The Americans, Chapter 18

The Beginnings
of the Cold War

During WWII, the US and the Soviet

Union were Allies. It was an uneasy
alliance.
Distrust persisted, even though
differences in our political ideas and
economic systems were not emphasized
during the war.
From President Trumans perspective, the
Soviet leader, Stalin, started the Cold War
by making false promises during wartime
meetings with Allied leaders, vowing to
allow free elections in the Eastern
European countries the USSR had

The Aftermath of WWII

The Soviet Union did NOT

pull its troops out of these
Eastern European countries
and communist
governments were
established in all of them.
Also, much of Eastern and
Western Europe had to be
rebuilt from the devastation
of the war.

Soviet Expansion in Eastern

Europe

The

In response to communist
Truman
uprisings inDoctrine
Greece and Turkey,
Truman told a joint-session of
Congress . . .
I believe that it must be the
policy of the United States to
support free peoples who are
resisting attempted subjugation
by armed minorities or by
outside pressures.
This became known as the
Truman Doctrine, which
would guide our early Cold War
foreign policy.

The Marshall Plan

Because of Western Europes

economic problems after WWII, it
was believed that these countries
were especially vulnerable to
being taken over by communism.
The US Congress passed the Marshall Plan.
This plan would send $13 billion to
Western European countries to help them
rebuild, allowing their capitalist economies
to recover and enabling them to resist the
threat of communism.

North Atlantic Treaty

Organization

Also, in a further attempt to protect

Western Europe, a defensive alliance was
made between the U.S., Canada, and 10
Northern and Western European countries,
commonly called NATO.

In response, the Soviet Union established

the Warsaw Pact and so the line was
drawn . . . .

The Korean War

When communist
North Korea invaded
South Korea in 1950,
the US commitment
to the Truman
Doctrine was put to
the test.
Truman asked the
newly formed United
Nations to take
action to stop this
aggression.

U.N. Forces Aim to Free South

Korea

The U.N. forces,

under the leadership
of U.S. Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, invaded
near Pusan and made
another successful
landing near Inchon.
Soon many North
Korean troops were
trapped in South
Korea and were
forced to surrender.

The Conflict Expands

Northward

MacArthur convinced
Truman that UN
forces should invade
N. Korea to unify
Korea under a
democratic
government.
The invasion went
very well. Within two
months UN forces
had reached the Yalu
River, which divides
North Korea from

A Whole New War

Then China, which

had recently
become a
communist nation,
invaded and forced
the U.N. troops out
of North Korea.
The war would
drag on for two
more years with
very little ground
changing hands.

The Impact of the Korean

War
In 1953, an armistice
divided North and South
Korea near the original
border set before the
war.
We had lost 54,000 men
and spent $67 billion.
Our marginal success in
this conflict, so soon
after the WWII victory,
lessened US confidence
in our policies and our
military power.

The Cold War at Home

The

events in Eastern Europe, the fall

of China to communism in 1949, and
the Korean War helped increase
Americans fears of a communist
threat to the U.S.
The public assumed that there were
communist spies throughout the U.S.
These fears were reinforced by the
news media, popular literature, and
the motion picture industry.

Hunting for Communists

In the late 1940s the

U.S. Congress set up the
House Un-American
Activities Committee to
investigate and expose
communist subversives
in the U.S.
This committee
questioned actors,
movie producers,
authors, professors, and
others that they thought
were spreading
communist ideas.

The Rise of
Senator Joseph
McCarthy
In

1950, a young senator from

Wisconsin grabbed the headlines by
claiming to have a long list of the
names of communists working in the
U.S. State Department.
He rapidly became one of the most
famous men in America. He was
allowed to conduct Senate hearings
in which he bullied those he unfairly
accused of being reds, or
communist sympathizers.

The End of the McCarthy Era

None of these charges were ever proven

to be true, but many reputations were
ruined just by being questioned at the
hearings.
In 1954, he made accusations against
high-ranking Army officers. He had gone
too far. This would be his political
downfall.
The Senate voted to censure him.
To this day, the expression McCarthyism
means using unfair tactics to make
false accusations.

The Beginnings of
the Nuclear Arms Race

The Soviets tested their

first atomic bomb in
1949.
We developed the
hydrogen bomb by 1952,
but the Soviets had one
by 1953.
From that point on, the
U.S. and the Soviet
Union would spend
billions of dollars trying
to produce the strongest

In 1957,of
thethe
Soviets
sent a
The Beginnings
Space
small satellite into space. It
Race
was
named Sputnik.

This caught us by surprise

because we were just
planning to launch our first
satellite.
In response, the Congress
passed measures to
improve U.S. education and
to create our NASA space
program.
The space race that
followed is related to the
arms race. Rockets can
deliver missiles.

The Cold War Continued . . .

The Cold War would

continue to guide
our foreign policy
through the coming
decades until the fall
of the Soviet Union
in 1991.