The Cold War was the tense relationship between the United States (and its allies), the Soviet Union (the USSR and its allies) and the United Kingdom (The three main 'powers' ) between the end of World War II and the demise of the Soviet Union; i.e. the years 1945 to 1991. By the time World War2 ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called “containment.” The containment strategy also provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the United States. In 1950, a National Security Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed Truman’s recommendation that the country use military force to “contain” communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring.
Harry S. Truman
Sworn in as the 33rd president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's sudden death, Harry S. Truman presided over the end of WWII and dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. Harry Truman came from modest beginnings and is the only 20th Century President to not have a college degree. Among his accomplishments as President were integrating the military, defeating Nazi Germany, and initiating the Berlin Airlift.
Timeline of events
-Who are the Satellite Nations
A Satellite Nation is a country that is dominated politically and economically by another nation. The Satellite Nations include East Germany, Czech, Poland, Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania.
-Policy of Containment
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. This policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Vietnam.
-Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
-Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine, 1947. President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces.
-The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II.
-The berlin Airlift/ Berlin Wall
In June 1948, the Russians, who wanted Berlin all for themselves, closed all highways, railroads and canals from western-occupied Germany into western-occupied Berlin. This, they believed, would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France and the U.S. out of the city for good. Instead of retreating from West Berlin, however, the U.S. and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air.
-NATO Alliance
NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
A Satellite Nation is a country that is dominated politically and economically by another nation. The Satellite Nations include East Germany, Czech, Poland, Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania.
-Policy of Containment
Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. This policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Vietnam.
-Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
-Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine, 1947. President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces.
-The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II.
-The berlin Airlift/ Berlin Wall
In June 1948, the Russians, who wanted Berlin all for themselves, closed all highways, railroads and canals from western-occupied Germany into western-occupied Berlin. This, they believed, would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France and the U.S. out of the city for good. Instead of retreating from West Berlin, however, the U.S. and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air.
-NATO Alliance
NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.
China & Korea
On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China. The announcement ended the costly full-scale civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, which broke out immediately following World War II and had been preceded by on and off conflict between the two sides since the 1920’s. Chinese communism has had a remarkable continuity of leadership. Mao Zedong and his colleagues were party members in the 1920s. Mao was instrumental in establishing an early form of Chinese communism in the years 1928-1934. He helped to develop it and create the military and political strategy in the Yenan years of 1935-1945 that won the civil war in 1949. He then went on to mold communist China and ruled it, in his last years at least in name, until his death in September 1976. The 38th parallel, popular name given to latitude 38° N that in East Asia roughly demarcates North Korea and South Korea. The line was chosen by U.S. military planners at the Potsdam Conference (July 1945) near the end of World War II as an army boundary, north of which the U.S.S.R. was to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces in Korea and south of which the Americans were to accept the Japanese surrender. The line was intended as a temporary division of the country, but the onset of the Cold War led to the establishment of a separate U.S.-oriented regime in South Korea under Syngman Rhee and a communist regime in North Korea under Kim Il-sung. On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel. Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end. In all, some 5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the war. The Korean peninsula is still divided today. United States took the lead in the Korean action, it did so under the rubric of the United Nations. Truman made it clear that his actions fell within the measures recommended by the United Nations, and reminded "all members of the United Nations" to "consider carefully the consequences of this latest aggression in Korea" and that America "will continue to uphold the rule of law." http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/korean-conflict/
Mao Zedong
Born on December 26, 1893, in Shaoshan, Hunan Province, China, Mao Tse-tung served as chairman of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1959, and led the Chinese Communist Party from 1935 until his death. Mao Tse Tung ruled a quarter of the world's population for twenty five years and made China one of the most powerful countries in the world. But behind the scenes he was responsible for the deaths of millions of Chinese people. Mao Tse-tung died from complications of Parkinson's disease on September 18, 1976, at the age of 82, in Beijing, China. He left a controversial legacy in both China and the West as a genocidal monster and political genius. Officially, in China, he is held in high regard as a great political strategist and military mastermind, the savior of the nation.
