Today we continued the Cold War Projects:
Causes of the Cold War:
- Happened in 1945-1990
- United States v. Soviet Union and Democrats v. Communists (dem is freedom comm is control you)
- One of the causes was that the governments were so different, they thought they would push their ways onto eachother. Try to change one another.
- Free Trade we thought would be good for us and would help the economy better
Soviet Union didn't want it, wanted to keep to themselves
- Power, they struggled for power between one another. We tried to gain allies, and they tried to take control of areas. Set up missles near eachother. Try to see who could dominate the world with their government system.
- Germany; soviet union had the East of it, and the U.S., Britian, and France took the West. It put tensions between the countries, they didn't agree on how to control Germany.
- Soviet Union didn't like our Truman Doctarine where we would help any country that was threatened by communism, it was aimed at them.
- Marshall Plan- US rebuilding European countries.
- They both had the Atomic Bomb/ nuclear weapons. There was a fear that we would attack eachother. It intensified the war, until we came to an agreement not to use them on eachother.
- Truman didn't like Stallin, who only saw reason with an iron fist (using military).
- There was a red scare in 1917 and Russia first got taken over by the Sov's, so it could be argued that it started then, we started mistrusting them.
Policy of Containment:
-Domino Effect: was mainly about communism. They believed that if one country had communism then it would spread to to other countries surrounding it.
-The Policy of Containment: worked to stop the domino effect and contain communism.
-Iron Curtain Speech: said by Winston Churchill. He used the term in context of soviet-diminated in Eastern Europe, and iron curtain was ment to be stopping communism from spreading from the east to west. Split the communist from the democratic.
- The Marshall Plan (European Recovery Act): A large scale economic of the U.S. program that gave cash grants to Europe with repayment of the money. Helped to rebuild Europe. Some of the goals were to remove trade barriers, rebuilding Eurpoe, madernizing industry, making Europe presperous again, and stopping the Soviet Union from helping them so that they didn't turn to Communism. Trying to get them not to go to Communism during their tough period of time.
- Truman Doctarine: It stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey to help them with economic aid and military to help them get back up instead of falling to Communism. The people in these two countries were fighting communism at the time and we needed to stop it from spreading.
Both countries joined NATO and became our Allies. The Soviets said the Doctarine was a part of what started the Cold War.
House of Un-American Activities Commitee (HUAC):
- Created in 1938 to look into private citizens engaging in criminal aacts against the United States. (like if you say you're going to bomb somewhere)
- Main focus was to keep people from having communist ties.
- Hollywood's Black List: famous people who were accused of being communist. They ended being blacklisted; they were deemed to be promoting communist propaganda if they were in movies, and couldn't get hired.
- HUAC was very determined to find communists and communist sympathizers by pressuring witnesses to give up the names of those who are communist.
- Witnesses who didn't give up any information were hild in contemp of congress because they knew they were.
- Senator Joseph McCarthy used the HUAC's ideas and began accusing people of being communists even if he didn't really know for sure. This started McCarthyism accusing people of treason without any evidence. This era of time was known as the Second Red Scare.
- The Second Red Scare: the fear of communism spying on our government, and of the Soviet Union atomic bombing the U.S. (one of the reasons HUAC came about)
- The Red Scare made the actual communists in our country lay low because they knew we were after them, helped reduce communist activity.
- The HUAC became less important by the 60s
- The were renamed the House of Internal Security Comitee in 69, but was abolished in 75.
McCarthyism:
-Named after Senator Joe McCarthy
- Is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty or treason without much evidence of it. (communism)
- It happened in the Second Red Scare of the United states
- Fear of communists, and American traitors
- If you just looked or acted suspicious they may accuse you of being communist and question you even if you weren't. Questioned by government officials
- McCarthy finally got turned away from the Senate because he kept accusing people who weren't communist as being communist without evidence. He ruined people's lives by accusing them. They ended up censoring him. It was all about making himself more powerful.
