The Cold War from 1945 to 1980 in two minutes
- In 1946 George Kennan's Long Telegram urged firm resistance to Soviet power, Churchill said an iron curtain had fallen across Europe, and each side believed the other wanted the world.
- Containment became policy in 1947: the Truman Doctrine sent $400 million to Greece and Turkey, and the Marshall Plan provided about $13 billion to rebuild Western Europe between 1948 and 1952.
- An American and British airlift beat Stalin's 1948–1949 blockade of West Berlin; in 1949 the United States also helped found NATO, and the Soviets tested an atomic bomb.
- NSC-68 urged a large military buildup in 1950, North Korea invaded the South that June, the United States led a UN force, and an armistice in 1953 halted the limited war.
- Crises mounted: Hungary's revolt in 1956, Sputnik in 1957, the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, which brought the superpowers closest to nuclear war.
- In 1963 a hotline and a test ban eased tension, and Nixon's détente brought his 1972 China visit and SALT I, until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 ended it.
- On the exam: Expect continuity and change questions on containment from Truman to Carter, causation questions on Korea or Cuba, and links to the Red Scare and Vietnam.
Topic 8.2 key terms
- Cold War
The long rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, from about 1945 to 1991. It was fought through alliances, spies, arms races and proxy wars instead of a direct war between the two superpowers.
- Satellite states
Countries that stay formally independent but are controlled by a great power. After 1945, the Eastern European governments run by Communists loyal to Moscow: Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Albania (KC-8.1.I.A).
- Collective security
Nations acting together, through alliances or an organization like the UN, to stop an aggressor rather than each defending alone (KC-8.1.I.A).
- Long Telegram (1946)
George Kennan's 5,000-word cable from Moscow arguing that Soviet leaders saw the West as an enemy and would back off only when they met firm resistance. It was read across official Washington and became the intellectual basis of containment (KC-8.1.I.A).
- Iron Curtain
Churchill's phrase (Fulton, March 5, 1946) for the line dividing Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe from the West: from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic (KC-8.1.I.A).
- Truman Doctrine (1947)
Truman’s pledge to support free peoples resisting takeover by armed minorities or outside pressure. It began as $400 million for Greece and Turkey and set the pattern for containment.
- containment
The U.S. strategy of stopping the spread of Soviet power and Communism, patiently and without a major war. Critics such as the journalist Walter Lippmann said it would commit America everywhere, even in places that did not matter.
- Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program, 1948–1952)
About $13 billion in U.S. aid to rebuild Western Europe’s economies. The logic: hungry, broke countries were more likely to vote Communist, so containment could start with food and factories.
- Department of Defense
One department to run the Army, Navy and Air Force, with a new independent Air Force. The 1947 act called it the National Military Establishment; it was renamed the Department of Defense in 1949.
- National Security Council
A council that brings the president and his top foreign-policy and military advisers together to coordinate national security policy.
- Central Intelligence Agency
A new agency, under the National Security Council, to collect and analyze foreign intelligence in one place.
- Berlin blockade (1948–1949)
Stalin's closing of every road, rail and canal route into West Berlin, from June 1948 to May 1949. It came after the Western powers introduced a new currency, and it was an attempt to force them out of the city.
- Berlin airlift (1948–1949)
The British and American operation that supplied West Berlin entirely by air during the Soviet blockade. It kept two million people fed and warm without a shot fired, and the Soviets ended the blockade in May 1949.
- NATO (1949)
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a defensive alliance of twelve North American and Western European nations. Article 5 says an attack on one is an attack on all. It was the first U.S. peacetime military alliance outside the Americas.
- NSC-68 (1950)
A secret National Security Council report calling for a large, permanent military buildup to contain the USSR. It stayed a proposal until the Korean War made it policy.
- 38th parallel
The line of latitude that split Korea in August 1945. Soviet forces took Japan's surrender north of it and American forces south of it. It became the border between North Korea and South Korea.
