The best way to protect the Soviet Union was to ensure that the countries along its western borders were friendly. Indeed, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had recognized this fact at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. What they did not appreciate was, given the extent of anti-Russian sentiment in eastern Europe, no freely elected, democratic government from Poland to Romania could be counted on to be friendly.
Nor was there any real history of democracy in those countries. In fact, Hungary and Romania had been Nazi allies during the war. The Red Army already occupied Eastern Europe, and the Russians imposed pro-Soviet governments there to establish a buffer zone against future attacks.
When Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov traveled to the United States in April , the new president, Harry Truman, subjected him to an undiplomatic tongue lashing. After the end of the war, U. Although Truman withdrew most U. The Truman Doctrine, he warned, would ultimately lead to war. Taft of Ohio, one of the most conservative men in the Senate. Such views were very much in the minority, however. Most Americans, by the late s, had come to regard the Soviet Union as a serious menace to world peace, and containment became the prevailing U.
We will never know whether a more conciliatory policy on the part of the United States would have produced a different outcome. With the opening of American archives in the s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early s, scholars now have access to all the documents describing the intentions and assumptions of decision-makers in both countries in the years after World War II.
Supposed mysteries have been solved. Old questions have been answered. The documentary evidence is in. They were ideological nation-states with incompatible and mutually exclusive ideologies. The founding purpose of the Soviet Union was global domination, and it actively sought the destruction of the United States and its allies.
If the United States wanted to continue as a nation-state that protected the rights enshrined in its founding documents, it needed to wage an active opposition to the Soviet Union. As an ideological nation-state, the United States has always, by its very existence, found itself at odds with nations, states, tribes, or groups of people with conflicting ideas.
Those conflicts would typically become important or violent once an entity threatened the interests of the United States. By , communism had been around for a century, and violent, radical, Marxist communists had been in control of the Soviet Union for decades.
The Communist Soviet Union had suffered tremendous losses in World War II, perhaps around 27 million deaths, but found itself with significant global influence at its conclusion. Its leader, Joseph Stalin, was one of the most ruthless dictators in human history and a dedicated Marxist communist. How many tens of millions died at his hand depends on how one categorizes his victims, but the most common estimates range between 20 million and 25 million.
At the same time, the United States, under the leadership of President Harry Truman, undertook the task of trying to guide the nations of the world toward a set of ideas that would make another such war less likely. Stalin and the Soviets wanted to expand communism into Europe and around the world; Truman, his nation, and the free world wanted to preserve freedom where it existed and spread it where it did not.
People don't have enough to eat. They certainly don't have any cash, and they don't have any fuel, which is very worrisome in because of the terrible winter. So people are cold and they are hungry. And when people are cold and hungry there is a lot of fuel for a possible revolution, right?.
Even in the s, in the United States, there's a lot of different political ideas that come up during the Great Depression. Because when your political system isn't working well, you consider other kinds of political systems. So for the United States, they're worried that communism is kind of the child of hunger and poverty. And they're afraid that because Stalin has so much territory in Europe, that he is really well poised to become "Hitler, part two.
And that is a sequel the United States does not want to see. Absolutely not. And if they really learned anything from World War II, it's that appeasement doesn't work, right? During the s, many people in the West, the prime minister of England, Neville Chamberlain, kind of felt like they didn't want to go back to war because World War I is still very much on people's minds during the s.
And so they figured, let's not confront Hitler head on because we're not up for that right now. We're also in the middle of worldwide depression. And that helped nothing because it just meant that Hitler could gain a whole lot of territory and World War II was much worse than it might have been if they hadn't gone after Hitler earlier. So they're really trying to say, all right, Stalin, if he wants to, could probably just run his way through the rest of Europe, right, with very little resistance, because the only nation in the world that has the military and economic power to stop the Soviet Union is the United States.
Pilot Charles Maultsby was supposed to use The two superpowers had met on the battlefield during the Korean The atomic bomb, and nuclear bombs, are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. Scientists first developed nuclear weapons technology during World War II.
