The Cold War (1945-91)

Figure 1.--Berlin was conquered by the Red Army in savage fighting during April 1945. As decided at the Yalta Conference, the three principal Western Allies (Britain, France, and the United States) were given occupation zones in the conquered NAZI capital. It was at Berlin that the first major confrontation of the Cold War occurred. Stalin decided in 1948 that he could blockade Berlin and force the Western allies out and the people of West Berlin into submission. Ironically the people of West Berlin were saved by American and British pilots, in most cases the same men that only 3 years earlier had been bombing German cities. Notice that the children here are standing on ruble created by the Allied bombing. It is difficukt to see, but thec pilotv of this C47 as he lands his dropping little parachutes with candy for the children.

The United States and its allies following World War II fought a 45-year struggle war with the Soviet Union and China. The War pitted the ideals of Western democracy and free enterprise against totalitarian states with command economies. At stake was the future social order of mankind. Germany's defeat left Stalin in control of the countries of Eastern Europe. President Harry Truman when he became president in April 1945 began taking a stronger approach to the Soviets, disturbed by Soviet actions in Poland. Stalin proceeded to install People's Republics in these states which meant Stalinist police states subservient to the Soviet Union. American and European democracies sharply criticised the Soviet actions. Winston Churchill warned in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. Joseph Stalin who had virtually allied himself with Hitler in 1939 to launch World War II, blamed the War on "capitalist imperialism" and threatened Western Europe. President Truman decided to support Western Europe economically (the Marshall Plan) and militarily (NATO). The Cold War was a period of intense East-West competition, tension, and conflict, but always short of full-scale war. The first major episode was the soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948. Berlin was during much of the Cold War a focal point of the conflict. The Soviets brutally suppressed attempts by Eastern Europeans to overthrow Soviet imposed governments: East Germany (1953), Poland (1956), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1978). There were proxy wars and competition for influence in developing countries, many of which introduced Soviet command economics. There was also an arms race between the two super powers. After Stalin died in 1953, the Cold War became more unbalanced. There were periods of relaxation followed by resumed confrontation. The most dangerous point of the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). There were efforts to pursue detente during the 1970s. Unlike the other major conflicts in world history, in the end the Cold War was not settled by force of arms. It was the example of the West, especially the success of free market economics and political democracy that defeated Communism. Not all historians agree that the Cold War was necessary and that the foundation of Western democracy was at stake.

World War II

World War II Germany's defeat left Stalin in control of the countries of Eastern Europe. Right-wing politicians in America charged that President Roosevelt at Yalta had given Eastern Europe to the Communists. The actual fact is that the Soviet Red Army had been the major factor in the defeat of the German Wehrmacht. The Soviet Union had been a major part of the Allied coalition that had defeated the Axis. It was Soviet victories in the desperate fighting on the Eastern Front that had left Stalin in control of Eastern Europe. The Red Army before Moscow (1941) and at Stalingrad (1942), and Kursk (1943) defeated German armies far more massive than were encountered by the Allies in 1942-44. Revisionist historians have tried to blame America in the aftermath of World war II for the Cold War. Stalin's behaviour in 1939-40 when he brutally imposed a Communist dictatorship on the people of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Eastern Poland make it clear that the creation of satellite People's Republics in Eastern Europe was not a response to American policies, but in fact the essential nature of Stalin's regime.

Marshall Stalin

Joseph Stalin is undeniably one of the most important figures of the 20th century. His impact on the development of the Soviet state and society and the international Communist movement was immense. He is also one of the most evil figures in world history and was directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a death toll even exceeding that of Adolf Hitler. Even so, the Russian people are deeply conflicted about his legacy.

President Truman

President Harry Truman when he became president in April 1945 began taking a stronger approach to the Soviets, especially disturbed by Soviet actions in Poland. The decisions taken by President Truman were to set the foundation for an epic 45-year struggle with Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin and the powerful empire that he created.

