The Cold War Erupts
With the United states having just dropped their shiny new atomic bombs on Japan, WWII had come to a close and a new era had been born. That of the Cold War. When the US bombed Nagasaki, most people didn't think it was necessary and done because Harry Truman wanted to scare Stalin into not progressing further into Asia. Mainly because Stalin had been making the eastern nations of Europe communist not to spread the ideology, but to have enough allies so he could defend that side of the USSR if Germany had decided to invade again. Furthering the eruption of conflict, President Harry Truman very much had a hardline policy against communist ideals unlike FDR who had been able to get along with Stalin (shown right) which lead to both nations soon being at each others throats. The Cold War had begun.
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Containment
The main goal of the 1950's for the U.S. was something called containment. Since the USSR and the US had been the two powers left in the world at the time, it was up to them to rebuild Europe. However, the did not exactly see eye to eye since the USSR was communist and the US was capitalist. This lead to some very fundamental differences and them begrudgingly building Europe together, but in opposite halves. The USSR had built up a communist barrier between him and Germany to stop another invasion. With Harry Truman taking this as a spread of communism which threatened the free market. This lead to the Marshall Plan which funded the capitalist nations of Europe, which angered the USSR as they suffered the most in the war and needed a lot of rebuilding. Eventually, this lead to Stalin cutting off access to Berlin, which lead to a year of the allies airlifting supplies to their half of the city which was called the Berlin Airlift. Thankfully, none of the planes were shot down, which probably have started another war.
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Who Started the Cold War?
The Cold War was unlike other conflicts like WWI and WWII where there was a clear event of series of events that started the war. Both the USSR and the US had actions that heavily contributed to the cold war starting as a whole. Truman had his Doctrine which blatantly cut funding off to communist countries which was further fueled by the marshall plan. However, Stalin created the Warsaw Pact and had a massive spike in nuclear production.
Reasons that Stalin started it |
Reasons that Truman started it |
Stalin can have the blame put on him because he was using his sphere of influence to create a communist barrier. This is best seen by Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech where he said, "Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet Sphere," to express how Stalin has been influencing Europe.
Another reason pointing to Stalin being to blame for starting the Cold War comes from the Truman Doctrine in which Truman states "Confusion and disorder might well spread through the entire Middle East.... Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East," to show how the Soviets have a plan to cut off trade with the U.S. which had great interest in the region. |
Truman may also be to blame for the cold war as well due to his policies and how the U.S looked to the rest of the world. A Soviet Ambassador said "In this regard, it was throughout that the main competitors of the United States would be crushed or greatly weakened in the war, and the United States by virtue of this circumstance would assume the role of the most powerful factor in resolving the fundamental questions of the postwar world," to show how the U.S. was basically plotting to come in and mop up and be the world power.
Lastly, the U.S. may be to blame from how the world was viewing us at the time. Truman's vice president said, "These factors came it appear either that we are preparing ourselves to win the war which we regard as inevitable or that we are trying to build up a predominance of force to intimidate the rest of mankind," to express that the U.S. was looking very much like the power to take over the world. Truman's VP was forced to resign after this letter. |
The Arms Race
At the beginning of the 1950's both countries had become nuclear capable with the U.S. detonating its first bomb in 1945 with the USSR following up soon in 1949. With the detonation of these bombs, both countries began to fear each other for the reason of mutually assured destruction. This lead both countries to develop bigger and bigger bombs to try to one up each other. Eventually, this lead to the hydrogen bombs and ICBMs we see today. Eventually, it was this arms race that was a part of the end of the cold war since they spent so much that it crashed their economy.
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The arms race was a very heated time in the 50's as both countries started to try an arm their allies with all sorts of atomic weapons so that if it came to it, both countries could follow through with their Mutually Assured Destruction threat that was being made at the time. These countries armed include France and Great Britain for the United States, as well as the newly created People Republic of China for the USSR. The early 1970's saw an end to the arms race with the SALT agreements (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks)
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The Red Scare
The second Red Scare happened primarily in the 1950's and was popularized by a Senator Joseph McCarthy who rose to national fame for prosecuting communists and putting them into the limelight in Wisconsin. Eventually with the advent of TV and other broadcasting forms, McCarthy was able to reach a broader audience. This event is similar to the Salem Witch, as people would go out and convict supposed communists by taking them to jail or just straight up killing them. Two of the most famous people during this period were the Rosenbergs. They were a couple that worked on the atomic bomb and supposedly leaked secrets to the USSR as to which they were executed. The peak of this came with the House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HUAC) which was a secret police to hunt communists in the US. The end of the Red Scare fell out along with McCarthy as people started to realize that there was no specific people to take their anger out on.
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The Korean War
The Korean War was an important moment in the overall Cold War as it was the first proxy war that would be initiated at the time and the closest we got to conflict between the U.S. and the USSR. The Korean War started in 1950 with the invasion of North Korea into South Korea. The reason this is thought is due to reports from the South Korea, Chinese, and U.S. government. The UN choose to get involved in Korea because of immense pressuring from the U.S. and a lack of the USSR because of it feeling left out as a communist nation. This allowed the U.S. to come into Korea and push the North Korean Military up to the Chinese border, at this point China got involved and pushed the US back to the 38th parallel where the border between the two countries lies to this day.
The Korean War had massive impact on the Cold War as it showed that the US would get involved in hot conflict when it came to communism. The general during the Korean War also got very famous. General Douglas MacArthur lead the UN to the stalemate but he wanted to go one step too far and drop Atomic Bombs on china. Truman during this time pulled the plug on that and fired him. This was one of the most important points during the war as this is where the Cold War could have gone hot. |
Eisenhower Gets MAD
Eisenhower was a very important president during the Cold War as he established what would be our main theme for the fifties during that time. Eisenhower was a general during WWII and he had seen a lot of the horrors of war so he wanted to further avoid conflict with the USSR. He was able to turn around the first detonation of the Atomic Bomb by the USSR into a positive as he promised Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) to detour attacks from the USSR.
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Affluent Society
Taking a break from all the politics and tensions of the day, the 1950's were a great time for Americans back here at home. The 1950's were an important time for many different groups but mostly African-Americans. Although no legislation was passed, the brown vs. board of education case was hold and that was a big part of the civil rights movement during the decade as it got African-Americans the materials they divided and it also set up what was going to happen in the 1960's with Martin Luther King Junior and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The other big influence of the 1950's was that of the younger generation and teenagers. At the time, Rock and Roll was getting started which brought the new scandalous dance moves. This emphasis on music created a very rebellious youth culture that focused on having a good car and getting married early to settle down in the suburbs.
Women in the 1950's
When we all think of women in the 1950's we tend to think of happy characters like the mom from leave to to beaver but this was actually far from the case. A magazine from 1953 called Harper's Weekly stated, "For the women this is a long, monotonous boring daily routine," to express how frustrated women were in the 1950's. Women were not as happy as well because they lost a lot of the jobs and freedom from WWII with the men coming home. However, women were encouraged to get jobs and participate in politics and things like that as expressed from a historian studying that at the time. So as a whole, the image of the happy 50's housewife was more of a facade for their inner troubles of the time that was waiting to be unleashed in the 60's and 70's.
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