HONOURS MODERN
HISTORY
The Iron Curtain
*Although
Germany was divided in theory into four occupation zones, in practise
there was nothing to prevent free movement around the country.
Therefore, particularly as West Germany began to experience the
‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s-1970s (caused by assistance from the
Marshall Plan, German diligence, the rebuilding of factories dismantled
and taken to other countries by the Allies, and cheap labour from
Gastarbeiter from Southern Italy, Greece, and later Turkey), East
Germans began to travel to the West and not come back. It is
likely that 2.5 to 3 million East Germans (one sixth of the population)
went to West Germany while they were separate states.
*Communist East Germany also claimed that too many people (and spies)
were coming to East Germany from the cruel, cold, capitalist
West. To keep out these interlopers, the East German government
decided to build an anti-fascist protection wall. At midnight
12/13 August 1961, the East German army began to close the border with
guards and barbed wire. On 15 August, pre-fabricated concrete
barriers were put in place along portions of the border, and eventually
all of West Berlin was surrounded by a 12-foot wall with barbed wire,
machine gun towers, land mines, and other security around it.
Border guards were given orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape,
and about 200 people were killed trying to do so (and many also
succeeded). On the western side of the wall there was no
security, and West Berliners covered it with graffiti.
*The West feared that East Germany and the USSR would soon try to take
over all of Berlin, and sent more troops to defend it. In 1963
President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin and said that it stood for all
the peoples divided by the Iron Curtain: Two thousand years ago
the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen]. Today,
in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein
Berliner'... All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of
Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich
bin ein Berliner!'
*The Berlin Wall would stand for 28 years as a physical manifestation
of the Iron Curtain. Fences, guard posts, and land mines also ran
the entire length of the Inner German Border and along the
Czechoslovakian borders with West Germany and Austria.
*The Soviet Union had other problems in the 1960s. On 1 May,
1960, a US Air Force U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet
Union. Eisenhower said that it was just a weather research
aircraft and that the pilot had died from malfunctions in his oxygen
equipment. In fact it was assumed that he would have committed
suicide, as he was expected to do. At that point, Khrushchev
announced that the pilot was still alive and in Soviet custody.
*Gary Powers, a Milligan graduate, was put on trial after months of
hard interrogation and a ‘voluntary confession’ and apology for spying
on the USSR. Although convicted to ten years in prison and seven
years of hard labour, he was exchanged for a Soviet spy in 1962, and
eventually exonerated by a Senate investigation.
*In 1960, Mao, who had disagreed with Khrushchev over many things,
particularly the need for continual belligerence against capitalist
countries (rather than peaceful co-existence), split with the Soviet
Union politically.
*Although China remained communist, the Sino-Soviet Split created a
sort of Cold War between the Soviets and Chinese, with various
communist countries siding with one or the other, and with Yugoslavia
trying to pursue a middle way and actually maintaining diplomatic
relations with both right- and left-wing countries and many developing
Third World countries.
*In fact, the term ‘Third World’ comes from the Cold War, when many
developing nations of the world were neither in NATO or the Communist
sphere, but were in a third world of their own).
*Many Third World countries sided with the West or the East or in some
cases tried to create new power bases of their own. One country,
however, left the First World for the Second.
*Cuba, although theoretically a free country since the Spanish-American
War, was, thanks to the Platt Amendment, essentially and American
dominion. From 1933 until 1958, the pro-American leader of Cuba
was Fulgencio Batista. For much of that time he ruled as a
military dictator with American support.
*Batista ruled ruthlessly, imprisoning his political enemies and
dissidents, or else arranging for them to vanish. Between 1953
and 1958 various forces, many of them socialist (but not all—some were
strongly anti-communist), protested against Batista and attempted armed
uprisings.
*In 1956, after a period of exile, Fidel Castro returned to Cuba along
with Che Guevara from Argentina, who taught him guerrilla
warfare. They waged war against Batista’s government, and on 1
January, 1959, Batista and his family fled the country. Batista
ended up in Spain, and his grandson spent time as a justice on the
Florida Supreme Court. On 16 February, Castro was sworn in as
president of Cuba.
*At first Castro insisted he was not a Communist, and his government
was recognised by the US, which he visited in April of 1959.
However, he also visited the Soviet Union, and soon began implementing
socialistic ideas.
*Castro broke up plantations, limited landownership to 993 acres per
person, and outlawed foreign ownership of Cuban land. He began to
import oil from the USSR, and when American-owned refineries refused to
process it, he nationalised them. The US soon reduced imports of
Cuban sugar and Castro nationalised Cuban industries and collectivised
farms. Many wealthy and middle-class Cubans fled to the USA,
where they remain vocally anti-Castro. In January 1961,
Eisenhower broke off relations with Cuba, although some trade continued.
*In April 1961, after months of planning, a group of Cuban refugees
trained by the CIA and the Alabama National Guard landed in the Bay of
Pigs in Cuba. They expected assistance from the US Air Force
(which had bombed some Cuban military bases ahead of time), but at the
last minute John F. Kennedy cancelled their air support without letting
them know. They also planned to meet up with anti-Catro rebels
within Cuba, but were never able to reach them. Within two days
the invaders had been defeated. Many were able to escape, but
those who did not were imprisoned and many were executed and the rebels
within Cuba were brutally crushed.