Early Phase

Stalin was left after World War II in control of Eastern Europe, Stalin proceeded to install repressive puppet satellite governments in Poland and other countries. Stalin proceeded to install People's Republics in these states which meant Stalinist police states subservient to the Soviet Union. Stalin proceeded to use Communist parties in Greece, France, and Italy to broaden the Soviet Empire. American and European democracies sharply criticised the Soviet actions. Winston Churchill warned in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. Joseph Stalin who had virtually allied himself with Hitler in 1939 to launch World War II, blamed the War on "capitalist imperialism" and threatened Western Europe. President Truman decided to support Western Europe. The Cold War was a period of intense East-West competition, tension, and conflict, but always short of full-scale war. The American policy throughout the nearly 50 years of the Cold War was once of "Containment". It was first enunciated by George Kennan writing as "X" in a celebrated article on Foreign Affairs. In the Nuclear Age, war between super powers was unthinkable. America sought to contain the expansion of the Soviet Empire while internal forces would weaken Soviet imposed Communist regimes from within. World War II had left Europe devastated. A staggering 40 million people were killed in World War II. In an effort to promote economic recovery, the United States implemented the Marshall Plan. (It was not called the Truman Plan because that would have doomed it in the Republican controlled American Congress.) The Plan was proposed by American Secretary of State George C. Marshall in 1947. Eventually over $12 billion (in 1948 dollars) was provided. Berlin was at the center if the Cold War. Stalin decided in 1948 that he could blockade Berlin and force the Western allies out and the people of West Berlin into submission. Ironically the people of West Berlin were saved by American and British pilots, in most cases the same men that only 3 years earlier had been bombing German cities and had reduced Berlin to ruble. President Truman was determined that the United States would not leave Berlin and a massive airlift was organized and even during the winter, more supploes were reaching Berlin than before tht Soviets had instituted the blockade. America did not withdraw from Europe after World War II as it had done after World War I. Stalin helped bring about that commitment. Stalin seized total control of Czechoslovakia in 1948, ending all pretence of democracy. But it was the Soviet blockade of West Berlin that made it clear that a strong Western military capability was necessary to counter Soviet power. The United States helped organize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)--a mutual assistance military treaty. Even befoire the Soviet blockade was lifited, the United States and 11 other countries on April 4, 1949 signed the treaty. [Hudson, p. 62.] After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II, the Civil War between the Nationalists and Communists resumed in earnest. The Communists had by 1948 defeated the Nationalists on the Mainland and Chian Kai-shek and his remaining forces fled to Taiwan which had been liberated from the Japanese. The success of the Communist Revolution led by Mao-Tse-Tung in 1949 brought a massive change in Chinese society. As the Cold war intensified, a wave of anti-Communist hysteria developed in America. The North Koreans Army crossed the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950 to forcibly unify Korea. President Truman immediately ordered war material be provided the South Koreans and then cmmitted U.S. forces to the defense of South Korea. Stalin and his sucessors encountered much more difficulty subjecting the people of Eastern Europe to totalitarian rule than the Russian people. The Soviets brutally suppressed attempts by Eastern Europeans to overthrow Soviet imposed governments: East Germany (1953), Poland (1956), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1978), and other outbreaks--especially in Poland. The Cold War was to be won or lost in Germany. The country was even with deminished borders the powerhouse of Europe. The Red Army and Stalin's ruthlessness early owned settled the matter in the minds of most Germans. The question became moreone of whether America had the determination to support the Germans in the face of the Soviet threat. The Western Allied in 1949 began to allow the Federal Republic of German to administer the Western occupation zones and formally ended ocupation in 1955. The Cold War is often seen as a bi-polar struggle between East and West. The reality was much more complicated. France had been humbled by the Germans in World War II. After the War, France attempted to resurrect its colonial empire. This led to two failed colonial wars (Vietnam and Algeria). In search of an independent defence capability, France under General De Gaulle built an atomic bomb and pulled out of the NATO combined command.There were proxy wars and competition for influence in the newly independent countries of the developing world, many of which introduced Soviet command economics. India adopted a command economy with a democratic political system. Many other countries discarded all but the trappings of democratic government. There was also an arms race between the two super powers. America and the Soviet Union adopted client states in the Third World to support their respectivde sides. After Stalin died in 1953, the Cold War became more unbalanced. There were periods of relaxation followed by resumed confrontation. Nikita Khrushchev shocked the Communist world when he denounced Stalin at the 1956 20th Party Congress. A power struggle followed Stalin's death in 1953. Ukranian Party boss Nikita Khrushchev emerged victorious in that struggle. Perhaps his single most important achievement was launching the De-Stalinization process in 1956. While Stlalin was a mass murder, Khrushchev was even more dangerous. His behacior was often crude such as when he took his shoe off and banged his desk at the United Nations when a speaker displeased him.

