US History II
Post-War 1950s
What is the Cold War?
Origins of the Cold War
Following the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945 near the close of World War II,
the uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one
hand and the Soviet Union on the other began to unravel. By 1948 the Soviets had
installed left-wing governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been
liberated by the Red Army. The Americans and the British feared the permanent
Soviet dominat,m.ion of eastern Europe and the threat of Soviet-influenced
communist parties coming to power in the democracies of western Europe. The
Soviets, on the other hand, were determined to maintain control of eastern Europe
in order to safeguard against any possible renewed threat from Germany, and they
were intent on spreading communism worldwide, largely for ideological reasons.
The Cold War had solidified by 1947–48, when U.S. aid provided under the Marshall
Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and
the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe.
The struggle between superpowers: NATO
The Cold War reached its peak in 1948–53. In this period the Soviets
unsuccessfully blockaded the Western-held sectors of West Berlin (1948–49); the
United States and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a unified military command to resist the Soviet presence in
Europe (1949); the Soviets exploded their first atomic warhead (1949), thus ending
the American monopoly on the atomic bomb; the Chinese communists came to
power in mainland China (1949); and the Soviet-supported communist government
of North Korea invaded U.S.-supported South Korea in 1950, setting off an
indecisive Korean War that lasted until 1953.
Aerial photograph of Medium Range
Ballistic Missile (MRBM) Launch Site 1
near San Cristóbal, Cuba, taken on
October 25, 1962.
Death of Stalin
From 1953 to 1957 Cold War tensions
relaxed somewhat, largely owing to the
death of the longtime Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953;
nevertheless, the standoff remained. A
unified military organization among
the Soviet-bloc countries, the Warsaw Pact, was formed in 1955; and West
US History II
Post-War 1950s
Germany was admitted into NATO that same year. Another intense stage of the Cold
War was in 1958–62. The United States and the Soviet Union began developing
intercontinental ballistic missiles, and in 1962 the Soviets began secretly installing
missiles in Cuba that could be used to launch nuclear attacks on U.S. cities. This
sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two
superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the
missiles.
Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy signing the
Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, October 7, 1963.
The Cuban missile crisis showed that
neither the United States nor the Soviet
Union were ready to use nuclear weapons
for fear of the other’s retaliation (and thus
of mutual atomic annihilation). The two
superpowers soon signed the Nuclear
Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned
aboveground nuclear weapons testing.
But the crisis also hardened the Soviets’
determination never again to be humiliated by their military inferiority, and they
began a buildup of both conventional and strategic forces that the United States
was forced to match for the next 25 years.
Soviet invasion of Prague
Czechoslovaks confronting Soviet troops
in Prague, August 21, 1968. Soviet forces
had invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the
reform movement known as the Prague
Spring.
Throughout the Cold War the United
States and the Soviet Union avoided
direct military confrontation in Europe
and engaged in actual combat operations
only to keep allies from defecting to the
other side or to overthrow them after they had done so. Thus, the Soviet Union sent
troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary
(1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the United
States helped overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954), supported
an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic
(1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long (1964–75) and unsuccessful
effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South Vietnam under its
rule (see Vietnam War).
US History II
Post-War 1950s
-Taken from Britannica.com
