APUSH Cold War Study Sheet – Chapter 25 – Flashcards

The Yalta Conference and the Potsdam Conference -Stalin insisted that Russian national security mandated the need for pro-Soviet governments in Eastern Europe and the presence of Soviet troops in Poland and surrounding countries, including Romania and Hungary. At the Yalta Conference FDR needed Stalin's commitment to enter the war against Japan and thus had to accept a pledge from Stalin to hold free elections in these countries at a later time. While elections took place, most were not particularly democratic. Soviet-imposed governments in Poland, Hungary, and Romania were backed by the Red Army and, at the Potsdam Conference, Truman's hardline stance against Stalin hardened relations between the U.S. and Soviets. Stalin was able to exert near complete control over these Eastern Europe governments, thus establishing the Soviet sphere of influence.

Stalin's unwillingness to honor the self-determination for nation's in Eastern Europe as promised during the Yalta Conference.

Harry Truman stood up to Stalin fearing that if he did not another war would break out. But Stalin was unmoved given that he had armies backing Soviet governments in Poland, Hungary, and Romania. The Americans and the Soviets were divided over the fate of Germany. Americans believed that a revived German economy was necessary to ensure that democratic regimes in Europe would flourish and to keep Germans from turning to Nazism. Stalin, on the other hand, hope to simply extract reparations from Germany in the form of goods and industrial machines. Stalin was convinced to accept German reparations only from the Soviet zone (a largely rural area of Germany with little wealth) in exchange for a recognition of the new German- Polish border by the United States. The Potsdam Conference, in conjunction with the Yalta Conference before it, set the stage for the division of Germany into East and West. The conference brought to light the very different objectives of the United States and the Soviet Union.

a General Assembly, in which all nations would be represented, and a Security Council composed of the 5 major Allied powers - the United States, Britain, France, China and the Soviet Union, with 7 other nations elected on a rotating basis. The Big Three (U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union) determined that the 5 permanent members would have no veto power over decisions of the General Assembly.

George F. Kennan, who first proposed the idea in a confidential cable to the U.S. State Department. Kennan had a post at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Kennan made a case for the proposition that the Soviet Union was an "Oriental despotism" and that communism was the "fig leaf" justifying Soviet aggression. In an article he later published, Kennan called for "long-term patient but firm and vigorous containment of Russian expansive tendencies." Thus, containment became the word that would define America's approach toward the Soviet Union.

Large budget deficits and an economy in collapse along with an independence movement in India, led by Mohandas Gandhi, and similar nationalist movements in the territories in its empire.

Greece and Turkey

Marshall Plan (named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall).

the Berlin crisis. No agreement could be reached regarding the unification of the four zones of occupied Germany into a single state. In 1947, the Western allies consolidated their three zones into a single state, with the intention of establishing an independent German republic. With funds from the Marshall Plan, the allies hoped to make West Berlin a capitalist showcase within the Soviet zone. But in June of 1948, Stalin blocked all traffic to West Berlin in response to the Allied plan to create a German republic. Britain and America remained determined to continue with their plan and American and British pilots began the Berlin Airlift, dropping million tons of food and fuel into the Western zones of the city. Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade. West Berlin became a symbol of the resistance to communism.

The Berlin crisis convinced Western European nations to form a pact with the United States. For the first time since the American Revolution, the United States entered into a peaceful military alliance in April 1949. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization included twelve nations - Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. The treaty stated that an armed attack against any of these nations would "be considered an armed attack against them all." In May of 1949, these same nations agreed to the creation of the Republic of Germany (West Germany), which joined NATO in 1955.

the West develop a "bold and massive program of rebuilding the West's defensive potential to surpass that of the Soviet world." It proposed the development of a hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear bomb that would be a thousand times more destructive than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. It also proposed significant increase in conventional military forces. In order to pay for these, the report proposed that Americans pay higher taxes.

Japan

The People's Republic of China was established in October 1949, with Mao Tse-tung as its leader. The Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan. Mao aligned himself with the Soviet Union, fearing that if China did not that the United States would re-arm the Nationalists and invade mainland China. Many Americans believed that the victory of the Communist forces in China was a defeat for Americans. In response to pressure from this faction, President Truman refused to recognize "Red China" and blocked China from being admitted to the United Nations.

