HONOURS MODERN
HISTORY
The Post-War World
*Harry
Truman had the misfortune to preside over the opening years of the Cold
War, although in many ways the Cold War actually began at Yalta in
February 1945, where the Big Three met for the last time to divide up
the spoils of Europe. Stalin was permitted control over Poland,
Bulgaria, Roumania, and other eastern territories, although he promised
to permit them to hold free elections. The USSR was also asked to
step into the war with Japan, and agreed, under terms that would end up
giving them de facto control of most of Manchuria and any other areas
they could take.
*Many have accused Roosevelt of selling out Chiang Kai-shek and the
peoples of Eastern Europe, and there is a measure of truth to this,
since none of the free elections ever materialised, or at least had any
effect. In part FDR trusted ‘Uncle Joe,’ or so it has been said,
in part FDR was very sick and not at his best, and in part he knew he
had no choice but to accede to the requests of the man with the largest
army on the planet, a force already occupying much of the land he asked
for.
*The truth is that, despite the war-time alliance, the USA and the USSR
had never much liked one another, and this did not much change during
the war. Both nations held strongly to ideologies that united
large populations across large spaces, ideologies, moreover, that were
essentially internationalist in nature yet mutually incompatible.
Totalitarianism and democracy did not get along well in the best of
times, and having different economic systems tied in with their
ideologies did nothing to ease mistrust.
*Russians resented the US and UK’s slow and small entrance into the war
in Europe, the US gave less lend-lease to the USSR than to other major
allies, the US tried to keep the Soviets out of their atomic research
(although Communist spies ended up keeping Stalin better informed about
the bomb than Truman was), and as soon as the war ended the United
States cut off support to all her allies, but soon began making new
loans to the UK and other nations—but not the USSR.
*Americans resented not only Soviet Communism in its own right, but
also the fact that the Soviets were carving out an empire of their own
from Germany’s old eastern territories—hardly the desired outcome of a
war to keep the world safe for democracy. The Russians, though,
remembered two German attacks through Eastern Europe in the 20th
Century alone, and wanted a better buffer than German goodwill.
*Defeated Germany was dealt with in several ways. First, the
Potsdam Conference just outside Berlin divided up the post-war
world. Germany was reduced, Poland was moved west to take up the
last German land (losing land in the east to the USSR in return) and
East Prussia ceased to exist. Germany was split into four zones
of occupation, as was the city of Berlin. Austria, again separate
from German, was initially split up, but later was jointly occupied in
all area, and ended up remaining cautiously neutral during most of the
Cold War. The rest of Eastern Europe was added to the Soviet
Sphere, and the free elections promised to the region never
materialised in fact, and when elections did occur, they were heavily
influenced by the USSR and the Red Army.
*Soon all of Eastern Europe, including the state of East Germany, was
under Communist rule, and steadfastly opposed to the West.
According to Winston Churchill, ‘From Stettin in Baltic to Trieste in
the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent.’
*Despite this rapid growth of tensions among the great nations of the
world, an attempt was made at co-operation. In 1945 the United
Nations was founded, allowing all nations representation in the General
Assembly and with the USA, UK, France, USSR, and China holding
permanent seats with veto powers on the 15-member Security
Council. All member nations (initially 51, counting Russia,
Belarus, and Ukraine as separate nations) have a seat in the General
Assembly. The Security Council nominates and the General
Assembly approves a Secretary General for any number of 5-year terms
(usually two). The first Secretary General was Norwegian Trygve
Lie.
*The UN helped create Israel as a modern nation-state, seen at the time
as a great humanitarian move. Since then it has been at the heart
of almost every regional war in the Middle East.
*In Eastern Europe, the Red Army ensured that the promised ‘free
elections’ were won by Communists, and in Western Europe and elsewhere,
starving nations devastated by war also seemed ripe for Communist
revolutions or takeovers. America, however, did not want a
desperate Europe again turning to totalitarian dictators to lead them.
*To rebuild Europe, Truman and his Secretary of State, former General
George Marshall, implemented a plan, the Marshall Plan, to encourage
Europeans to create a joint plan for rebuilding the continent.
The incentive for co-operation was that the USA would pay for it.
Congress was initially reluctant to spend the billions of dollars
required by the plan, but agreed to do so after watching a weak
democratic government in Czechoslovakia overthrown by a Soviet-backed
Communist insurrection.
*From 1948 to 1951, the Marshall Plan rebuilt much of Western Europe,
paying over $13 billion (perhaps $100 billion or more in to-day’s
funds). The Communist countries were invited to take advantage of
it as well, but the Soviet Union forbade them, creating their own
version in its place. That version in fact did little for the
conquered nations, and in most cases the Russians actually dismantled
German factories and moved them back to Russia as a form of
reparations. With this help most of Western Europe was more
prosperous (or at least had a higher industrial output) than they were
before the war, and local Communist parties declined in popularity.
*In addition to backing the Marshall Plan for economic aid to friendly
nations, Truman also supported helping nations under more direct attack
from Communism. This became obvious in 1947, when the British
became unable to send money to Greece to support the roaylists'
struggle against Communist insurgents.
*Fearing that the fall of Greece would also lead to the fall of Turkey
(where there were also Communist agitators), Truman called a join
session of Congress and asked for money for Turkey and Greece,
declaring that ‘it must be the policy of the United States to support
free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed
minorities or by outside pressures.’ This became known as the
Truman Doctrine, the promise to support any country that was resisting
Communism.
