United States History from 1877
to the Present Day
An Online United States History Course
World War II and The Cold Car
The ending of World War II brought a very uneasy peace. The use of atomic energy in the form of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States, made the rest of the world fearful. Countries scrambled to gain their own nuclear weapons. By 1947, the Soviet Union had plans for a bomb that looked strikingly like the U. S. weapons.
The Manhattan Project
The story of the Manhattan Project began in 1938, when German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann inadvertently discovered nuclear fission. A few months later, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard sent a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that Germany might try to build an atomic bomb. In response, FDR formed the Uranium Committee, a group of top military and scientific experts to determine the feasibility of a nuclear chain reaction.
Nevertheless, initial research moved slowly until the spring of 1941, when the MAUD Committee (essentially the British equivalent to the Uranium Committee) issued a report affirming that an atomic bomb was possible and urging cooperation with the United States. The U.S. government responded by reorganizing its atomic research under the S-1 Committee, which was in turn under the jurisdiction of the newly created Office of Scientific Research and Development, led by Vannevar Bush. As the project progressed from research to development, however, Bush realized that the S-1 Committee did not have the resources for full-scale construction, eventually opting to turn to the Army for support. from:https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/manhattan-project
The Potsdam Conference, 1945
The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. After the Yalta Conference of February 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had agreed to meet following the surrender of Germany to determine the postwar borders in Europe. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the Allied leaders agreed to meet over the summer at Potsdam to continue the discussions that had begun at Yalta. Although the Allies remained committed to fighting a joint war in the Pacific, the lack of a common enemy in Europe led to difficulties reaching consensus concerning postwar reconstruction on the European continent.
Taken from: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/potsdam-conf
The Early Years of the Cold War
Interestingly, for the first few years of the early Cold War (between 1945 and 1948), the conflict was more political than military. Both sides squabbled with each other at the UN, sought closer relations with nations that were not committed to either side, and articulated their differing visions of a postwar world. By 1950, however, certain factors had made the Cold War an increasingly militarized struggle. The communist takeover in China, the pronouncement of the Truman Doctrine, the advent of a Soviet nuclear weapon, tensions over occupied Germany, the outbreak of the Korean War, and the formulation of the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as rival alliances had all enhanced the Cold War's military dimension. U.S. foreign policy reflected this transition when it adopted a position that sought to "contain" the Soviet Union from further expansion. By and large, through a variety of incarnations, the containment policy would remain the central strategic vision of U.S. foreign policy from 1952 until the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Containment Policy
George F. Kennan, a career Foreign Service Officer, formulated the policy of “containment,” the basic United States strategy for fighting the cold war (1947–1989) with the Soviet Union.
Kennan’s ideas, which became the basis of the Truman administration’s foreign policy, first came to public attention in 1947 in the form of an anonymous contribution to the journal Foreign Affairs, the so-called “X-Article.” “The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union,” Kennan wrote, “must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” To that end, he called for countering “Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world” through the “adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.” Such a policy, Kennan predicted, would “promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.”
Kennan’s policy was controversial from the very beginning. Columnist Walter Lippmann attacked the X-Article for failing to differentiate between vital and peripheral interests. The United States, Kennan’s article implied, should face down the Soviet Union and its Communist allies whenever and wherever they posed a risk of gaining influence. In fact, Kennan advocated defending above all else the world’s major centers of industrial power against Soviet expansion: Western Europe, Japan, and the United States. Others criticized Kennan’s policy for being too defensive. Most notably, John Foster Dulles declared during the 1952 election campaign that the United States’ policy should not be containment, but the “rollback” of Soviet power and the eventual “liberation” of Eastern Europe. Even within the Truman administration there was a rift over containment between Kennan and Paul Nitze, Kennan’s successor as director of the Policy Planning Staff. Nitze, who saw the Soviet threat primarily in military terms, interpreted Kennan’s call for “the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force” to mean the use of military power. In contrast, Kennan, who considered the Soviet threat to be primarily political, advocated above all else economic assistance (e.g., the Marshall Plan) and “psychological warfare” (overt propaganda and covert operations) to counter the spread of Soviet influence. In 1950, Nitze’s conception of containment won out over Kennan’s. NSC 68, a policy document prepared by the National Security Council and signed by Truman, called for a drastic expansion of the U.S. military budget. The paper also expanded containment’s scope beyond the defense of major centers of industrial power to encompass the entire world. “In the context of the present polarization of power,” it read, “a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.”