Later Phase

The most visible aspect of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall - the Wall the Communists built between East and West Germany. The Wall changed this. It did stop the flow of people West, although heart rending sights of small numbers of people braving the increasingly lethal dangers of the Wall moved West Germans. President Kennedy visited Berlin in 1962 to demonstrate American resolve in this vulnerable outpost of freedom. The most dangerous point of the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviert Union secretly began installing balistic missles in Cuba capable of hitting Atlantic coast American cities. A major development in the Cold War was the split between the Soviets and Chinese in 1964. There were efforts to pursue detente during the 1970s. Vietnam is the most controversial war in American history. Even after several decades the debate over the war continues. American Presidents Kennedy and Johnson committed American combat troops primarily as part of a Cold War commitment to fighting Communism. The reality in Vietnam was much more complex. American officials failed to perceive the nationalist dimensions of the War. The developing fissures in the Communist world were also not appreciated. Perhaps the most serious miscalculation was the military assessment of the ability of North Vietnam to resist American military power. The Indonesian military in 1965 overthrew the Sukarno regime claiming that the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) was planning an uprising. The actual plans of the PKI are still murky, but over 1 million Indonesians were killed by the military for expected PKI sympathies. It was one of major attrocities of rhe 20th century. Another major even more radical change occurred during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), one of the most violent and tragic episodes in modern Chinese history. It was inspired by China's leader Mao Tse Tung and known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Mao thought that the Chinese people were losing their revolutionary zeal. He thus conceived of a cultural revolution to destroy once and for all the culture of pre-Communist China. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, after years of struggle, defeated the Cambodian military and seized the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. What followed was one of the most sinister and senseless acts of genocide ever committed by a government on its own people. The Soviets invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 1979. Unlike the other major conflicts in world history, in the end the Cold War was not settled by force of arms. It was the example of the West, especially the success of free market economics and political democracy that defeated Communism. [Mandelbaum] The Soviets in Western Europe used the growing pasifist movement in Western Europe to promote disarmament--disarmaament of the West. Stalin once asked mockingly how many divisions the Pope had. In fact the entire edifice of Stalinist in Eastern Europe began to unravel in Poland. The two principal forces were the Polish Catholic Church and an illegal free trade union movement--Solidarity. Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev played a central role in ending the Cold War. The Soviet economy was clearly failing. With a faltering economy, the Soviets could not successfully compete with America and the West. Gorbachev sought to rationalize the Soviet system through Glasnost and Perestroika. The relaxation of the police state role and the openness that he sought in effect destroyed the Soviet Union and its Eastern European Empire. Gorbachev was unwilling to use the instruments of state security to suppress the people of Eastern Europe and the nationalities within the Soviet Union. In the end the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991. This was not Gorbachev's intention, but he inadvertently launched a new undivided and much freer Europe. [Hitchcock] President Ronald Reagan envisioned a smaller Government, a greater America. At the end of his two terms in office, the President Reagan viewed with satisfaction the achievements of his innovative program known as the Reagan Revolution, which aimed to reinvigorate the American people and reduce their reliance upon Government. He felt he had fulfilled his campaign pledge of 1980 to restore "the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism." It is difficult to assess to what extent this stress or the internal weakness of the Soviet system resulted in its demise. Probably a combination of the two. Some view Reagan as genial, but poorly informed and unengaged. Others credit him with the destruction of Soviet Communism.

Country Trends

Our discussion of the Cold War is primarily based on a chronological flow of events. This of necesity condenses the Cold War into its essence--a struggle between the Soviet Union and America. America's European allies played critical roles in the Cold War. but withoit America, Wesrern Europe could not have resisted the Red Army and Soviet domination after World War II. In Easter Europe, East Germany was the key for the Soviets because of the potential power of a united Germany, And because of its geographic lovation, Poland became the epicenter for the Cold War. For without a compliant Communist Poland, a the Communist East German regime was untenable. Unfortunately for the Siviets, Poland proved the most difficult Eastern European satellite country to control. Thus developments in individual countries, especially the European countries most affected by the struggle are not adequately presented. Here we will collect information on development in specific countries during the Cold War. Here we are just beginning this assessment.