Truman requested that the UN Security Council approve a "police action" against the North Korean invaders. At the time, the Soviet Union was boycotting the Council to protest the UN's refusal to admit China. Thus, the Soviet Union could not veto Truman's request. The Security Council authorized a "peacekeeping force." Truman then sent American troops to Korea as part of the UN Army. Most of the troops were actually U.S. soldiers.

After gaining control of Seoul and almost all of the territory up to the 38th parallel, General MacArthur ordered the troops across the 38th parallel and led them all the way up to the Yalu River at the Chinese border, which was certain to draw China into the war. In fact, a Chinese counterattack was launched and forced MacArthur's troops to retreat back down the Korean peninsula. A stalemate then ensued. MacArthur denounced this stalemate stating, "there is no substitute for victory." Because of MacArthur's aggressive actions leading to China's entry into the war, along with the resulting retreat and stalemate, Truman relieved MacArthur of his command. While Truman's decision was unpopular, it likely saved the United States from a war with China.

Korea was left divided along the original line of demarcation along the 38th parallel, which had been established as the dividing line at the close of WWII. North Korea remained allied with the Soviet Union and South Korea entered into a mutual defense treaty with the United States. This was the first major proxy battle of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (The history of the 38th parallel is that after WWII, the U.S. and Soviet Union had agreed to jointly occupy the Korean peninsula, which had been a Japanese colony. It was at this time that the 38th parallel was established as a temporary line of demarcation between the territory occupied by the U.S. in the south and the territory occupied by the Soviets in the north. As tensions in Europe rose, this line became permanent with the Soviets supporting a Communist government in North Korea and the United States supporting a right-wing Nationalist government in South Korea.)

Truman's decision to send troops to the conflict without prior approval by Congress set a precedent for future undeclared wars. The ground rules for Cold War conflicts were also set, based on part upon Truman's refusal to use atomic bombs in the conflict. The war also expanded America's involvement in Asia, making its policy of containment, a global policy, which helped Japan's struggling post-war economy. Lastly, the Korean War ended Truman's resistance to a major military buildup. Between 1950 and 1953, the military budget grew from one-third of the federal budget to two-thirds of the budget.

appeasing Hitler at the conference in 1938, when Western democracies had offered him part of Czechoslovakia. Americans believed that appeasing Stalin and his successors would lead to wider war as it had with Germany. Because of this, the United States resisted Soviet power in Germany, Greece, and Korea, and later in Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam.

Cold Warrior - embracing the idea that resisting communism abroad and in the U.S. was the most important post-war objective

Eisenhower's "New Look" policy stepped of production of the hydrogen bomb and developed long-range bombing capabilities. The goal was to maintain containment, while limiting its cost. By relying on a nuclear arsenal, Eisenhower hoped to economize by relying less on conventional military forces. The U.S. believed that the best deterrent to Soviet aggression was the threat of massive nuclear retaliation. However, the Soviet Union matched the United States buildup of nuclear weapons, leading to an arms race between the two nations. This arms race became an important feature of the Cold War.

Whether the country was anticommunist. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations sometimes supported repressive governments that were anticommunist even though they were governed by dictatorships or right-wing regimes that lacked the support of their citizens.

Iran and the government of Guatemala.

Because he was a Communist. Thus, even though the U.S. had previously expressed support for nationalist self-determination, the U.S. supported France's control over Vietnam over Ho Chi Minh's struggle for nationhood for Vietnam. France rejected Ho's offer of a negotiated independence. When Eisenhower became President, he argued that if the French were to fail, all non-Communist governments in the region would fall like dominoes - which became known as the domino theory. This policy of containment in Southeast Asia would last for the next twenty years.

Reunification elections. The 1954 Geneva Accords, which partitioned Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel and called for elections within two years to unify the nation. The U.S. rejected the Geneva Accords. With the help of the CIA, a pro-American government took power in South Vietnam in June of 1954, helping to install its President Ngo Kinh Diem in rigged elections. Knowing that he would be defeated by Ho Chi Minh, Diem called off the scheduled reunification elections. The last French soldiers left in 1956, but the U.S. propped up Diem's government with financial aid and military advisors.

