APUSH 8.2 to 8.3 — APUSH Notes and Study Guides

Hello and welcome to Unit 8, the penultimate unit of the AP United States History curriculum! We’ll be going over the years 1945 and 1980 and in this set of votes, we’re going to be getting started with the Cold War.

The Cold War

Even after World War II ended and the United States emerged as a global superpower, there was still a lot of tension in the world and namely, this tension was between the democratic U.S. and the communist Soviet Union, and this tension became known as the Cold War.

So what is a cold war? Essentially, a cold war is a conflict or a period of tension between two countries that doesn’t actually result in any direct fighting. But although there was not a lot of direct fighting, there was still a lot of indirect conflict and tension between the two ideologies. Most of the fighting occurred through diplomacy, but in some cases, the world became really close to nuclear war.

In 1917, the Russians had overthrown their monarchy and replaced it with a communist government in the Russian Revolution. Ever since the beginning of communism, the United States was strictly against it and worked to prevent its spread to other countries. This was because American democracy and Soviet communism could not coexist and because both governments wanted the rest of the world to be remade in their image. The United States wanted the world to be transformed into democratic capitalist nations while the Soviet Union wanted the world to be remade into communism.

Despite the U.S. and Soviet union fighting on the same side of World War II, there was already distrust between them even before the war ended. The U.S. did not inform the Soviet Union of their atomic bombs before they were used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But in 1943, two years before the bombings, the USSR (Soviet Union) had learned of the Manhattan Project and of the bombs through espionage and had started their own atomic program. By the time Truman told Stalin of the bombs, the USSR was already making their own.

In 1945, the United Nations was created after World War II. In it, a Security Council was formed, made up of 15 countries to promote peace and stability. Five of the countries, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and the Soviet Union, were given permanent seats in the council and veto power. However, despite the goal of promoting peace, peace would not become a reality. In 1946, the Soviet Union manipulated elections in eastern Europe to put communist dictators into power, despite having had promised to allow for free elections in the Yalta Conference. This led to countries such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia becoming communist.

After the war, Germany had been split into four occupation zones between the Allies (France, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, United States). Soon after, the Soviet Union turned their zone into a communist state called the German Democratic Republic. In response, the U.S. and the U.K. joined their zones together and called for German unification. However, instead, the Soviet Union continued to promote communism in eastern Germany. This led to Europe being essentially being split into western and eastern halves, with the western half being democratic and the eastern half being communist. U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill then declared that "an iron curtain has descended across the continent" of Europe, referring to the split between the two ideologies.

Harry Truman and the Marshall Plan

In response to the threat of communism, President Harry Truman introduced the Containment Policy in 1947. This policy suggested that instead of trying to get rid of communism, the United States should stop its spread. Truman then launched the Truman Doctrine, providing military and economic aid to any country threatened by communism’s spread. For example, he gave aid to Greece to stop a communism uprising. The United States also helped Turkey to prevent the USSR from gaining control of the Dardanelles, a strait in Turkey connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

Additionally, Truman’s Secretary of the State, George Marshall, developed the Marshall Plan. This provided $12 billion to western Europe to help them rebuild after World War II. The idea was that if western Europe got money from the United States and their economies quickly recovered from the war, they would not convert to communism. The plan worked and it ended the threat of communism in western Europe.

The Berlin Airlift and NATO

Although Berlin was in east Germany, the western powers (mainly United States and United Kingdom) still had occupation of the western half of Berlin. In 1948, to stop western influence in Berlin, Stalin ordered the Berlin Blockade. This blockade blocked all canals, railways, and highways to Berlin to prevent the western powers from supplying their half of the city. In response, the U.S. organized the Berlin Airlift. This was a system of daily flights to and from Berlin to supply the city with food, fuel, and supplies, preventing the USSR from taking over the entirety of Berlin.

In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created to stop the spread of communism. This was an alliance made up of the U.S., Canada, and ten western European nations. Members of this alliance agreed to a mutual defense agreement against communism, in which if one of them was invaded, all would attack back. Truman appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the NATO supreme commander and stationed four American divisions in Europe to act as the NATO army. He did this in order to deter the USSR from trying to influence western Europe.

China

Now let’s talk about the rise of communism in two places outside of Europe: China and Korea.

In China, when World War II ended, the country fell into a civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and Mao Tse-tung’s Communists. Chiang’s faction, despite having the support of the United States and the recognition of the USSR, suffered from heavy inflation and corruption in their government. On the other hand, Mao had the support of the peasantry in China. When Trunan tried to send $400 million and many military supplies to Chiang, most of it ended up in communist hands. Because of this and many other issues, by 1949, Chiang’s army and his Nationalists were driven out of China and they fled to Taiwan. Mao took power and signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance, making China allies with the USSR.

Korea

After Japan was defeated in World War II, the Korean peninsula was divided into a northern and southern half along the 38th parallel. The northern half was occupied by the USSR while the U.S. occupied the south. After both the American and Soviet armies were withdrawn in 1949, North Korea was left in the communist leadership of Kim Il Sung while South Korea was led by conservative Syngman Rhee. But then in 1950, the North Korean army attacked South America. In response, the U.S. sent troops to South Korea and pushed North Korea back to the Chinese border. China, fearing that the U.S. would continue invading past their border, launched a counterattack and pushed them back to the original 38th parallel. This stalemate continued until July of 1953, in which 34th President Dwight D. Eisenhower negotiated an armistice and an exchange of prisoners with China and North Korea. They agreed to leave the borders unchanged, changing nothing despite the millions that died.

