Cold War

The Cold War was a decades-long rivalry between the Western powers (led by the United States) and the Soviet Union. It began in 1945 and ended in 1991. It grew out of the ideological differences between communism (a system of government in which the state controls the economy, and all property and wealth are shared equally by the people) and capitalist democracy (a government system in which businesses may be privately owned and compete against one another, and leaders are elected by the people).

Long before the onset of the Cold War, the United States and Russia shared a distrust of one another as a result of their competition over the economic development of Manchuria in the 1890s. That competition turned into an ideological rivalry after Russia's Bolshevik Revolution (1917). Russia was a communist country whereas the United States was (and is still) a capitalist democracy. The two countries did join forces to fight World War II (1939–45) against Germany, Italy, and Japan, but even then, they disagreed over military strategies and postwar plans for Germany.

As leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) was determined to use his military forces to control Poland and keep Germany from regaining its strength after World War II. Germany had invaded Russia twice, costing the communist nation almost twenty-five million casualties; Stalin would not forget that. President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53), however, was intent on rebuilding Europe's economic infrastructure on a capitalist foundation, and his plans included rebuilding Germany. After the war, the United States and other Western nations considered the expansion of the Soviet Union a threat. At the same time, the Soviets worried that the Western powers would overthrow their communist regime. This is how the Cold War began.

The Berlin airlift

Europe's economy was in crisis after World War II. By 1947, the Soviets had taken over much of Eastern Europe using the strength of the Red (Soviet) Army. As communism spread throughout Eastern Europe, the United States began a postwar recovery program known as the Marshall Plan . The plan helped restore Western Europe's economy. The Soviet Union and nations of Eastern Europe opposed the plan, fearing the revival of Germany.

After World War II, the victorious Allies —the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—had agreed to divide defeated Germany into four zones, each of which was occupied by one of the Allies. Germany's capital, Berlin, was similarly divided into four sectors. Because of the city's location in the Soviet-occupied part of Germany (what later became communist East Germany), the U.S., British, and French sectors of Berlin were completely surrounded by the Soviet occupation zone. In 1948, the Soviet Union restricted access into West Berlin in 1948 by setting up blockades into the city. As of June 24, the city was not accessible by road, train, or canal. It had enough coal to last forty-five days and enough food to last thirty-six days. President Truman had to maintain a Western presence in the city if the Marshall Plan was to be successful. On June 26, he officially approved what became known as the Berlin airlift. During the airlift, which lasted 321 days, planes delivered daily supplies of coal, food, and other necessities to the more than two million people living in Berlin behind the blockade. By May 12, 1949—the end of the airlift—1,592,787 tons of supplies had been delivered to

Berlin. It was a magnificent achievement that cost very few lives. When the Soviet Union realized that the airlift could continue indefinitely, Stalin was forced to back down and remove the blockades.

A divided Germany

When the United States refused to give the Soviet Union some western German factories as war reparations (compensation paid for damages caused by war), the Soviets reacted by securing their occupation zone, eastern Germany, as a communist state. On September 21, 1949, the former Allied countries declared their zones in western Germany the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany), and set about paving the way for civilian control. A furious Soviet Union soon did the same, announcing on October 7 the formal German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany). Germany was now divided by what Great Britain's leader, Winston Churchill (1874–1965), called the Iron Curtain.

The year 1949 also saw the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the purpose of which was to defend Western Europe against the spread of communism. The United States joined eleven other countries in the effort. In response, the Communist bloc formed the Warsaw Treaty Pact in 1955.

The spread of the Cold War

The Cold War spread to Asia in 1950, the year the Soviet Union negotiated an alliance with China. Communist North Korea attacked South Korea and started the Korean War (1950–53). The United States assisted South Korea by helping to establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and providing neutral Asian countries with military support.

Stalin's death in 1953 eased Cold War tensions. Both the Soviets and the Americans had developed an atomic bomb in 1949, but the possibility of a ban on nuclear weapons now seemed likely. Relations became strained again in 1957, however, with the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik. The two countries now competed in missile production and space exploration. Officials from both countries threatened retaliation for any aggression on the other's part. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America continued to struggle with the Cold War. Both the United States and the Soviet Union provided military and financial support to often corrupt and brutal regimes in these areas in hopes of securing their allegiance.

In 1961, East Germany built the Berlin Wall along the boundary separating East Berlin from West Berlin. In addition, the entire length of the boundary between East and West Germany was closed off by walls, chain-link fences, barbed wire, or minefields. The purpose of the walls and fences was to keep East Germans from moving to West Germany.

When the United States discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba in 1962, President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) sent U.S. ships to intercept Soviet vessels carrying rockets to Cuba. This event became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis , and it led to the eventual agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States for a ban on nuclear testing.

Both superpowers began to weaken as alliances deteriorated. The United States became involved in the Vietnam War (1954–75) and made great efforts to help the South Vietnamese government fight communist North Vietnam. Early in the 1970s, U.S. president Richard Nixon

(1913–94; served 1969–74) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) with the Soviet Union to reduce the need for spending money on weapons. The two countries also agreed to strengthen economic bonds; this period of relief was known as détente. Tensions resumed when political clashes erupted in the Middle East, Angola, and Chile as the two superpowers competed for influence in those war-torn areas.

The end is near

President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; served 1981–89) antagonized the Soviet Union in the early 1980s by calling the country the “evil empire.” He increased military spending and intensified the nuclear arms race as well. After Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (1906–82) exercised his authority against Poland, Reagan imposed economic sanctions against the Soviet Union. Relations between the two superpowers were the worst they had been since the late 1940s.

When Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–) took office in Moscow in 1985, tensions began to ease. He made major economic reforms that encouraged restructuring and openness within the European communist countries. Although his intention was to implement these reforms gradually, they had a major impact almost immediately. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. The same year, the United States accepted military arms and economic agreements, and Gorbachev announced that the postwar period was over.

By 1990, many communist governments in Europe had been overthrown. The dissolution of the Soviet Union into fifteen independent states in December 1991 put an end to the Cold War.