- UN intervention in Korea
Passed while the Soviets boycotted: the Security Council called on members to help South Korea (June 27, 1950) and put the force under an American commander (July 7). Most of its troops were American and South Korean.
- Limited war
A war fought for a limited goal, here saving South Korea, without using every weapon or widening the fighting into a world war. Truman called Korea a 'police action' to keep it limited.
- Civilian control of the military
The rule that elected leaders, not generals, make the final decisions about war. The Constitution makes the president commander in chief.
- Armistice and the DMZ
An armistice stops the fighting without ending the war. The 1953 agreement set up a Demilitarized Zone, a buffer strip along the front line near the 38th parallel. No peace treaty followed.
- Massive retaliation
Eisenhower's policy, announced by Dulles in January 1954: deter even small Communist moves by threatening an overwhelming, possibly nuclear, reply. It cost less than matching Soviet armies man for man, but it left few choices between backing down and nuclear war.
- Brinkmanship
Pushing a crisis to the very edge of war so the other side backs down. Dulles, in Life magazine, January 1956: “The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.”
- Peaceful coexistence
Khrushchev’s line after Stalin: communism and capitalism could compete without war. It fed the “Spirit of Geneva” at the 1955 summit, where Eisenhower also offered “Open Skies,” mutual flights over each other’s territory to check for a surprise attack. Moscow refused.
- Warsaw Pact (1955)
The military alliance the Soviet Union and seven Eastern European states signed in May 1955, days after West Germany joined NATO. It bound them to defend one another, and it was Moscow's answer to NATO.
- Berlin Wall (1961–1989)
The barrier East Germany began building through Berlin on August 13, 1961, to stop its people from fleeing to the West. It started as barbed wire, then grew into concrete, guard towers and a patrolled strip. It stood until 1989.
- ExComm
The small group of advisers Kennedy gathered in secret to decide how to answer the missiles.
- Quarantine
Kennedy's word for a naval blockade of offensive weapons headed to Cuba. A blockade counted as an act of war, and Dean Rusk did not want it compared to Stalin's Berlin blockade.
- Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
The thirteen-day standoff in October 1962 after the U.S. found Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. It was the closest the two superpowers came to nuclear war.
- Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)
A treaty that banned nuclear test explosions in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union signed it in Moscow on August 5, 1963. Underground tests were still allowed, which is why it is called limited.
- Hotline (1963)
A direct teletype link between Washington and Moscow, agreed in a memorandum signed June 20, 1963 and working by August 30. Cuba had shown how slowly messages crossed between the two capitals. It was never a red telephone.
- Détente
A French word for a loosening. In the 1970s the United States and the Soviet Union eased tension through talks, trade and arms control while the rivalry went on. Nixon and Kissinger pursued it with both Moscow and Beijing.
- SALT I (1972)
The first Strategic Arms Limitation agreements. The ABM Treaty let each side keep just two missile-defense sites, and an interim agreement froze the number of land-based long-range missile launchers for five years and capped missile submarines.
- Carter Doctrine (1980)
The policy Carter announced in his 1980 State of the Union address: an outside power's attempt to control the Persian Gulf region would be treated as an assault on vital U.S. interests and met with force if necessary. It answered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
- Historiography
The study of how historians interpret the past, and how those interpretations change over time.
- Traditional view
Historians who say Stalin started the Cold War by taking over Eastern Europe, while the United States defended the free world.
- Revisionist view
Historians, rising in the 1960s during the Vietnam War, who argue that U.S. actions also helped start the Cold War.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
The Long Telegram
1945–1946
Key terms: Satellite states, Collective security, Long Telegram (1946), Iron Curtain
The winners were already arguing about the peace.
Twice in thirty years, Germany had invaded Russia through Poland. So Stalin wanted a ring of friendly governments in between.
In January 1947, the Communists and the secret police rigged Poland's election.
Harry Truman had stopped trusting Stalin. Truman later said he read Secretary of State James Byrnes a letter saying:
Harry S. Truman
I'm tired of babying the Soviets.