(About 4 Weeks)
The Cold War in the 1960's
It was also in the early 1960s that American containment policy shifted from heavy reliance on nuclear weapons to more conventional notions of warfare in pursuit of a more "flexible response" to the spread of communism. Although originally articulated by President Kennedy, it was in 1965 that President Johnson showcased the idea of flexible response when he made the initial decision to commit American combat troops to South Vietnam. American thinking had come to regard Southeast Asia as vital to its national security, and President Johnson made clear his intention to insure South Vietnam's territorial and political integrity "whatever the cost or whatever the challenge."
Vietnam War
Vietnam War, (1954–75), a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the “American War” in Vietnam (or, in full, the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.
The Domino Theory
President Dwight D. Eisenhower coins one of the most famous Cold War phrases when he suggests the fall of French Indochina to the communists could create a “domino” effect in Southeast Asia. The so-called “domino theory” dominated U.S. thinking about Vietnam for the next decade.
By early 1954, it was clear to many U.S. policymakers that the French were failing in their attempt to re-establish colonial control in Indochina (Vietnam), which they lost during World War II when the Japanese took control of the area. The Vietnamese nationalists, led by the communist Ho Chi Minh, were on the verge of winning a stunning victory against French forces at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. In just a few weeks, representatives from the world’s powers were scheduled to meet in Geneva to discuss a political settlement of the Vietnamese conflict. U.S. officials were concerned that a victory by Ho’s forces and/or an agreement in Geneva might leave a communist regime in control of all or part of Vietnam. In an attempt to rally congressional and public support for increased U.S. aid to the French, President Eisenhower gave an historic press conference on April 7, 1954.
He spent much of the speech explaining the significance of Vietnam to the United States. First was its economic importance, “the specific value of a locality in its production of materials that the world needs” (materials such as rubber, jute, and sulphur). There was also the “possibility that many human beings pass under a dictatorship that is inimical to the free world.” Finally, the president noted, “You have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle.” Eisenhower expanded on this thought, explaining, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is a certainty that it will go over very quickly.” This would lead to disintegration in Southeast Asia, with the “loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following.” Eisenhower suggested that even Japan, which needed Southeast Asia for trade, would be in danger.
Eisenhower’s words had little direct immediate impact–a month later, Dien Bien Phu fell to the communists, and an agreement was reached at the Geneva Conference that left Ho’s forces in control of northern Vietnam. In the long run, however, Eisenhower’s announcement of the “domino theory” laid the foundation for U.S. involvement in Vietnam. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson both used the theory to justify their calls for increased U.S. economic and military assistance to non-communist South Vietnam and, eventually, the commitment of U.S. armed forces in 1965.
Taken from:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisenhower-gives-famous-domino-theory-speech
The Berlin Wall
The U2 Spy incident
An international diplomatic crisis erupted in May 1960 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers (1929-77). Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The Soviets convicted Powers on espionage charges and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. However, after serving less than two years, he was released in exchange for a captured Soviet agent in the first-ever U.S.-USSR “spy swap.” The U-2 spy plane incident raised tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets during the Cold War (1945-91), the largely political clash between the two superpowers and their allies that emerged following World War II.
The U2 Spy Plane
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy (1917-63) notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. Following this news, many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s (1894-1971) offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Berliners celebrate as the wall comes down.
The Atomic Bombs, Fat Man and Little Boy
The Big Three meet at Potsdam. Winston Churchill, Harry S Truman, and Joseph Stalin
Nikita Khrushchev
premier of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
After Stalin’s death in March 1953 and the execution of the powerful state security chief, Lavrenty Beria—which Khrushchev engineered—he engaged in a power struggle with Malenkov, who was Stalin’s heir apparent. Khrushchev soon gained the decisive margin by his control of the party machinery. In September 1953 he replaced Malenkov as first secretary and in 1955 removed Malenkov from the premiership in favour of his handpicked nominee, Marshal Nikolay A. Bulganin.
