Cold War

Though ideological enemies, the Soviet Union and the United States are allies against Hitler during World War II. At the end of the War, Europe is divided and the one-time allies now confront each other. The United States has the atomic bomb.

The Soviet Union dominates Eastern Europe. Churchill warns about the consequences. Stalin insists that the governments of the Soviet Union's client states be pro-Communist. Impoverished after the war, Great Britain opts out as a world power. The United States assumes the mantle of world leadership.

The United States adopts the Truman Doctrine--it will defend freedom, worldwide. Secretary of State George Marshall plans to bolster economic recovery in Europe. Stalin sees this as a threat, and forbids his satellites to participate. The world divides.

Berlin is a Western enclave in Eastern Europe. The Soviets blockade the city, but the allies airlift in supplies. NATO is formed. In August 1949, Soviet scientists explode an atom bomb, establishing nuclear parity between the two world superpowers.

Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China--the country is now lost to the West. In June 1950, North Korea invades the South, with Stalin's blessing. The United States, backed by the United Nations, defends South Korea and confronts China. Use of atomic weapons is considered, but rejected. Aggression has been contained. Japan's economy is revitalized. There is stalemate at Panmunjom.

The world is polarized across an ideological divide. Following Stalin's domination of Eastern Europe, and the loss of China, American democracy succumbs to a bout of anti-communist hysteria, but survives it. Eisenhower is elected President. In the Soviet Union, Stalin reinforces the climate of terror on which his rule is based. When he dies, in 1953, the Soviet people mourn the end of an era.

Thaw is conceivable with Stalin dead and Eisenhower in the White House. Stalin's chief of secret police is arrested and shot. Krushchev outmaneuvers Malenkov, for power and visits the West. Germans, Poles, and Hungarians riot and rise against Soviet rule. In 1956, a coup in Budapest is suppressed by Russian tanks. The United States, pledged to contain Communism rather than overthrow it, does nothing.

In the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union seems to be forging ahead. In October 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik orbits the earth—to the dismay of the United States, which is frustrated with its own unsuccessful space program. John F. Kennedy is elected President and says he will see the United States first again. In 1961, the Soviets launch a man into space.

Stalin's death has brought about détente, but the fate of Germany is unresolved. West Germany is admitted to NATO. Thousands of East Germans escape to the West through Berlin. At the Vienna Summit in 1961, Khrushchev bullies the inexperienced Kennedy. The Soviets confirm the division of Germany. To keep their people in, the East Germans erect the wall.

Contemplating U.S. missile power installed around the Soviet periphery, Krushchev decides to install short and medium range missiles in Cuba, America's backyard. The sites are detected and the U.S. blockades the island. The two superpowers confront each other. Rather than launch nuclear war, they step back. It was close.

Since the end of the French colonial rule, Vietnam has been divided. The north is run by Communists, the south by anti-Communists. Ignoring warnings against involvement in a nationalist struggle, the United States commits its armed forces: more than half a million men by 1968. As the body bags come home, American protests against the war mount. The U.S. embassy in Saigon is briefly captured during the Tet offensive. The United States realizes this is not a war it can win.

The USA and the USSR confront each other, each armed with nuclear weapons. Each side must deter the other. Bombing the enemy could mean provoking retaliation and self-destruction. Nuclear strategy evolves into Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, in which both sides are guaranteed certain annihilation in the event of nuclear war.

Western Economies grow and prosper, fueled partly by armaments production. Rejecting their parents' affluence and the Cold War, the young protest and rebel. There is racial violence in U.S. inner cities. Rock music expresses the mood of a disenchanted generation.

In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, denial of freedom and incentive stifles ambition and achievement. The young lust for totems of America's youth culture--blue jeans and rock-and-roll. Those who work for the Soviet military industrial complex prosper. Those who do not stagnate. Defense expenditure cripples economic growth in the Soviet Union. As Communist states ponder liberalization, Czechoslovakia, under Dubcek, tries it. In August 1968, Soviet tanks crush the Prague Spring.

Chinese Communists are victorious in the longest civil war in 20th century history. Mao Zedong's reforms are popular, but in 1958, he embarks on a series of catastrophic changes. A famine that kills 30 million people follows. In 1966, the Red Guards brandish the "Thoughts of Chairman Mao." China's relationship with the Soviet union is uneasy. The Sino-Soviet split comes in 1960 and by 1969, they are almost at war. China responds positively to the United States. In 1972, President Richard Nixon makes his historic visit to Beijing.