Soviet troops stayed in northern Iran past their March 1946 deadline. They left by May, after Iran took its complaint to the new United Nations and Washington backed it.
Sick in bed in Moscow, George Kennan was asked to explain the Soviets. As he remembered it, the Treasury's question was why they wouldn't join the World Bank. He answered with more than five thousand words.
They had asked for it. Now, by God, they would have it.
George F. Kennan
They had asked for it. Now, by God, they would have it.
George F. Kennan
Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force.
Resist firmly, he argued, and Soviet power backs off.
Eleven days later, in Truman's home state, Winston Churchill named the divide.
Winston Churchill
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace objected: America had no more business in Eastern Europe than Russia had in Latin America. Truman forced him out eight days later.
That September, the Soviet ambassador in Washington wrote Moscow his own long telegram.
Nikolai Novikov
The foreign policy of the United States, which reflects the imperialist tendencies of American monopolistic capital, is characterized in the postwar period by a striving for world supremacy.
Two diplomats, seven months apart. Each was sure the other side wanted the world.
Kennan's telegram circulated through official Washington. Molotov requested Novikov's, then underlined his copy. Each gave his government a reason to stop trusting the other.
Containment
1947–1948
Key terms: Truman Doctrine (1947), containment, Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program, 1948–1952), Department of Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency
In 1947, Britain told Washington it could no longer afford to help Greece fight Communist-led rebels. Or to back Turkey against Soviet pressure.
On March 12, Truman asked Congress for $400 million. A Republican senator, Arthur Vandenberg, reportedly told him to “scare hell out of the country.”
Harry S. Truman
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.
Congress voted the money.
That summer, a magazine article signed only “X” gave the policy its name.
George F. Kennan
…a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.
X was Kennan.
Western Europe was hungry, cold and broke. Communist parties were winning votes in France and Italy.
Secretary of State George Marshall had already offered a different weapon.
George C. Marshall
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.
About $13 billion rebuilt Western Europe’s factories. Much of it was spent on American goods.
The offer was open to the Soviets and Eastern Europe too. Stalin refused, and made Poland and Czechoslovakia refuse.
In February 1948, the Communists took full control of Czechoslovakia.
March 10, 1948 Prague
Two weeks later, its foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, was found dead beneath his window. Whether he fell, jumped or was pushed is still under investigation.
In 1947, atomic scientists put a clock on their magazine’s cover, set at seven minutes to midnight.
Stalin’s answer to the Marshall Plan came in Berlin.
Operation Vittles
1948–1950
Key terms: Berlin blockade (1948–1949), Berlin airlift (1948–1949), NATO (1949), NSC-68 (1950)
The Allies split Germany into four zones, and Berlin the same way. But Berlin sat more than a hundred miles inside the Soviet zone.
In June 1948, the Western powers issued a new currency, even in West Berlin. Stalin closed every road, railway and canal into the city.
Truman had three choices. Give up Berlin. Send an armed convoy and risk a war.
Or fly.
American and British planes began flying food into a city of two million. Then coal.
Every pilot flew three minutes behind the last, and got one try at landing.
One pilot, Gail Halvorsen, dropped candy on handkerchief parachutes. He wiggled his wings so the children would know it was him.
The airlift wasn't free. About seventy American and British airmen died flying it. Some German ground workers died too.
In May 1949, Stalin reopened the roads. The airlift had beaten the blockade without firing a shot.
In April, the United States had signed its first peacetime military alliance outside the Americas.
An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.
George Washington had warned against permanent alliances. This was one.
In September 1949, an American weather plane over the Pacific picked up radiation. The Soviet Union had tested an atomic bomb.
The Doomsday Clock moved to three minutes to midnight.
That October, Mao Zedong's Communists won China's civil war. Republicans asked who had lost China.
In April 1950, a secret report called NSC-68 urged a huge military buildup. Two months later, North Korea invaded the South.