Significantly, by 1954 Khrushchev had been able to reform the Stalinist security apparatus by subordinating it to the top party leadership. Stalin’s Ministry of Internal Affairs was divided into criminal police and the security services—the Committee on State Security (KGB), which in turn reported to the U.S.S.R.’s Council of Ministers.
In May 1955, when Khrushchev made his first trip outside the Soviet Union—to Yugoslavia with Bulganin—he began to show his flexibility; he apologized to Josip Broz Tito for Stalin’s denunciation of Yugoslav communism in 1948. Later, in trips to Geneva, Afghanistan, and India, he began to exhibit a brash, extroverted personal diplomacy that was to become his trademark. Although his attacks on world capitalism were virulent and primitive, his outgoing personality and peasant humour were in sharp contrast to the image earlier Soviet public figures had cultivated.
Khrushchev, Nikita; Bulganin, Nikolay; Kurchatov, Igor(Left to right) Nikita S. Khrushchev, Nikolay A. Bulganin, and Igor V. Kurchatov aboard a Soviet ship, Portsmouth, England, 1956.Brian Seed—Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
On February 25, 1956, during the 20th Party Congress in Moscow, Khrushchev delivered his memorable secret speech about the excesses of Stalin’s one-man rule, attacking the late Soviet ruler’s “intolerance, his brutality, his abuse of power.” The spectacle of the first secretary of the Communist Party exposing the wrongful executions of the Great Purge of the 1930s and the excesses of Soviet police repression, after years of fearful silence, had far-reaching effects that Khrushchev himself could barely have foreseen. The resulting “thaw” in the Soviet Union saw the release of millions of political prisoners and the “rehabilitation” of many thousands more who had perished.
Khrushchev’s rule was not without its dark side—including an intensified persecution of religion. Nonetheless, by smashing the repressive icon of Stalinism and the mentality of terror that had been imposed on the general population, Khrushchev inspired a new intellectual ferment and widespread hopes for greater freedom, particularly among students and intellectuals.
Inevitably, the de-Stalinization movement had repercussions in the communist countries of eastern Europe. Poland revolted against its government in October 1956. Hungary followed shortly afterward. Faced with open revolution, Khrushchev flew to Warsaw on October 19 with other Soviet leaders and ultimately acquiesced in the Polish leader Władysław Gomułka’s national communist solution, which allowed the Poles a great deal of freedom. Khrushchev’s shared decision to crush the Hungarian Revolution by force, however, came largely because of the Hungarian premier Imre Nagy’s decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Aside from this sanguinary exception, Khrushchev allowed a considerable amount of freedom to the European communist parties.
The stresses in eastern Europe helped crystallize opposition to Khrushchev within the Soviet Communist Party. In June 1957 he was almost overthrown from his position, and, although a vote in the Presidium
The Korean War
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. After some early back-and-forth across the 38th parallel, the fighting stalled and casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile, American officials worked anxiously to fashion some sort of armistice with the North Koreans. The alternative, they feared, would be a wider war with Russia and China–or even, as some warned, World War III. Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end. In all, some 5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the war. The Korean peninsula is still divided today.
The Second Red Scare
The second Red Scare refers to the fear of communism that permeated American politics, culture, and society from the late 1940s through the 1950s, during the opening phases of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. This episode of political repression lasted longer and was more pervasive than the Red Scare that followed the Bolshevik Revolution and World War I. Popularly known as “McCarthyism” after Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), who made himself famous in 1950 by claiming that large numbers of Communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department, the second Red Scare predated and outlasted McCarthy, and its machinery far exceeded the reach of a single maverick politician. Nonetheless, “McCarthyism” became the label for the tactic of undermining political opponents by making unsubstantiated attacks on their loyalty to the United States.