- McCarthy started to go after people in the military or were. These people were hero's, and people didn't want to believe that these military people were communists, so they stopped believeing him and censored him.
- He turned into a heavy drinker, and alchoholism got the better of him. It got to his liver and killed him four years after getting married.
China Becomes Communist:
- Mao Zedong was the leader of the Chinese Revolution.
- Led to Communist party to victory over china over Chiang-Kaished's Kuominnstang.
- He was founder of the People's Republic of China.
- Mao was a guerilla warfare stategist- came out of the forest, hit, and run.
- Chiang-Kaished was the chairman of the Nationalist of the Gov't of China.
-Was the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party during the Civil war against Mao.
The Civil war, Communist v. Nationalists
- In 1949 the Chinese Civil war started between the communist and Nationalist.
- The communists pushed the nationalist back so hard that they forced the nationalist into the island of Taiwan.
-Now the Republic of China (taiwan) is nationalist, and The People's Republic of China (mainland of China) is communist.
-Communists then control most or all of china, they were supported by the Soviet Union.
- The Nationalists were supported by the U.S.
- The Great Leap Forward: Mao's five year plan to take peasant's off the street and go into big factories and make big products like steel and iron. A lot of this was for war materials and such.
- There was a lot of food production that was banned. it dropped food production by 25% BY 1960.
The Cultural Revolution
- The Cultural Revolution Mao feared the people in his party would turn against him.
- During this period there was a lot of rape, fraud, and murder.
- He feared people would forget about him, and turn against him.
- The Revolution basically completed the Communism of China for Mao. Helped him get control over the country.
- Many people thought that Mao should be taken from power. The revolution took place from 66-76, made Mao become somewhat unpopular.
Cuban Missile Crisis-
- United States started to build missile bases in Turkey and Italy in 1958 in range of attacking the Soviet Union
- The Soviet Union responded by building bases in Cuba within the range of the United States which caused tension. (they also built them there so that the U.S. didn't invade Cuba in response to the Bay of Pigs).
- JFK then reacted by forming EX-COMM which was a group of smart people that came up with forming a naval blockade around Cuba to make sure no more missle supplies got into Cuba.
- The US then demanded that the Soviet Union dismantle their bases in Cuba in exchange of the U.S. not to invade Cuba.
- The USSR then got rid of their bases and everything was all good.
- During October of 62 there was much fear of a nuclear war breaking out.
- They were both sitting on edge, if either of them made a wrong move, a nuclear war was very likely to break out (cuban missle crisis)
- During this time it was thought that thousands of people would die, but only one person ended up dying in compat and eleven others by a few planes being shot down.
- Krushchev was teh leader of the USSR during this time. There were several exchanges of communication during this time.
- Oct 15 was when the images were found of the bases and Kennedy was informed.
- Oct 22 Kennedy announced that there were missile bases
- Oct 28 Krushchev began to dismantle the bases, which ended the crisis. (13 days)
Ronald Regan's Strategic Defense Initiative:
- Was initiated on march 23, 1983 to develop an anti-ballistic missile system (code named star wars)
- Thought to protect us from missile attacks on other countries (soveit union)
- Our response to predicted nuclear attacks on other countries
- There were people against it because they thought it would waste money, not helped us, get the soviet union madder, wouldn't have enought room to set up research for this.
- They needed nuclear x-ray lasers that were computer guided and the weapons would take up a lot of space, a lot of power was needed, and billions of dollars to make it happen. Be able to intercept ballistic missles in the sky.
- To make it happen, we developed a Strategic Defense Initiative Orginization to oversee it. Lazer and mirror experiments were done. Money was raised to hlep, and research and development.
- At that time, the plan failed. Ideas were too much and wouldn't have worked. Too difficult to construct.
- Wasted 30 billion dollars. No mirror systems were ever created for the laser systems
- The Missle Defense Agency is still working on trying to get anti-missle ballistic technology. They are advancing and going more global all the time.
- They have ground and sea based defense missles.
- Russia is opposed to this. They would shoot missles at us, and we could get rid of them and then shoot them down.