The Accordion
1950–1953
Key terms: 38th parallel, UN intervention in Korea, Limited war, Civilian control of the military, Armistice and the DMZ
In August 1945, two American colonels divided Korea in one late-night session. Their line, the 38th parallel, put Seoul on the American side.
By 1950, each half had a strongman who wanted the whole country.
Before dawn on June 25, 1950, North Korean tanks crossed the line. Stalin had approved the plan. Seoul fell in three days.
The Soviets could have vetoed any UN action. They weren't there. They were boycotting the Security Council over China's seat.
Congress never declared war. A reporter offered a name: police action.
Harry S. Truman
Yes. That is exactly what it amounts to.
The North Koreans drove the South's army and the Americans into a corner around Pusan.
In September, MacArthur landed an army behind them at Inchon. UN forces raced north toward China's border.
At Wake Island, Truman asked MacArthur if China would come in.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Very little. … We are no longer fearful of their intervention.
Within weeks, hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers attacked.
In the mountains that winter, it reached thirty below.
MacArthur wanted to take the war into China, and said so in public.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
There is no substitute for victory.
That day, Truman fired MacArthur.
Harry S. Truman
In the simplest terms, what we are doing in Korea is this: We are trying to prevent a third world war.
MacArthur came home to a hero's welcome, and many Americans agreed with him.
General Bradley told the Senate why widening the war was a mistake.
Gen. Omar N. Bradley
…the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.
Over the Yalu, American pilots fought MiGs flown in secret by Soviet pilots. Both governments knew and kept quiet, so neither would be pushed to go further.
For two years the line barely moved, while negotiators argued, mostly about prisoners. Stalin died in March 1953. In July, both sides signed an armistice, not a peace treaty.
More than 36,500 Americans died. So did two to three million Koreans, most of them civilians, and about 200,000 Chinese soldiers by China's own count.
Containment had held the line. It had also left America with a large peacetime army.
Thaw and Freeze
1953–1961
Key terms: Massive retaliation, Brinkmanship, Peaceful coexistence, Warsaw Pact (1955), Berlin Wall (1961–1989)
In 1952, the United States tested a hydrogen bomb. It erased an island. The Soviets built one within three years.
The atomic scientists’ clock read two minutes to midnight.
Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, threatened “massive retaliation.”
John Foster Dulles
…a great capacity to retaliate, instantly, by means and at places of our choosing.
At Geneva in 1955, the two sides smiled for the cameras, and agreed on almost nothing.
The same year, West Germany joined NATO, and Moscow answered with the Warsaw Pact.
In 1956, Hungarians rose against their Soviet-backed government. Soviet tanks crushed the revolt. Thousands died.
American-funded Radio Free Europe had hinted that help was coming. None came.
In 1957, a Soviet rocket put the first satellite into orbit. Americans took it as a warning.
In 1959, Khrushchev toured the United States, from Hollywood to an Iowa farm.
Nikita Khrushchev
Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken over the place that can destroy me?
In 1960, the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane. Washington said a NASA weather plane was missing over Turkey.
Then Khrushchev produced the pilot, alive. Nine days later, the Paris summit collapsed.
In 1961, a CIA-backed invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles failed at the Bay of Pigs. Castro turned to Moscow.
Millions of East Germans had fled west through Berlin. In August 1961, East German troops strung barbed wire across the city overnight. The concrete came next.
Kennedy, an aide later wrote, said a wall was a lot better than a war.
In October, American and Soviet tanks faced each other at Checkpoint Charlie. They sat a hundred yards apart for sixteen hours.
Then the Soviet tanks pulled back, and the Americans followed.
WASHINGTON 16 OCT 62
A year later, the tanks were the least of it.
Thirteen Days
October 1962
Key terms: ExComm, Quarantine, Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
By 1962, the United States had about eight times as many nuclear weapons as the Soviet Union. It also had missiles in Turkey, on the Soviet border.
Khrushchev decided to protect Castro and even the odds. He reportedly talked of throwing a hedgehog down Uncle Sam's pants. That summer, Soviet ships carried missiles and about 42,000 soldiers to Cuba, in secret.
