The division of the world along U. These alliances implied that these two nations were part of a world organized into a bipolar balance of power, in contrast with a previously multi-polar world.
In Asia, the Red Army overran Manchuria in the last month of the war and went on to occupy the large swath of Korean territory north of the 38 th parallel. The Eastern European territories liberated from the Nazis and occupied by the Soviet armed forces were added to the Eastern Bloc by converting them into satellite states. The Soviet-style regimes that arose in the satellite states not only reproduced Soviet command economies, but also adopted the brutal methods employed by Joseph Stalin and Soviet secret police to suppress real and potential opposition.
In Allied-occupied Germany, the Soviet Union, United States, Britain, and France established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four-power control. Soviet occupation of Eastern bloc states was viewed with suspicion by Western powers, as they saw this occupation as a sign of Soviet willingness to use aggression to spread the ideology of communism.
In early , Britain, France and the United States unsuccessfully attempted to reach an agreement with the Soviet Union for a plan envisioning an economically self-sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, goods, and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets. In June , in accordance with the Truman Doctrine, the United States enacted the Marshall Plan, a pledge of economic assistance for all European countries willing to participate, including the Soviet Union.
The plan also stated that European prosperity was contingent upon German economic recovery. These would become the main bureaucracies for U. Stalin opposed the Marshall Plan. He had built up the Eastern Bloc protective belt of Soviet controlled nations on his Western border and wanted to maintain this buffer zone of states and a weakened Germany under Soviet control.
Fearing American political, cultural, and economic penetration, Stalin eventually forbade Soviet Eastern bloc countries from accepting Marshall Plan aid. Stalin believed that economic integration with the West would allow Eastern Bloc countries to escape Soviet control, and that the U. As part of the economic rebuilding of Germany in early , representatives of a number of Western European governments and the United States announced an agreement for a merger of western German areas into a federal governmental system.
In addition, in accordance with the Marshall Plan, they began to re-industrialize and rebuild the German economy, including the introduction of a new Deutsche Mark currency to replace the old Reichsmark currency that the Soviets had debased. Shortly thereafter, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade June 24, — May 12, , one of the first major crises of the Cold War, preventing food, materials, and supplies from arriving in West Berlin.
The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche mark from West Berlin. The Soviets did not disrupt the airlift for fear this might lead to open conflict. By the spring of , the airlift was clearly succeeding, and by April it was delivering more cargo than had previously been transported into the city by rail. The Berlin Blockade served to highlight the competing ideological and economic visions for postwar Europe.
Berlin Airlift : Berliners watch an aircraft take part in the Berlin Airlift, which was a successful attempt to circumvent the Soviet blockade of non-Soviet Berlin.
The Berlin Blockade and the tensions surrounding it marked the beginning of the Cold War. Containment was the Cold War policy of preventing the spread of Soviet communism while not confronting it where it already existed. Containment was a U. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam. The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a cable by U. Defense Secretary James Forrestal in , later used in a magazine article.
According to Kennan, the Soviet Union did not see the possibility for long-term peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world. It was its ever-present aim to advance the socialist cause. Capitalism was a menace to the ideals of socialism, and capitalists could not be trusted or allowed to influence the Soviet people.
George F. The word containment is associated most strongly with the policies of U. Although President Dwight Eisenhower —61 toyed with the rival doctrine of rollback, he refused to intervene in the Hungarian Uprising of President Lyndon Johnson —69 cited containment as a justification for his policies in Vietnam. Central programs begun under containment, including NATO and nuclear deterrence, remained in effect even after the end of the war.
Congress appropriated the money. Because containment required detailed information about Communist moves, the government relied increasingly on the Central Intelligence Agency CIA. Established by the National Security Act of , the CIA conducted espionage in foreign lands, some of it visible, most secret.
Completed in April , it became known as NSC It concluded that a massive military buildup was necessary to the deal with the Soviet threat. The Truman Doctrine was the start of the policy of containment, followed by economic restoration of Europe through the Marshall Plan. In , shortly after the United States used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, writer George Orwell used the term in an essay that explored what the atom bomb meant for international relations.
The Truman Doctrine , as it was called, was the first salvo in a decades-long containment policy in which the U. By , both countries had missile defenses pointed at one another.
That year, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought both countries closer to actual conflict than any other event in the Cold War. Multiple proxy wars stood in for actual conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Korean War , Vietnam War , and a number of other armed conflicts, during which both sides either funded one side of the war or fought directly against a communist or capitalist force, are all considered Cold War proxies. Both sides also funded revolutions, insurgencies, and political assassinations in Central America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
Though the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in the s and the fall of the Soviet Union in , it still affects modern geopolitics. As the last remaining superpower, the U.
NATO, an alliance between the U. Today, increased tensions between Russia and the West have been referred to as a second Cold War. All rights reserved. Culture Explainer.
What was the Cold War? For many, the growth in weapons of mass destruction was the most worrying issue. A clash of very different beliefs and ideology — capitalism versus communism — each held with almost religious conviction, formed the basis of an international power struggle with both sides vying for dominance, exploiting every opportunity for expansion anywhere in the world.
Note that USSR in was Russia post and included all the various countries that now exist individually Ukraine, Georgia etc but after the war they were part of this huge country up until the collapse of the Soviet Union the other name for the USSR. This never happened and any appearance that these two powers were friendly during the war is illusory. Before the war, America had depicted the Soviet Union as almost the devil-incarnate.
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