The initial infrastructure for waging war on domestic communism was built during the first Red Scare, with the creation of an antiradicalism division within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the emergence of a network of private “patriotic” organizations. With capitalism’s crisis during the Great Depression, the Communist Party grew in numbers and influence, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program expanded the federal government’s role in providing economic security. The anticommunist network expanded as well, most notably with the 1938 formation of the Special House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, which in 1945 became the permanent House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Other key congressional investigation committees were the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and McCarthy’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Members of these committees and their staff cooperated with the FBI to identify and pursue alleged subversives. The federal employee loyalty program, formalized in 1947 by President Harry Truman in response to right-wing allegations that his administration harbored Communist spies, soon was imitated by local and state governments as well as private employers. As the Soviets’ development of nuclear capability, a series of espionage cases, and the Korean War enhanced the credibility of anticommunists, the Red Scare metastasized from the arena of government employment into labor unions, higher education, the professions, the media, and party politics at all levels. The second Red Scare did not involve pogroms or gulags, but the fear of unemployment was a powerful tool for stifling criticism of the status quo, whether in economic policy or social relations. Ostensibly seeking to protect democracy by eliminating communism from American life, anticommunist crusaders ironically undermined democracy by suppressing the expression of dissent. Debates over the second Red Scare remain lively because they resonate with ongoing struggles to reconcile Americans’ desires for security and liberty.
Taken from: http://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-6
Joseph McCarthy, leader of the communist "witch hunts of the 1950's
The Berlin Wall
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.
Space Race
The Space Race was a competition between the USA and the USSR to explore space using artificial satellites and manned spacecraft. It can be seen as a part of the larger arms race, as developments in space research could easily be transferred to military research. Both countries started work on developing reconnaissance satellites well before the height of the Space Race. The Vostok spacecraft used by the USSR to put Yuri Gagarin into space, for example, was developed from the Zenit spy satellites used by the Soviet military.
However, the military benefits of the Space Race were not the only driving force behind the American and Soviet attempts to explore space. The populations of both countries took a great interest in their respective space programs and it was a useful way for both superpowers to demonstrate their superiority. Nikita Khruschev, the Premier of the Soviet Union, used the country's early success in the Space Race to claim that the "economy, science, culture and the creative genius of people in all areas of life develop better and faster under communism." The American President John F. Kennedy, on the other hand, is quoted as saying "Everything we do ought to... be tied in to getting on to the Moon ahead of the Russians... we hope to beat the USSR to demonstrate that instead of being behind by a couple of years, by God, we passed them."
In America the space program was headed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, who were given control of all non military activity in Space. The team at NASA included Dr. Wernher von Braun, the German scientist responsible for the development of the V2 rocket during the Second World War. He was later moved to the United States by the U.S. Army to study the future potential of rockets and masterminded the development of the Saturn V Moon Rocket.
Where is this Cold War Headed?
Since 1989, many disappointments have followed the initial euphoria. The “peace dividend” hoped for by millions, and Gorbachev’s sunny but characteristically vague formula of peaceful coexistence in a “common European home”, have not eventuated. Instead, a triumphant NATO has pitched its tents inside the borders of the old USSR, and a surly and resentful Russia has responded with brinkmanship and confrontation.
Following the end of the Cold War, neoconservative US administrations sought to put their stamp on the world, and the “blowback” has resulted in chaos in much of the Middle East and think tank predictions of a “clash between civilizations”.
Economically, turbocharged neoliberal capitalism has come under question, especially following the 2008 global financial crisis. But, what is significant to note is that since the collapse of state socialism, symbolised by the fall of the Wall, the contours of an alternative social order have become almost impossible to discern.
Berlin at the sight of the former wall, today.
Sputnik and the Space Race
The Soviet Union launched a satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit on October 4, 1957. Sputnik I brought about new political, military, technological, and scientific developments in the United States, as well as educational requirements for high school students graduating after the launch. This marked the start of the space race. After the Sputnik I launch in October, The U.S. Defense Department responded to the political furor by approving funding for another U.S. satellite project. America felt hopelessly behind the communist. The US developed the NASA agency and did in 1969 land men on the moon, besting the Soviets. They continued making a space station and reusable space shuttle.