History 2710
The Cold War, 1946-1991
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/614785/3892/Soviet-territorial-gains-after-1922 |
Chronology
1946 Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech
1947 Truman Doctrine
1948 Marshall Plan; Berlin airlift
1949 NATO;; first USSSR atomic bomb; Communist victory in
China
1950 Joseph McCarthy's first charges; outbreak of Korean War
1953 Armistice in Korea
1954 Vietnamese victory over French in Dien Bien Phu; McCarthy
hearings
1947: The Truman Doctrine.
1949: NATO Treaty signed.
1949: Communists take power in China; Nationalists retreat to Taiwan
1950: Korean War begins.
1953: Armistice ends fighting in the Korean War.
1955: Warsaw Pact is formed
1961: Bay of Pigs invasion.
Toward Peaceful Coexistence
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis.
1964: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
1965: President Johnson begins escalation of US role in Vietnamese Civil War.
1972: US withdraws from Vietnam.
1972: SALT Treaty signed
1972: Nixon visits China
1979: The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1985: Gorbachev begins policy of "Perestroika"
1989: The Fall of the Berlin Wall; The Cold War ends.
1989: Tiananmen Square Massacre in China
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The cold war began with mistrust between the Soviet Union and the western
democracies as early as the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Union felt it had
good cause to mistrust the West.
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In 1919 the former World War I allies of Britain, France and the
United States joined the "White Russians" to fight off the
Bolsheviks following the revolution. (For more information
see
The
American Invasion of Russia). Although this intervention
failed and the Red Army of the Bolsheviks secured the power of
the new Soviet state, the young USSR government never quite
trusted the western democracies after that.
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The western democracies did not invite the Soviet Union to
participate in the World War I peace talks or the League of
Nations.
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The west did not aid the Republicans fighting the fascists in the
Spanish Civil War.
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The west did not invite the Soviets to the Munich Conference which
decided the fate of Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to
World War II, even though the Soviet Union had a security pact
with Czechoslovakia.
The West, for its part, never trusted the Soviet Union:
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The avowed purpose of the International Communist Party to secure
world wide communist revolution. There was a great fear of
socialism in Europe and America.
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The Soviets negotiated an agreement with Hitler and annexed
eastern Poland.
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By the end of the war Britain and the United States distrusted the
Soviet motives in eastern Europe.
This mutual distrust was barely suppressed during World War II when
for practical reasons (the common enemy of Hitler's Germany) the
western allies and the Soviet Union became uneasy allies.
Stalin believed that the western allies were dragging their feet in
opening up the "second front" in Europe, so necessary to take the
pressure off the struggling Soviet forces in the east.
Stalin was open about wanting "friendly governments" in Eastern
Europe to protect his country's western frontier from another
invasion like the invasion by Germany.
(Source: The Cold War Museum:
http://www.historywiz.com/coldwarexhibit.htm)
Readings:
- Zinn: 16 (latter half)
- CNN created a web site to accompanying their video series on the Cold War.
The Wilson Center no maintains those files:
Cold War. There are over 1,000 pages of materials -- just peruse a couple
of aspects of the Cold War which interest you. Use the pull-down menu
"browse by topic)
- There are a number of video clips available through Google::
Discussion Topics:
- What are some of the consequences of "peace through mutual terror"?
- Use the readings to consider how the "war on communism" affected our
understandings about nationalism in the Middle East/Vietnam.