In 1952 Gamal Abdel Nasser led a military coup, overthrowing the monarchy and creating a constitutional republic. Nasser sought to end the Middle East's colonial relationship with the West. In 1956 negotiations with the U.S. for Egypt to build a hydroelectric dam on the Nile failed. Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, which was the lifeline for Western Europe's oil. Britain, France allied with Israel and attacked Egypt, seizing the canal. President Eisenhower asked France and Britain to pull back, fearing the Egypt would seek assistance from the Soviets. The UN General Assembly added pressure, calling for a truce and troop withdrawal. When the Western nations backed down, Egypt reclaimed the Suez Canal and built a dam on the Nile with Soviet support. The end result was the loss of Nasser as a potential ally in the Middle East.

overthrow Iran's democratically elected nationalist premier, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he seized British oil properties in 1953. After Mossadegh was deposed, the CIA helped Mohammad Reza Pahlavi seize power as the shah of Iran. In 1954, after Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the democratically elected president in Guatemala, seized the American owned fruit company, he offered to pay United Fruit for the land but the company rejected the offer. Eisenhower also authorized the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected president of Guatemala. By approving these actions, the CIA grew from an agency for simply gathering intelligence to one that intervened in the affairs of sovereign states. The Eisenhower administration also had plans to send Cuban exiles to Cuba in order to incite an anti-Castro uprising. However, these plans were not implemented while Eisenhower was in office.

the Middle East. It was based upon concerns of Soviet influence in the region.

The Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles. Kennedy followed through on Eisenhower's plan to send Cuban exiles to incite an anti-Castro uprising. These exiles were trained by the CIA but they were not up to the challenge. The 1400 men sent to the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961 were crushed by Fidel Castro's troops. The CIA wanted a U.S. air strike but Kennedy rejected that idea and instead admitted defeat and apologized to the American people.

On October 22, 1962, Kennedy made a televised address disclosing that U.S. reconnaissance planes had spied Soviet-built bases from intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Some weapons had already been installed with more on their way. Kennedy announced that the U.S. would impose a "quarantine on all offensive military equipment" on its way to Cuba. The world nervously watched to see if the conflict would turn into a war. On October 25th, ships carrying Soviet missiles turned back. During negotiations, both Kennedy and Khrushchev made concessions, with Kennedy promising not to invade Cuba and Khrushchev promising to disassemble the missile bases. Kennedy also secretly ordered the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey as another concession to Khrushchev. The risk of the nuclear war was the greatest during this incident.

The threat of a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis and the resulting negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union caused a slight thaw the relationship.

In 1962 Kennedy persuaded Congress to increase funding for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in order to land a man on the moon within a decade. He was motivated by the Cold War competition with the Soviets, who had already beaten the U.S. into space with the 1957 *Sputnik* satellite and the 1961 flight of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The increased funding allowed the U.S. to pull ahead of the Soviets and U.S. astronauts arrived on the moon in 1969.

peasants alienated by Diem's "strategic hamlet program," which had displaced entire villages and moved the residents into barbed wire compounds. The National Liberation Front (NLF), known as the Vietcong, allied with these peasants with the backing of North Vietnam. Buddhists also opposed Diem, a Catholic, based on his religious persecution of them. These Buddhists participated in demonstrations, which included the practice of self-immolation (the offering of oneself as a sacrifice, especially by burning; such suicidal action in the name of a cause or strongly held belief). To ensure a stable southern government and to prevent victory for the Communist Ho Chi Minh and the North, the U.S. continued to support Diem's repressive regime. Eventually, Diem was assassinated in November of 1963.

increasing military aid to the South Vietnamese and expanding the role of the U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) to train the South Vietnamese army in small group warfare and unconventional tactics.

National Liberation Front.

Buddhists also opposed Diem, a Catholic, based on his religious persecution of them. These Buddhists participated in demonstrations, which included the practice of self-immolation (the offering of oneself as a sacrifice, especially by burning; such suicidal action in the name of a cause or strongly held belief).