Military Trends

The Cold war was notable in that it was a rare conflict between two major world powers in which there was no direct military confrontations. between the two principal powers--the United States and the Soviet Union. There were several military engagements. The United States fought the Korean War which became a direct conflict between the United States and China and subsequently the Vietnam War. The Soviet Union had to use its military forces to maintain order in its Eastern European empire. And it fought a war in Afghanistan. hus while a Cold war, military power was important and in many ways set the parameters wihin which the Cold War evolved. Thus to understand the Cold War it is necessary to assess the military balance, a balance which shifted over time. The military balance at the beginning of the Cold War was largely determined by two developments. First was the success of D-Day which meant that the NAZIs were defeated by both the Soviets and Western Allies, creating a military balance. Second was the American development of an atomic bomb. The Soviet Union had at the end of the War a massive army. The exclusive American possession of the atomic bomb mean that the Sovierts were not able their massive superority in land forces to chllenge the West, even over Berlin deep in the Soviet occupation zone.

Intelligence

The Cold War unlike World War I and World War II which proceeded it was primarily fought on the intelligence front. The intelligence struggle was a fascinating one. Although the American Central Inteligence Agency is a much agency, in fact thanks to the CIA and other Western intelligence, the Soviets never succeed in launching a weapon system which upset the strategic ballance or surprisng the United Sates with an unansweravle feint. The one weapon system which the CIA did not fully appreciate was the Soviet biological weapns program, but it never became a factor in the Cold war. The CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) achieved many innovative technical successes. The KGB on the other hand while relying less on technology proved extrodinarily adroit in recruiting agents at high levels in the Western camp, especally in Germany. Although these successes gained them little and may have backfired. More useful was the penetration of American, and British intelligence services through ideological penetration or simple (often paltry) payoffs. The full story of the intelligence struggle has not yet been written.

Fashion

One notable aspect of the Cold war was that the Iron Curtain errectef by the Soviets proved impervious to fashion. Although fashion and consumer ecomomics in geneal was not promoted by the Soviet planners, Western fashion slowly spread east. It often took some time, but fashions devekoped in the West were eventually adopted in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In contrast there was no fashion flow west. This observation is less frivolous than it may seem at face value. A characteristic of people over time and over cultures is an interest in fashion. The specific fassions have varied, but an interest in fashion began in the stone age even before civilization. The Soviet economic planning also reflect the desire of Kremlin planners to use the economy to butress state power rather than to meet thev needs and desires of the popuilstion. The resulting Soviet resistance to fashion and consumer goods in general underlie a majpr weakness in the Soviet system. It was also a major reason for the eventual collapse of Communidsmm in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Assessment

Not all historians agree that the Cold War was necessary and that the foundation of Western democracy was at stake. Gore Vidal has described the Cold War as "40 years of mindless wars which created a debt of $5 trillion". A British journalist described the Cold War as "the most unnecessary conflict of all time". This view is the Cold War was just one more exercise in great power politics. It is difficult to understand Vidal's view when in the Soviet Empire any independent thinker, certainly anyone like Vidal, was silenced permanently or ended up in the Gulag. This is not to say that America and its allies always acted in the best tradition of its values. The McCarthyite excesses of the 1950s were a serious stain on the Cold War effort. Accommodations were made with dictators, people like Franco, Suharto, Mobutu, and many others. Nor was the Cold War always well fought. As with any human undertaking of the dimensions involved here, there were undoubtedly mistakes, serious mistakes. The Cold war was not, however, just another in the endless historical confrontations between nation states. The Cold War was fought not because the Soviet Union was powerful and threatening. It was fought because the totalitarian system created by Stalin was inhumane, even as President Regan charged evil. The Soviet threatened the basic human rights that had evolved so painfully in the Western democracies which led by America contained it and allowed it to destroy itself.

Sources

Deutscher, Issac. Deutscher is Trotsky's biographer.

Gray, William Glenn. Germany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949-69 (University of North Carolina), 251p.

Harrison, Hope. George Washington University. Library of Congress Panel, March 5, 2003.

Hitchcock, William I. The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent (Doubleday), 513p. This is a thought provoking, well researched book. He has gained access to never before used Soviet archives. We do not agree with all of his conclusions. The author in many instances, for example, tends to explain Soviet actions as response to American policies rather than the inherent nature of brutal regime.

Hudson, G.F. The Hard and Bitter Peace: World Politics Since 1945 (Praeger: New York, 1967), 319p.

Kennan, George. Foreign Affairs.

Mandelbaum, Michael. The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the 21st Century. Prados, John. Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (Oxford Unicersity, 2003), 380p.

Stafford, David. Spies beneath Berlin (Overlook), 211p.

Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (Norton), 876p.

Vidal, Gore.

Created: February 25, 2003
Spell checked: March 7, 2003
Last updated: 4:06 AM 2/18/2008