Atomic bombs have been used only twice in war—both times by the United States Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. American Leaders During the Cold War. Communist Leaders. Project Iceworm. Gerald Ford: Cold War vs. War on Terror. Communism's Rise and Decline Since its start a century ago, Communism, a political and economic ideology that calls for a classless, government-controlled society in which everything is shared equally, has seen a series of surges—and declines.
How Are Socialism and Communism Different? Atomic Bomb History The atomic bomb, and nuclear bombs, are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. See More. It dealt with U. It brought nation-building activities and modernization programs to the forefront of foreign policy.
The Truman Doctrine became a metaphor for emergency aid to keep a nation from communist influence. The initiative was named after Secretary of State George Marshall. The plan was established on June 5, , and was in operation for four years beginning in April Note the pivotal position of the American flag.
The Marshall Plan sought to rebuild a war-devastated region, modernize industry, bolster European currency, and facilitate international trade, especially with the United States, whose economic interest required Europe to become wealthy enough to import U. One of the main goals, however, was to contain the growing Soviet influence in Europe and prevent the spread of communism.
The Marshall Plan required a lessening of interstate barriers and a dropping of many regulations, and encouraged an increase in productivity, labor union membership, and the adoption of modern business procedures.
Sign: We want coal, we want bread. The Marshall Plan was designed to help rebuild war-torn Europe, and thus make Europe less susceptible to Communist threats. The Marshall Plan offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, but they did not accept it as to do so would be to allow a degree of U. The non-participation of Eastern Europe was one of the first clear signs that the continent was now divided.
The Marshall Plan aid was divided among the participant states on a roughly per capita basis. A larger amount was given to the major industrial powers, as the prevailing opinion was that their resuscitation was essential for a general European revival. Over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity, but economists are not sure what proportion was directly or indirectly due to the Plan.
The Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level—that is, it stimulated the total political reconstruction of western Europe.
Many felt that European integration was necessary to secure the peace and prosperity of Europe, and thus used Marshall Plan guidelines to foster integration.
The Marshall Plan was originally scheduled to end in Any effort to extend it was halted by the growing cost of the Korean War and rearmament. American Republicans hostile to the plan had gained seats in the Congressional elections, so conservative opposition to the plan was revived. Thus, the plan ended early in , though various forms of American aid to Europe continued. The political effects of the Marshall Plan may have been just as important as the economic ones.
Marshall Plan aid allowed the nations of Western Europe to relax austerity measures and rationing, reducing discontent and bringing political stability. The communist influence on Western Europe was greatly reduced, and throughout the region communist parties faded in popularity in the years after the Marshall Plan. The trade relations fostered by the Marshall Plan helped forge the North Atlantic alliance that would persist throughout the Cold War.
At the same time, the non-participation of the states of Eastern Bloc was one of the first clear signs that the continent was now divided. Originally created in response to the Soviet threat, NATO is an intergovernmental mutual defense organization. The organization constitutes a system of collective defense in which member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. However, participation of the United States was thought necessary both to counter the military power of the USSR and prevent the revival of nationalist militarism, so talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately.
It included the five Treaty of Brussels states plus the U. In Article 5 of the charter, the members agreed that an armed attack against any one of them in Europe or North America would be considered an attack against them all. Consequently, they agreed that if an armed attack occurred, each of them would assist the member being attacked, taking such action as it deemed necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
The treaty does not require members to respond with military action against an aggressor. Although obliged to respond, they maintain the freedom to choose the method by which they do so, although it is assumed that NATO members will aid the attacked member with military force.
During the Cold War, doubts over the strength of the relationship between Europe and the U. The outbreak of the Korean War in June was crucial for NATO as it raised the apparent threat of all Communist countries working together and forced the alliance to develop concrete military plans. Eisenhower in January In September , the first major NATO maritime exercises began; Exercise Mainbrace brought together ships and more than 50, personnel to practice the defense of Denmark and Norway.
Greece and Turkey joined the alliance in , forcing a series of controversial negotiations over how to bring the two countries into the military command structure. While the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO, there was no direct confrontation between them.
Instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs.
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