*In response to the Bay of Pigs invasion and to the US putting short
and medium-range nuclear missiles in Turkey (within striking distance
of the USSR and its satellites) the Soviet Union began placing nuclear
missiles in Cuba, which officially declared itself a Communist republic
in the spring of 1961.
*In September, 1961, rumours of new advisors and equipment coming from
the Soviet Union to Cuba reached the Cuban-American community in Miami
and U-2 spy planes discovered what looked like missiles in Cuba, which
were determined to be Soviet nuclear weapons. Cuba announced to
the UN that it would defend itself it was attacked, which was exactly
what the US Joint Chiefs of Staff felt was necessary.
*This is probably the closest the world has ever come to a nuclear
World War III. Kennedy placed a ‘quarantine’ around Cuba, because
a blockade is an act of war. For thirteen days the USA and USSR
faced off against one another to see who would back down first.
Both leaders wanted to avoid a conflict (despite pressure from other
members of their governments to be more aggressive), and eventually the
Soviet Union backed down, removing its missiles in return for the US
promising not to invade Cuba and for the US removing missiles from
Turkey. Furthermore, Khrushchev was not entirely sure he trusted
Castro with nuclear weapons.
*Many Soviet leaders felt that Khrushchev had been too weak during the
crisis, and in 1964 he was forced into retirement and eventually
replaced by Leonid Brezhnev, who remained in power until 1982. At
times Brezhnev would take a very hard line against the West (and
against any attempts at reform or revolution in countries in the Soviet
sphere), and in other cases would try to work with America and her
allies. Relations with China following the Sino-Soviet split
continued to deteriorate.
*Another reason the Soviet Union and USA were willing to remove their
short and medium-range nuclear missiles from Cuba and Russia was
because they were decreasingly necessary thanks to the development of
the ICBM which could hit almost any spot on Earth with a nuclear
warhead within 32 minutes.
*ICBM development was based on Germany’s V-2 rockets during World War
II, and was undertaken in large part by German scientists taken to the
USA and USSR after the war.
*The Soviets’ Germans were better than America’s, apparently, as they
managed to launch the first man-made satellite into space on 4 October,
1957. It was called Sputnik (which approximately translates to
‘co-traveller’ or ‘satellite’), weighed about 183 pounds, and
transmitted a beep On 3 November, Sputnik 2 carried the first
living creature into space, a dog named Laika (‘Barker’ or ‘Howler’).
*This terrified America, as a rocket that could launch a satellite or a
dog into space could also launch a nuclear weapon. America began
to emphasis science and math classes in schools and to create
NASA. This was the beginning of the Space Race.
*The Space Race was both about national pride and about being sure the
enemy could not drop weapons from space without a response.
*At first, America lagged behind. On 1 February, 1958, NASA launched Explorer 1, America’s first satellite.
*On 12 April, 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first
human in space and the first to orbit Earth, staying in orbit 108
minutes. On 5 May, Alan Shepard became the first American in
space.
*On 25 May, 1961 John F Kennedy pledged that the United States would place a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s.
*On 20 February, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
*On 20 July, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon, and the
next day, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on it. The
USSR never landed a man on the moon, despite plans to do so.
Twelve Americans on six missions eventually did walk on the Lunar
surface.
*In the late 1960s, Leonid Brezhnev reversed many of Khrushchev's
policies and reforms (even though he had supported them earlier).
He even spoke positively of Stalin and took the title General Secretary
(whereas Khrushchev had been First Secretary of the Communist
Party). The Cold War grew colder, as Brezhnev was unwilling to
work with the West or with reformers within the Soviet Sphere.
*By 1968, however, Czechoslovakia, which had been slow to de-Stalinize,
was ready for change. A New Economic Model based on Soviet
strategies for industrialisation had failed in a country that had been
industrially advanced for years and many people wanted both economic
and political reform. On 5 January, 1968, with Brezhnev's
permission, Alexander Dubček became First Secretary of the Communist
Part of Czechoslovakia.
*What followed was called the Prague Spring. In February, to mark
the 20th anniversary of Communist control of Czechoslovakia, Dubček
announced the socialism needed to change. It had triumphed over
the capitalists and the middle class, and the strict measures necessary
in the past could be relaxed. The workers should now be able to
produce consumer goods, enjoy rewards for expertise and skill, develop
science and technology to compete with the West, and begin to create a
mixed economy to make all of Czechoslovakia's exports competitive
again. Furthermore, he allowed freedom of the press, the
existence of other political parties, and promised to create 'socialism
with a human face.'
*Soon Brezhnev regretted allowing Dubček to come to power, and as
Czechoslovakia experimented with democratisation and a mixed economy,
and prepared to implement what would later be called the Brezhnev
Doctrine—that the Soviet Union had a right to intervene in any
Communist country threatened by non-Communist force. This
justified the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact's
invasion of Czechoslovakia.
*On the night of 20/21 August, 1968, the USSR, Bulgaria, Poland, and
Hungary invaded Czechoslovakia (Romania supported Dubček's policies,
and Albania had withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact after siding with China
in 1962). Although only a few hundred Czechoslovakians were
killed or injured, and Dubček and other leaders were not executed
(although they lost their political positions), the Soviet Army
occupied Czechoslovakia until 1990, and the new government undid almost
all of Dubček's reforms in a process called 'normalisation.'
*Many people fled from Czechoslovakia during the Warsaw Pact invasion
and immediately afterwards, until border security was
strengthened. The Czechoslovakian economy stagnated for over two
decades. By the end of 1968 it seemed that the Cold War would
never end.