MAD

Additionally, during this period, a lot of nuclear bombs were created. In 1953, the United States developed the hydrogen bomb, which was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb. By 1954, the Soviets created their own hydrogen bomb. Over the course of the next few years, the U.S. and the Soviets continued to create increasingly powerful and destructive weapons. But despite this, neither side attacked the other due to the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction. This was the concept that if one of them attacked the other, the other would retaliate, and then both would be destroyed and nobody would survive. This idea of mutual destruction discouraged the two powers from openly fighting each other.

Open Skies and U-2 Incident

After Stalin died in 1953, Eisenhower called for a slowdown in the arms race. In 1955, the Geneva Convention was held in Geneva between both sides in which the U.S. proposed an “open skies” policy. This would allow both sides to send planes and conduct photography over the other’s territory. Although the Soviets rejected this idea, many people around the world took it as a sign that things were starting to become peaceful again.

But then there was the U-2 Incident. In 1960, the Russians shot down a high-altitude U.S. spy plane over the USSR. This incident revealed that after the Soviets had rejected the open skies policy, the U.S. had been sending spy planes over Soviet territory anyways. This led to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev denouncing the U.S.

Cuba and the Bay of Pigs and the Berlin Wall

Then, there was communism in Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro had overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and nationalized American-owned businesses in Cuba, causing Eisenhower to cut off trade with Cuba. As a result, Cuba turned to the USSR for support and became a communist state. With communism less than 100 miles away from Florida, Eisenhower authorized the training of anti-communist Cuban exiles to overthrow the Cuban government. But his presidency ended soon after in 1960 and then John F. Kennedy was elected as the 35th President.

Soon after his inauguration, JFK approved the scheme to overthrow Castro’s regime and this launched the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April of 1961. But this invasion failed terribly and Castro’s forces easily crushed the invasion, killing nearly 500 exiles and causing the rest to surrender.

As for Berlin, during this time a lot of skilled workers had been escaping from east Berlin to west Berlin, weakening eastern Germany. As a result, the Soviets sealed off eastern Berlin and constructed the Berlin Wall to stop people from escaping.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

Then, in 1962, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Throughout 1962, the USSR had been doing a massive arms buildup in Cuba to protect the island from another American invasion. Additionally, another motive for this was that the U.S. had been doing the same thing in Turkey to the USSR. So in Cuba, the USSR was building numerous medium-range and intermediate-range missile sites. Soon after, U-2 flights over Cuba discovered these missile sites and JFK decided to plan out a quarantine of Cuba and a threat of nuclear confrontation to force the removal of the missiles.

On October 22, the people of the United States were informed of the existence of these missiles and for the next six days, the world was on the brink of a nuclear war. Sixteen Soviet ships continued to head towards Cuba and the U.S. Navy intercepted them 500 miles away. Soon after, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles as long as JFK wouldn’t invade Cuba and removed the U.S. missiles from Turkey. Additionally, both JFK and Khrushchev agreed to install a hotline between the two superpowers to speed up communication between them in case of an emergency.

Détente and SALT

Richard Nixon became the 37th President after the Election of 1968 and took advantage of the rivalry between China and the USSR in order to strengthen the power of the U.S. This led to détente, or a relaxation of tensions between the world powers. In addition, in 1972, Nixon visited China and ended two decades of hostility between the two nations by establishing an American liaison mission in Beijing. In response, the USSR, who saw China as an enemy now, agreed to an arms control pact with the U.S.

Starting in 1969, there were also the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), and in 1972, Nixon signed SALT I with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. SALT I limited the two superpowers to just two hundred anti-ballistic missiles each.

Later, 39th President Jimmy Carter signed SALT II with the USSR in 1979, which banned new missile programs and limited the size of each superpower’s nuclear delivery system. Additionally, Carter issued the Carter Doctrine which halted grain exports and technology to the USSR and boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

The Second Red Scare

During the Cold War, there was another Red Scare. In 1947, the Truman administration created a Loyalty Review Board to investigate the background of more than 3 million federal employees. The McCarren Internal Security Act was also passed, making it illegal to support totalitarian governments, restricting the employment of those in communist organizations, and allowing for the creation of detention camps.

The Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), originally created in 1938, was re-activated after World War II to investigate the government and other organizations for communists. An investigation into Hollywood led to many actors, writers, and directors being forced to testify before the committee.

This fear of communists was fueled by some famous cases in the United States. In the Hiss Case, Alger Hiss, an official in the State Department, was accused of being a communist and was sent to prison. This created fears that the United States government was secretly filled with communist spies. In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg were executed via electrocution for sending information on how to create nuclear weapons to the USSR.

McCarthyism

In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had a list of over 200 communists in the government. This led to a 4.5-year-long period of hunting down communists in the government known as McCarthyism. Although his accusations were false, he continued bringing in new accusations whenever he was questioned. Soon after, he began accusing public officials and famous people. But then in 1954, he accused the leaders of the army of being communists. This led to him being put on trial in the televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which ended in his censure. He then became incredibly unpopular and disgraced before dying in 1957.