On October 14, a U-2 spy plane photographed western Cuba.
The film went to a secret CIA office above a car dealership in Washington.
For a week, a small group of advisers argued in secret. Kennedy was taping them.
To keep the secret, Kennedy kept campaigning. Then his press secretary told reporters the president had "a minor upper respiratory ailment."
On October 22, Kennedy told the country what was in Cuba.
John F. Kennedy
It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
He gave the blockade a softer name: quarantine. Ships carrying offensive weapons would be turned back at a line drawn on the sea.
On October 26, Khrushchev offered a deal: the missiles out, if America promised not to invade Cuba.
Nikita Khrushchev
We and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war.
Messages took hours. The Soviet ambassador later said his cables went by Western Union, collected by a bicycle messenger.
October 27 was the worst day. A Soviet missile in Cuba shot down a U-2 and killed its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson. Another U-2 strayed over the Soviet Union.
American destroyers dropped small depth charges to force a Soviet submarine to surface. According to one officer aboard, the captain wanted to fire a nuclear torpedo. After talking with his officers, including Vasili Arkhipov, he surfaced instead.
That night, Robert Kennedy met the Soviet ambassador. America would promise not to invade Cuba. And, secretly, it would take its missiles out of Turkey within months.
The next morning, Khrushchev accepted, in a broadcast on Radio Moscow.
The Turkey deal stayed secret for years, even in Robert Kennedy's memoir. In 1989, its editor, Ted Sorensen, admitted he had cut it.
The Wire
1963–1980
Key terms: Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), Hotline (1963), Détente, SALT I (1972), Carter Doctrine (1980)
Both sides had looked over the edge.
John F. Kennedy
We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Two weeks later, in West Berlin, the rivalry was back.
John F. Kennedy
Let them come to Berlin.
John F. Kennedy
Ich bin ein Berliner.
And no, he did not call himself a jelly doughnut.
That August, Washington, London and Moscow agreed to stop testing bombs in the air, in space and under water.
The atomic scientists moved their clock away from midnight, to twelve minutes.
They also opened a direct line between Washington and Moscow. It was never a red telephone. It was a teletype.
The line ran through London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki.
The first message was a typing test. Moscow answered in Russian.
In 1972, the most famous anti-Communist in American politics went to China. He and his adviser Henry Kissinger meant to use China's quarrel with Moscow.
Richard Nixon
I think that you would have to conclude that this is a great wall and that it had to be built by a great people.
In Moscow that May, Nixon and Brezhnev signed the first treaties to put a ceiling on missiles.
Henry Kissinger
As far as the American public was concerned, we felt it imperative to demonstrate a commitment to peace.
Critics on the right said it rewarded a dictatorship. Critics on the left said it ignored human rights.
In July 1975, an American and a Soviet spacecraft docked in orbit.
Thomas Stafford and Alexei Leonov shook hands through the hatch. Thirty years after the Elbe.
It didn't last. In the last week of 1979, the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan.
Washington feared the Persian Gulf, and its oil, might be next.
Jimmy Carter
…such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
Carter cut off grain sales to the Soviets and kept American athletes home from the Moscow Olympics.
The scientists moved their clock to seven minutes to midnight. Where it had started in 1947.
But the wire stayed open. Every hour, each side still sent the other a test message.
What Didn't Happen
1945–1980
Key terms: Cold War, Historiography, Traditional view, Revisionist view
Each side read the other's defense as a threat. Historians still argue about who started it.
Some blame Stalin. Some blame Truman. Many blame both.
Historian John Lewis Gaddis argues that the most important thing about the Cold War is what didn't happen. No nuclear war. Again and again, someone stepped back.
It was only cold between the two of them.
For Koreans, Hungarians and Afghans, it was a hot war.
Private Joseph Polowsky, who was at the Elbe, died in 1983. He is buried at Torgau, where the soldiers met. He asked to be.