Dwight D. Eisenhower & brinkmanship and the Eisenhower Doctrine
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States. He used his policy of brinkmanship to help win his campaign for president. During his presidency(1953-1959) Eisenhower was highly against communism; he told the United States public that he would use brinkmanship to control the spread of it. Brinkmanship-the practice, especially in international politics, of seeking advantage by creating the impression that one is willing and able to push a highly dangerous situation to the limit rather than concede. It was first used by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles under President Dwight D. Eisenhower throughout his presidency. During the Cold War, the threats of brinkmanship and nuclear war was so much, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union backed down. Brinkmanship was also known as a "slippery slope" because the more a nation is threatening war, the more that nation has to be willing to follow through with those threats.
BRINK OF NUCLEAR WAR & SPACE RACE
A H-Bomb is a hydrogen bomb received new impetus in the United States. In this type of bomb, deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) are fused into helium, thereby releasing energy. There is no limit on the yield of this weapon. The CIA and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America, newly disclosed records and interviews show. The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union. History changed on October 4, 1957, when the former Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world’s first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S. space race. This Sputnik began in 1952, but it was establish July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958. On April 17, 1961, 1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict.
POST WAR & the American Dream
The G.I. Bill of Rights also called Servicemen's Readjustment Act, U.S. legislation passed in 1944 that provided benefits to World War II veterans. Through the Veterans Administration (VA), the bill provided grants for school and college tuition, low-interest mortgage and small-business loans, job training, hiring privileges, and unemployment payments. Amendments to the act provided for full disability coverage and the construction of additional VA hospitals. Later legislation extended the benefits to all who had served in the armed forces. On this day in 1949, President Harry S. Truman announces, in his State of the Union address, that every American has a right to expect from our government a fair deal. Truman announced his plans for domestic policy reforms including national health insurance, public housing, civil rights legislation and federal aid to education. He advocated an increase in the minimum wage, federal assistance to farmers and an extension of Social Security, as well as urging the immediate implementation of anti-discrimination policies in employment. More babies were born in 1946 than ever before: 3.4 million, 20 percent more than in 1945. This was the beginning of the so-called “baby boom.” In 1947, another 3.8 million babies were born; 3.9 million were born in 1952; and more than 4 million were born every year from 1954 until 1964, when the boom finally tapered off. By then, there were 76.4 million “baby boomers” in the United States. They made up almost 40 percent of the nation’s population. 1950s American automobile culture has had an enduring influence on the culture of the United States, as reflected in popular music, major trends from the 1950s and mainstream acceptance of the "hot rod" culture. The Cold War is accepted to have lasted from 1947 to 1991. During this time, the media’s predominant medium of communication evolved from radio and print into television. This change was accompanied along with the role of the media from a ‘mouthpiece’ of the state, to a more, prima facie, independent sector. The media’s role in the production, contribution and maintenance of the Cold War. In the early 1950s, a new form of music exploded onto the scene, exciting a growing teenage audience. Popularized by disc jockey Alan Freed in 1951, the term “rock and roll” came to be used to describe a new form of music, steeped in the blues, rhythm and blues, country, and gospel. Teenagers fell in love with this new sound, listening to it on transistor radios and buying it in record stores. Many parents believed that this music was simply noise that had a negative influence on impressionable teens. Either way, it became clear that rock and roll was here to stay, bringing with it important changes. Today, the teenage years serve as a rite of passage, marking the transition from childhood to adulthood. But it wasn't until the 1940s that "teenager" became a household word. During the 40s and 50s, fashion designers, authors, movie makers and manufacturers started catering specifically to the needs and wants of teens. As a result, teen culture took on a life of its own.
Elvis Presley
Musician and actor Elvis Presley endured rapid fame in the mid-1950s—on the radio, TV and the silver screen—and continues to be one of the biggest names in rock 'n' roll. Presley received his first guitar as a gift from his mother on his 11th birthday in 1946 and had his first taste of musical success a few years later when he won a talent show at his High School in Memphis. Presley soon began touring and recording, trying to catch his first big break. "That's All Right" was Presley's first single in 1954. Sometime in the morning of August 16, 1977, Presley died of heart failure, at the age of 42. It was later ruled that his death was related to his prescription drug use. Presley was buried on the Graceland property, near the gravesites of his mother, Gladys, father Vernon and grandmother Minnie Mae Hood Presley. Since his death, Presley has remained one of the world's most popular music icons.