Cold War Reference Library - Almanac

240 Pages·2003·5.63 MB·English

by  Sharon Hanes

COLDWARAlmanac1 10/15/03 2:07 PM Page 1
Cold War
Almanac
COLDWARAlmanac1 10/15/03 2:07 PM Page 3
Cold War
Almanac
Volume 1
Sharon M. Hanes
and Richard C. Hanes
Lawrence W. Baker,
Project Editor
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Cold War: Almanac
Sharon M. Hanes and Richard C. Hanes
Project Editor Permissions Product Design
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Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Reader’s Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Words to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
People to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxix
Cold War Timeline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv
Research and Activity Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xlix
Volume 1
Chapter 1: Origins of the Cold War . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: Conflict Builds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 3: Germany and Berlin. . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Chapter 4: Dawning of the Nuclear Age. . . . . . . . . 79
Chapter 5: Homeland Insecurities. . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Chapter 6: Espionage in the Cold War . . . . . . . . . 125
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Chapter 7: A Worldwide Cold War. . . . . . . . . . . 167
Volume 2
Chapter 8: Renewed Tensions. . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 9: Cuban Missile Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Chapter 10: Mutual Assured Destruction. . . . . . . . 233
Chapter 11: An Unsettled World. . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Chapter 12: Home Front Turmoil: The 1960s . . . . . . 275
Chapter 13: Détente: A Lessening of Tensions . . . . . 297
Chapter 14: A Freeze in Relations . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Chapter 15: End of the Cold War . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Where to Learn More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lix
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lxiii
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Introduction
Sometimes single events alter the course of history; other
times, a chain reaction of seemingly lesser occurrences
changes the path of nations. The intense rivalry between the
United States and the Soviet Union that emerged immediately
after World War II (1939–45) followed the second pattern.
Known as the Cold War, the rivalry grew out of mutual distrust
between two starkly different societies: communist Soviet
Union and the democratic West, which was led by the United
States and included Western Europe. Communism is a political
and economic system in which the Communist Party controls
all aspects of citizens’ lives and private ownership of property
is banned. It is not compatible with America’s democratic way
of life. Democracy is a political system consisting of several po-
litical parties whose members are elected to various govern-
ment offices by vote of the people. The rapidly growing rivalry
between the two emerging post–World War II superpowers in
1945 would dominate world politics until 1991. Throughout
much of the time, the Cold War was more a war of ideas than
one of battlefield combat. Yet for generations, the Cold War af-
fected almost every aspect of American life and those who
lived in numerous other countries around the world.
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The global rivalry was characterized by many things.
Perhaps the most dramatic was the cost in lives and public
funds. Millions of military personnel and civilians were killed
in conflicts often set in Third World countries. This toll in-
cludes tens of thousands of American soldiers in the Korean
War (1950–53) and Vietnam War (1954–75) and thousands of
Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. National budgets were stretched
to support the nuclear arms races, military buildups, localized
wars, and aid to friendly nations. On the international front,
the United States often supported oppressive but strongly anti-
communist military dictatorships. On the other hand, the So-
viets frequently supported revolutionary movements seeking
to overthrow established governments. Internal political devel-
opments within nations around the world were interpreted by
the two superpowers—the Soviet Union and the United
States—in terms of the Cold War rivalry. In many nations, in-
cluding the Soviet-dominated Eastern European countries,
basic human freedoms were lost. New international military
and peacekeeping alliances were also formed, such as the Unit-
ed Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the
Warsaw Pact.
Effects of the Cold War were extensive on the home
front, too. The U.S. government became more responsive to
national security needs, including the sharpened efforts of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Created were the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security
Council (NSC), and the Department of Defense. Suspicion of
communist influences within the United States built some in-
dividual careers and destroyed others. The national education
priorities of public schools were changed to emphasize sci-
ence and engineering after the Soviets launched the satellite
Sputnik,which itself launched the space race.
What would cause such a situation to develop and
last for so long? One major factor was mistrust for each other.
The communists were generally shunned by other nations,
including the United States, since they gained power in Rus-
sia in 1917 then organized that country into the Soviet
Union. The Soviets’ insecurities loomed large. They feared an-
other invasion from the West through Poland, as had hap-
pened through the centuries. On the other hand, the West
was highly suspicious of the harsh closed society of Soviet
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communism. As a result, a move by one nation would bring a