*This policy that motivated the Truman Doctrine was known as
containment, because its goal was to keep Communism from
spreading. It was part of the process whereby the entire world
became essentially two armed camps in which everyone was either with us
or against us.
*The Cold War grew colder in 1948 when the USSR, tired of sharing
Berlin with the other Allies (who refused to allow reparations to be
demanded of Germany) cut off all contact between Berlin and West
Germany, shutting down rail traffic and closing off all roads.
The USSR assumed that the Allies would be starved out, but, instead,
the Berlin Airlift began. For almost a year, the US Air Force
flew food and other supplies into Berlin, supplying not only their own
and allied troops, but the civilian population as well. Although
the blockade lifted in 1949, this event, combined with the obvious
electoral fraud in all the supposedly free nations of Eastern Europe
over the past few years, convinced the West that the Soviets could not
be dealt with.
*In fact, 1949 was one of the most frightening years in American
history. In 1949 the Soviets tested an atomic bomb, and the
Communists under Mao Tse-tung took over China.
*In China, Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists had fought Mao Tse-tung’s
Communists for years, even while both fought off the Japanese.
Although Chiang was supported by US dollars, he was a poor leader with
a corrupt administration, while Mao was more efficient and had better
access to Soviet assistance. Nonetheless, Chiang’s defeat was a
serious blow to American morale, despite his escape to Formosa and his
continuation of the Republic of China in opposition to Mao’s People’s
Republic of China. The United Nations recognised the Republic of
China as the legitimate government of China until 1971 and the United
States would until 1979.
*In response to the world situation, America and Western Europe began
to re-arm. With this new force, the United States did something
else unprecedented in peace-time: in 1949 the USA joined the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation along with eleven other nations,
pledging than an attack on any one of them was an attack on all of
them. Later more nations would join, including beleaguered Greece
and Turkey. The unofficial goal the Europeans who helped form
NATO, according to its first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, was to
'keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down.'
*In response, the Soviet Sphere signed the Warsaw Pact, pledging much
the same thing to one another (with the exception of Yugoslavia under
Marshal Tito).
*The United States exploded the world’s first hydrogen bomb (or H-bomb)
on November 1, 1952, on Elugelab Island in the Eniwetok Atoll of the
Marshall Islands, code-named Mike. It yielded 10.4 megatons of
explosive power (equal to 10.4 million tons of TNT), which is over 450
times the power of the bomb that fell on Nagasaki. The detonation
obliterated Elugelab, leaving an underwater crater 6240 ft wide and 164
ft deep where an island had once been.
*A year later the Soviets would test a smaller (i.e. more easily
delivered) h-bomb a year later. Thenceforth both the USA and USSR
would seek ‘nuclear superiority,’ hoping to have more atomic weaponry
than the other. Britain announced the possession of atomic bombs
in 1952, and France and Red China also developed atomic weapons later
during the Cold War.
*This escalation and proliferation of nuclear armaments would
characterise the Cold War for decades to come. In schools
children would learn to duck and cover in drills that might have
protected them from an A-Bomb like those dropped on Japan, but would
have done nothing to save them from a H-Bomb. The Balance of
Power had become the Balance of Terror, in which neither side dared
attack the other directly for fear of Mutual Assured Destruction.
*The good news in 1953 was that after 29 years, Stalin died. He
was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, who soon began a programme of
de-Stalinisation and proposed peaceful co-existence with the West,
which led many people in the Soviet satellite states to hope that they
might be allowed a little more freedom.
*In East Berlin, workers on the Stalin-Allee were threatened with a pay
cut if they did not meet increased work quotas. They began to
protest against that on 17 June, 1953, and then to demand more rights
in general. Soon the Red Army and the Volkspolizei crushed the
uprising, during which hundreds were killed and thousands arrested.
*From 28-30 June 1956, the Polish government raised the quota for its
workers and raised their taxes. There was a general strike and a
major protest, which was crushed by the military. However, during
Polish October, a more moderate (but still Communist) First Secretary
of the Polish Communist Party was chosen, and Khrushchev allowed him to
remain in power. Although Poland remained communist and within
the Soviet sphere of influence, it began to develop a more nationalist
approach to Communism and enjoyed some limited independence.
Today 28 June is a national holiday in Poland.
*In Hungary, word of the protests and political change in Poland led to
protests throughout Hungary between 23 October and 10 November,
1956. The government collapsed, a new government was formed under
Nagy Imre, and Hungary announced its intent to withdraw from the Warsaw
Pact. This was unacceptable.
*On 4 November, the Red Army entered Budapest, and by 10 November most
fighting had ceased, although public protests continued until January
1957. Nagy and many other revolutionaries were executed not long
afterwards. About 2% of Hungary’s population fled as
refugees. Today 23 October is a national holiday in Hungary.
*At the time, this brutality (Khrushchev was sometimes called the
'Butcher of Budapest') showed the world how far the Soviets were
willing to go to force Communism on others, and their leftist
sympathisers in the outside world finally had to give up on the
Workers' Paradise.
*If the people of the Soviet Union and its satellites could not enjoy
freedom and opportunity at home and could not win it through protest or
revolution, they would simply have to seek it abroad. Thousands
of citizens of Communist countries sought refuge outside their borders,
and the Soviet Union and its puppet governments had to find a way to
keep them in.