(morganne brought twinikies shaped like missles:)
Berlin Blockade:
- During the blockade the Soviet Union blocked the railroads going into Berlin to block supply lines.
- We created a 'Berlin Airlift' where we dropped suplies from planes into the city. We had hundreds of planes dropping supplies in a day.
- Why blockaded? Berlin was split into two parts and it was in the Communist part of the part.
- The Soviets wanted to blockade West Berlin because it was inside the Soviet Zone, and we split it. They wanted all of it to be theirs.
- The Allied wanted to repair Germany, while the Soviets wanted to destroy it because they felt Germany had caused all the problems and they didn't want to worry about Germany again.
- The blockade lasted about eleven months.
- Soviets stopped the blockade because us bringing supplies in made the blockade make no sense, they couldn't attack our planes because it would start another war.
- Berlin was surviving off little food and electricity. Soviets offered to dropp in supplies but were rejected, maybe because they didn't want a lot of people to die.
- The U.S. set up bases in Great Britian incase the Soviets did decide to attack our planes, had B-29 bombers that could carry atomic bombs.
Nuclear Arms Race:
- The first Nuclear weapons were produced by the US. in the Matthattan Project in WW11.
- Although the Soviets were an Allied power, we didnt' trust them with knowing the secret of the weapons.
- The Soviets were secretly developing their nuclear missiles behing the scenes
- It was set off in 1949, was basically a copy of the fat man, we called it 'Joe 1' they called it the RDS-1
- After they both developed nuclear weapons they had a race to get better more efficient higher quality bombs.
- They developed missiles that were ICBMs Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. They could deliver missiles to any part of the world.
- When the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, it was feared that they might launch a nuclear missile attack from any part of the world. It also had a major role in starting the space race.
- There were satellites designed to detect a nuclear strike before it happened.
- They build fallout shelters and bunkers to save leaders and citizens in fallout shelters.
- People were taught how to react to a nuclear strike in an act of civil defense.
- Mutual Assured Destrucion (MAD) was the US and USSR's mutual understanding that a nuclear strike from either side would cause massive damage to both parties.
- Came into play during the 1950's when either side had enough power to obliterate the other side completely.
- Even if one launched and killed the other, in that time the enemy would have had a 'second strike' that would have killed the other anyways.
- Other countries that started getting nuclear weapons were: France, People's Republic of China, and the United Kingdom. This intensified it.
- Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were arranged to limit the size of each power's nuclear arsenal. There were three other bans placed on nuclear testing, anti-ballistic missile systems, and weapons in space.
- Did little to discourage producion of mass amounts of nuclear weapons.
N.A.T.O.:
- Stands for North Atlantic Treaty Orginization. Only a defensive allience.
- Stated that if one country in the treaty was attacked, we would help ward off those attackers
- In 1979 the U.S. gave Europe Nuclear arms. It was basically NATO (us, and western europe) against the warsaw pact, which was soviet union and eastern europe.
- It organized a lot of organizations and plans after the 9/11 attack, recently put a no-flyzone over Libya, it also putr a weapons emabrgo against Lybia. (the people are going against the gov't in Lybia gov't has been killing random people..) We're trying to protect the people there using Nato Planes.
- De-stallinization: Joseph Stallin died around 1953 and Krushef came to power. Once he died we had to learn and deal with a new guy and we kinda feared that becuase we learned how to deal with Stallin. He tried to undo a lot of things Stallin started. Being better to their people and taking down camps.
- They start to talk about peaceful co-exhistince with the U.S.. We could live peacfully together without going to war. Stated to look good until the Bay of Pigs and other stuff.
Bay of Pigs:
my topic...
Nixon's Visit to China:
- Before we had open trade with China we felt threatened by the countries that didn't think it was fair we could and they couldn't
- Nixon arrived in China in 1972, first President to visit People's Republic.
- Our goal was to try to get rid of communism during the Cold War
- Nixon had meetings with the Leader of China at the time. They were secret meetings.
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