The North Vietnamese overwhelm U.S.-backed forces in the South and the United States steps up its bombing campaign. Nixon goes to the Kremlin to meet Brezhnev and signs the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). Kissinger negotiates with North Vietnam and proclaims, "Peace is at hand." Nixon is re-elected, and the United States finally withdraws from Vietnam. In Europe, rapprochement between East and West culminates in the Helsinki Accord. Apollo and Soyuz meet in space.

Across the world, the two superpowers back surrogates engaging in ideological and, sometimes, physical conflict. In the Middle East, the United States arms Israel; the Soviet Union arms Syria and Egypt. In 1967 and 1973, the two weapons systems clash. Israel, backed by the United States, triumphs. In Africa, the Soviets exploit nationalist, anti-colonialist struggles. Right-wing, corrupt dictatorships are supported by the United States in its battle against communism.

The United States has always regarded Latin America as its own back yard. In 1954, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz is overthrown by U.S.-backed forces. Arbenz is leftist, not Communist. The United States seeks to destabilize leftist governments and aligns itself with governments on the right, no matter how unsavory. In 1973, the CIA helps overthrow Chilean President Salvador Allende. Beginning in 1979, the United States gives aid to Nicaraguan counter revolutionaries, the Contras. In the 1980s, it supports right-wing extremists in El Salvador. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan sends in the marines to overthrow the government in Grenada.

As the United States absorbs the hike in OPEC oil prices and concerns for human rights in the East grows, the spirit of détente ebbs away. In 1977, the Soviets install SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe, and the United States counters by planning to install Pershing and cruise missiles across Europe. In Poland, Solidarity rises--strikes for reforms increase. General Wojciech Jaruzelski is appointed Prime Minister and proclaims martial law. "America," says Ronald Reagan, "has lost faith in itself." He is elected President.

Afghanistan is a brutal war that costs the lives of almost 15,000 Soviet conscripts and an estimated one million Afghans. "It was the Soviet Union's Vietnam syndrome," says Soviet aide Anatoly Chernyaev. The U.S. supplies billions of dollars of weapons to unlikely allies -- Islamic fundamentalists. The result is a Vietnam-style conflict which takes its toll on the Soviets and hastens the end of the Cold War.

Even before the end of World War II, spies prepare for post-war world order. Beginning in 1944, KGB spies infiltrate Los Alamos, stealing information about the atomic bomb. Early CIA attempts to penetrate the Iron Curtain are thwarted, in part due to KGB spies within British intelligence. The United States compensates for its lack of human agents within the Soviet Union through technological intelligence: the U-2 plane, satellite reconnaissance and electronic eavesdropping. Human spies, however retain a central role--betrayed and captured, some pay with their lives. The Cold War intelligence story ends with Aldrich Ames. He spied for money and is jailed for life.

Ronald Reagan pledges to defeat the "evil empire," but abhors the idea of nuclear war. He is prepared to increase arms expenditure significantly to protect the United States. Economically strong enough to bear the cost, the United States plans a strategic defense initiative, an anti-missile system in space. Mikhail Gorbachev knows that the Soviet Union cannot respond to Reagan's raising of the stakes and he desperately wants to liberalize the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union must opt out of the arms race it now knows it cannot win. After summits in Geneva, Reykjavik and Washington, Gorbachev and Reagan agree to slush arms stockpiles.

The dominoes fall: incredibly quickly, the Soviet bloc is breaking up, virtually without bloodshed. First Hungary, then Poland, then the German Democratic Republic slip away from Communist control--Gorbachev makes no effort to hold them back with force. Amid scenes of jubilation, the Berlin Wall—symbol of the Cold War--comes crashing down. Across Eastern Europe, the files of the secret police are pried open. The collapse of the empire forged by Stalin ushers in a new Europe.

The United States proves the stronger and the Soviet Union implodes. The balance of terror that has kept the peace in Europe for more than 40 years vanishes, but no new world order readily emerges. Politically and economically, the rest of Europe grows together. Germany is reunified. Shorn of its empire and no longer communist, Russia awaits its future with its economy in chaos. The United States counts the peace dividend and the social cost. The Cold War has ended without nuclear weapons being used.