The Cold War

From peace to a split

On October 24, 1945, the United Nations (UN) was created to keep the peace. On the Security Council, five permanent members (the United States, the USSR, the United Kingdom, France, and China) have a veto: each one can block a decision on its own.

But the two superpowers distrusted each other. The Red Army occupied Eastern Europe, where Stalin‘s USSR set up communist regimes. On March 5, 1946, former British Prime Minister Churchill said that an “Iron Curtain” had cut Europe in two.

1947: two camps face to face

On March 12, 1947, US President Truman promised to help free peoples threatened by communism: this was the policy of containment. On June 5, 1947, his Secretary of State, George Marshall, proposed a large aid program to rebuild Europe: the Marshall Plan. The USSR refused it and banned it in the countries it controlled.

In September 1947, the Soviet leader Zhdanov replied that the world was divided into two camps. Each side organized itself: NATO (April 4, 1949) brought together the United States and its Western European allies; the Warsaw Pact (May 14, 1955), the USSR and the people’s democracies.

Two models, a rivalry on every front

In the West, around the United States: liberal democracy, with free elections and several parties, and a market economy. In the East, around the USSR: people’s democracy, where the communist party alone holds power, and a planned economy, where the state decides what is produced.

Each camp wanted to prove it was the best, through propaganda (posters, films, radio), the nuclear arms race, and the space race: on October 4, 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite.

The Berlin Blockade

After the war, Germany was divided into four occupation zones (American, British, French, and Soviet), and its capital, Berlin, into four sectors. But Berlin lay in the middle of the Soviet zone.

In June 1948, the Western powers introduced a new currency in their zones and in West Berlin. On June 24, 1948, the USSR cut all the roads, railways, and canals to West Berlin: this was the blockade. The Western powers supplied the city by an airlift. The USSR lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949.

Two Germanys

The blockade sped up the division of Germany. On May 23, 1949, the Western zones became the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany); on October 7, 1949, the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), a communist state. West Berlin remained a Western enclave in the heart of East Germany.

The Korean War, a “hot” conflict

Korea was cut in two along the 38th parallel: in the North, a communist regime backed by the USSR; in the South, a regime backed by the United States. On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded the South.

The UN sent soldiers from many countries, under the command of US General MacArthur; the USSR, which was then boycotting the Security Council, could not prevent it. In late 1950, communist China sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to help the North. On July 27, 1953, an armistice stopped the fighting, near the 38th parallel; no peace treaty was signed.

The Berlin Wall

Every year, more than a hundred thousand people fled East Germany for the West, often through Berlin. During the night of August 12 to August 13, 1961, the East German authorities cut the city in two with barbed wire, soon replaced by a wall. They called it the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart,” but its real purpose was to stop people in the East from fleeing.

Families and friends were separated overnight. The Wall became the symbol of the Cold War.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

In 1959, Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, an island 150 km (90 miles) from the United States, and moved closer to the USSR. On October 14, 1962, an American U-2 spy plane photographed Soviet missile sites in Cuba, able to reach the United States. President Kennedy was informed on October 16. On October 22, he announced a naval blockade of the island.

For several days, the world feared a nuclear war. On October 28, 1962, the Soviet leader Khrushchev announced the withdrawal of the missiles. In return, the United States promised not to invade Cuba and, more quietly, removed its Jupiter missiles from Turkey and Italy.

The balance of terror

Each of the two superpowers had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other: neither dared to strike first. This was the balance of terror, or deterrence.

After the Cuban crisis, Washington and Moscow set up a direct line to talk quickly in a crisis. It was not a telephone, but a teletype line, which sent written messages; it worked from August 30, 1963.