response by the other. Hard-liners on both sides believed
long-term coexistence was not feasible.
A second major factor was that the U.S. and Soviet ide-
ologies were dramatically at odds. The political, social, and
economic systems of democratic United States and commu-
nist Soviet Union were essentially incompatible. Before the
communist (or Bolshevik) revolution in 1917, the United
States and Russia competed as they both sought to expand
into the Pacific Northwest. In addition, Americans had a
strong disdain for Russian oppression under their monarchy
of the tsars. Otherwise, contact between the two growing pow-
ers was almost nonexistent until thrown together as allies in a
common cause to defeat Germany and Japan in World War II.
It was during the meetings of the allied leaders in Yalta
and Potsdam in 1945 when peaceful postwar cooperation was
being sought that the collision course of the two new super-
powers started becoming more evident. The end of World War
II had brought the U.S. and Soviet armies face-to-face in cen-
tral Europe in victory over the Germans. Yet the old mistrusts
between communists and capitalists quickly dominated diplo-
matic relations. Capitalism is an economic system in which
property and businesses are privately owned. Prices, produc-
tion, and distribution of goods are determined by competition
in a market relatively free of government intervention. A peace
treaty ending World War II in Europe was blocked as the Sovi-
ets and the U.S.-led West carved out spheres of influence. West-
ern Europe and Great Britain aligned with the United States
and collectively was referred to as the “West”; Eastern Europe
would be controlled by the Soviet Communist Party. The Sovi-
et Union and its Eastern European satellite countries were col-
lectively referred to as the “East.” The two powers tested the re-
solve of each other in Germany, Iran, Turkey, and Greece in
the late 1940s.
In 1949, the Soviets successfully tested an atomic
bomb and Chinese communist forces overthrew the National
Chinese government, and U.S. officials and American citizens
feared a sweeping massive communist movement was over-
taking the world. A “red scare” spread through America. The
term “red” referred to communists, especially the Soviets. The
public began to suspect that communists or communist sym-
pathizers lurked in every corner of the nation.
Introduction ix
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Meanwhile, the superpower confrontations spread
from Europe to other global areas: Asia, Africa, the Middle
East, and Latin America. Most dramatic were the Korean and
Vietnam wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the military
standoffs in Berlin, Germany. However, bloody conflicts
erupted in many other areas as the United States and Soviet
Union sought to expand their influence by supporting or op-
posing various movements.
In addition, a costly arms race lasted decades despite
sporadic efforts at arms control agreements. The score card for
the Cold War was kept in terms of how many nuclear weapons
one country had aimed at the other. Finally, in the 1970s and
1980s, the Soviet Union could no longer keep up with the
changing world economic trends. Its tightly controlled and
highly inefficient industrial and agricultural systems could not
compete in world markets while the government was still focus-
ing its wealth on Cold War confrontations and the arms race.
Developments in telecommunications also made it more diffi-
cult to maintain a closed society. Ideas were increasingly being
exchanged despite longstanding political barriers. The door was
finally cracked open in the communist European nations to
more freedoms in the late 1980s through efforts at economic
and social reform. Seizing the moment, the long suppressed
populations of communist Eastern European nations and fifteen
Soviet republics demanded political and economic freedom.
Through 1989, the various Eastern European nations
replaced long-time communist leaders with noncommunist
officials. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Communist Party had
been banned from various Soviet republics, and the Soviet
Union itself ceased to exist. After a decades-long rivalry, the
end to the Cold War came swiftly and unexpectedly.
A new world order dawned in 1992 with a single su-
perpower, the United States, and a vastly changed political
landscape around much of the globe. Communism remained
in China and Cuba, but Cold War legacies remained else-
where. In the early 1990s, the United States was economical-
ly burdened with a massive national debt, the former Soviet
republics were attempting a very difficult economic transition
to a more capitalistic open market system, and Europe, stark-
ly divided by the Cold War, was reunited once again and
sought to establish a new union including both Eastern and
Western European nations.
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Reader’s Guide
Cold War: Almanac presents a comprehensive overview of
the Cold War, the period in history from 1945 until 1991
that was dominated by the rivalry between the world’s super-
powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The Almanac
covers the origins of the Cold War, including the fierce divi-
sions created by the differences between American democra-
cy and capitalism and Soviet communism; the key programs
and treaties, such as the Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift, and
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI); how the general public
coped with the rivalry and consequent nuclear buildup; gov-
ernment changes designed to make society feel more secure;
the end of the Cold War, brought about by the fall of commu-
nism in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet
Union; and the aftereffects of the Cold War, still felt in the
twenty-first century.
Coverage and features
Cold War: Almanac is divided into fifteen chapters,
each focusing on a particular topic or time period, such as the
origins of the Cold War, the beginning of the nuclear age, the
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