Cold War - Major Events Review

Aim: What were the events & results of the Cold War, and how to they affect the world today?

Do Now: Define the term: Cold War

Lesson Overview:

Item	Approx Time
Do Now	3-5 Min
Mini Lesson	15-20 Min
Activity	20 Min
Discussion	20 Min

Cold War Major Events Overview

The Korean War

Cold War tensions between the United States and the USSR eventually exploded in Korea when Soviet-backed North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950. Determined not to let Communism spread in East Asia, Truman quadrupled military spending and ordered General MacArthur to retake the southern half of the peninsula. MacArthur succeeded and then pushed the North Koreans almost up to the Chinese border. Threatened, over a million soldiers from Communist China poured into Korea, forcing MacArthur to retreat back to the 38th parallel, which had originally divided North Korea from South Korea.

When MacArthur began to criticize Truman publicly for his unwillingness to use nuclear weapons in Korea, Truman was forced to fire his top general for insubordination. United States forces remained entrenched at the 38th parallel for two more years, at the cost of more than 50,000 American lives. Both sides declared a cease-fire only after the new U.S. president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, threatened to use nuclear weapons in 1953.

The Cuban Crises

Kennedy’s greatest Cold War challenge came in Cuba. Hoping to topple Cuba’s new pro-Communist revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, Kennedy authorized the CIA to train and arm a force of more than 1,000 Cuban exiles and sent them to invade Cuba in the spring of 1961. When this Bay of Pigs invasion failed embarrassingly, Kennedy authorized several unsuccessful assassination attempts against Castro. Outraged, Castro turned to the USSR for economic aid and protection.

Khrushchev capitalized on the opportunity and placed several nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy consequently blockaded the island nation, pushing the United States and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev ended the terrifying Cuban missile crisis when he agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for an end to the blockade. Kennedy also removed American missiles from Turkey and agreed to work on reducing Cold War tensions. Tragically, Kennedy was assassinated in late 1963, just as tensions were rising in Vietnam—which would prove to be the next, and most costly, theater of the Cold War.

Policy of Containment

A U.S. foreign policy doctrine that argued that the Soviet Union needed to be “contained” to prevent the spread of Communism throughout the world. First formulated by State Department analyst George Kennan during the Truman administration, it suggested that the United States needed to fight Communism abroad and promote democracy (or at least anti-Communist regimes) worldwide. Policy makers tied it closely with the domino theory. Kennan’s idea eventually developed into the single most important tenet of American foreign policy through the Cold War until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

An organization formed in 1949 that bound the United States, Canada, most of Western Europe, and later Greece and Turkey together in a mutual pact of defense against the USSR and Eastern bloc countries. The treaty had the additional effect of permanently tying American interests to political and economic stability in Europe.

The Space Race

The Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for primacy in the exploration of outer space. The space race was prompted by the USSR’s launch of the first orbiting space satellite, Sputnik I , in 1957. The Sputnik launch prompted President Eisenhower to form NASA and Kennedy to push for a lunar landing by the end of the 1960s.

Warsaw Pact

A pact signed by the USSR and Eastern European countries under Soviet influence in 1955. By signing the pact, they pledged mutual defense in response to the formation of NATO.

The Iron Curtain

Although the United States and the Marshall Plan controlled West Germany’s fate, Stalin dictated policy in occupied East Germany. Determined to build a buffer between Germany and Moscow, the Soviet Red Army established Communist governments in the eastern capitals it occupied at the end of the war. As a result, the USSR created an “iron curtain” that effectively separated East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Belarus, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania from the West.

The Berlin Crisis and Airlift

In 1948, Stalin attempted to drive British, French, and American forces out of Berlin by cutting off all highway and railway access to the Western-controlled portion of the city. Truman refused to withdraw U.S. troops; control of Berlin had become such an enormous symbol in the U.S.-Soviet standoff that Truman could not afford the political cost of caving under Stalin’s threats. Instead, he ordered American airplanes to drop millions of tons of food and medical supplies to West Berlin’s residents in 1948 and 1949. Americans and Europeans hailed the Berlin airlift as a major victory over the Soviet Union. Stalin eventually ended the Berlin crisis when he reopened the roads and railways in 1949.

The Arms Race

Also in 1949, Truman announced that the Soviet Union had successfully tested its first atomic bomb, sooner than American scientists had predicted. Even though it would have been difficult for the USSR to actually drop a nuclear bomb on U.S. soil—nuclear missiles would not be invented for another decade—the Soviets’ discovery cost Truman the diplomatic upper hand. Whereas the United States had lorded its nuclear superiority over the Soviets’ heads in the past, it could no longer do so.

To regain the upper hand, Truman poured federal dollars into the 1952 development of the hydrogen bomb, an even more devastating weapon than the original atomic bomb. Its developers feared this weapon would become a tool for genocide. The Soviet Union responded in kind with its own H-bomb the following year, ratcheting the stakes even higher. The United States and the USSR continued competing against each other with the development of greater and more destructive weapons in an arms race that lasted until the end of the Cold War.

The Vietnam War

In the Vietnam War which lasted from the mid-1950s until 1975 — the United States and the southern-based Republic of Vietnam (RVN) opposed the southern-based revolutionary movement known as the Viet Cong and its sponsor, the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the DRV, or North Vietnam). The war was the second of two major conflicts that spread throughout Indochina, with Vietnam as its focal point (see Vietnam). The First Indochina War was a struggle between Vietnamese nationalists and the French colonial regime aided by the United States. In the second war, the United States replaced France as the major contender against northern-based Communists and southern insurgents. Communist victory in 1975 had profound ramifications for the United States; it was not only a setback to the containment of communism in Asia but a shock to American self-confidence.

Classwork & Homework

Lesson Activity: Cold War Brainstorming Group Activity

Homework: Assignments