1001GIR Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Berlin Blockade, Mao Zedong, Berlin Wall
4 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
L4. Cold War and Decolonisation
Cold War
• The Cold War (1947-89)
• Why? US and Soviets had been allies in WW2
• Consolidation of Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe
• Soviet Union occupies large parts of Europe following WW2, which the US
hoped would be organised democratically, but this did not happen and
created the Eastern Bloc
• Soviet support for communist insurgencies in Greece and Turkey
• Britain was supposed to be in control of Greece and Turkey and believed
that the Soviet Union was behind communist insurgencies there
• Suspicion due to different political ideologies (capitalism vs communism)
• Truman Doctrine (12 March 1947)
• The imposition of totalitarian regimes on "free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression,
undermine[s] the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United
States". The USA would support "free peoples" who were resisting "subjugation by
armed minorities or by outside pressures"
Harry S. Truman, 'Special Message to the Congress on Greece and Turkey:
the Truman Doctrine', 12 Mar. 1947, Public Papers of the Presidents, 1947,
p.178
• Communism poses a direct threat to US security
• All countries must be democratic in order to diminish the threat
• Interventionism vs isolationism
• Foundations of US policy of containment
• US policy of 'containment'
• Initially called 'strong-point' containment
• Containing communist expansion (George F. Kennan)
• Keeping the Soviet Union out of Western Europe, the Middle East and Japan
• Firm application of containment would avoid WW3 and collapse the Soviet Union
• Marshall Plan (1947)
• Rebuild Europe after war, reduced risk of countries becoming communist and increased
chance of creating market relationships with the US
• Berlin Blockade (1948-49)
• Soviet Union explodes atom bomb (1949)
• Makes the US and the Soviet Union even in weapon capabilities
• Chinese Revolution (Mao Zedong declares the People's Republic of China, 1 Oct. 1949)
• Chinese nationalists vs Chinese communists
• Communists win
• Korean War (1950-53)
• 50s-60s were the height of the Cold War
• North Korean forces invade South Korea to attempt to unify the country with
communism
• UN removed North Korean forces from South Korea (counter-invasion)
• After Korean War, US pledged to never involve itself in a ground war in Asia again
• Soviet troops put down Hungarian revolution (1956)
• Berlin Wall (August 1961)
• To prevent people from leaving the East sector for the West
Cold War Alliances
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