe

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After the Cold War

• The United States Today
• Economy
• Unemployment was low, Budget deficits shrank,
  Economic success was due to the developments in
  computer technology
• Concerns of the new century include high energy
  costs, increased government spending and a rising
  national debt, gap between the rich and poor and
  high unemployment rate

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After the Cold War

• New Conflicts
• New conflict in the Middle East
• Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait
• negotiations failed and the US sent troops into
  the Persian Gulf War
• coalition troops quickly freed Kuwait
• US took part in peacekeeping efforts around the
  world

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After the Cold War

• War on Terror
• US was hit by terrorists throughout the 1990s
• These hits were planned attacks by al Qaeda
• led by Osama bin Laden
• Islamist terrorist organization
• 9/11

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After the Cold War

• US responded by attacking al Qaeda and Taliban
• Taliban a group that was then governing
  Afghanistan according to a strict interpretation
  of Islamic law
• Bush went into Iraq to find weapons in 2003 but
  werent able to find any such weapons
• It will take some years before Iraq is able to
  stand alone without help from the US or any other
  country