- [Professor Gore] Hello, students.
This is Professor Gore
and this is the first recorded lecture
for Module Three and in this first part
we're going to be talking about kind of
what causes the Cold War.
Then we're going to talk
about the early events
of the Cold War through the Korean War,
which was a brief war
but still was very bloody
and pretty nasty.
It's kind of almost a
forgotten American war
of the 20th century and so forth.
But it's a very important
part of American history
and for the 20th century as well.
I want to start out this
lecture kind of showing you
some little funny things that came out
in the late '40s, early '50s.
For instance, this one, yeah,
I want to fight communism
but how?
With truth dollars.
Trying to get money, raise money
to try to root out communism
in the country and so forth.
Captain America, which
was the first comic book
created in the United States.
Originally, Captain
America was fighting Nazis
during World War II but
then after World War II,
now he's a commie smasher.
You can see kind of how the
Cold War even shapes culture
and so forth.
This was a funny thing,
better dead than red.
Then this was actually a movie
that came out at the time,
starring Robert Ryan as a famous actor,
I Married a Communist.
Oh, and he's a spousal abuser as well.
What exactly caused the Cold
War to happen and so forth?
It really, if you look at,
both sides are to blame
for the Cold War, certainly,
but Stalin is what,
his action is what started it.
Stalin was distrustful of
the US and Great Britain
during World War II because of,
the United States and Great
Britain not opening up
the second front of France
until the summer of 1944.
It took a lot of planning
for that invasion,
the largest invasion ever
assembled in world history
to be successful.
Of course, the United States
had much smaller invasions
and D-days and so forth
and specific to here
that were no less well-planned out or,
probably more planning went
into the invasion of Normandy
but certainly the bravery was the same
on the storming of the
beaches against the Japanese
as it was against the Germans and France.
But Stalin was distrustful.
But at the Yalta Conference,
Stalin had promised FDR and Churchill
that he was going to allow free elections,
particularly in Poland and Eastern Europe.
You've got to remember,
Stalin and the Soviet Union
invaded Poland ruthlessly in 1939.
Stalin also had taken prisoner
about 2500 Polish military officers
despite Poland having surrendered
and he had them liquidated
which caused quite a bit of controversy.
Because the US and Great Britain
didn't want to spark
another war after fighting
a really nasty World War II,
they didn't take disciplinary actions
against the Soviet Union
because of what had just
happened with World War II.
But certainly Stalin and the Soviet NKVD
should have been held accountable.
The problem is just the timing of it.
You don't want to fight another
war with the Soviet Union
right after World War II,
which would have led to
more and more loss of life.
But when the Soviet Army had
come in in Eastern Europe
and liberated those countries
like Ukraine and Belarus
and Poland and Yugoslavia and others,
they pushed for communism
in those countries.
I mentioned this previously
in one of the World War II lectures
but they are going to,
between 1945 and 1948,
prevent free elections.
The communists would murder
some of the democratic party leaders
in terms of pushing for
free elections and democracy
and so forth.
They also would run them
out of town and so forth.
Another thing that was
particularly tragic,
as my parents always used to say,
two wrongs don't make a
right, to punish the Germans
from what had happened
during World War II,
there was quite a few
German-speaking people
that were in Eastern Europe,
they were persecuted severely
in some Eastern European countries.
In fact, in Poland they were moved into
the same concentration
camps that the Germans
had held Jews and gypsies and so forth
and other Polish people
in concentration camps.
They drove them out of their country
and so it led to the
biggest refugee crisis
of the 20th century, not just with Germans
but a lot of different people groups
from what had happened.
The war was the worst war
ever fought in world history
in terms of loss of life and displacement.
But particularly when
Potsdam Conference happened
in the summer of 1945 and
Truman kind of threatened Stalin
that you need to allow
free elections in Poland
when Stalin doesn't, we
end up having a Cold War
with the Soviet Union from 1945
until the end of the Soviet
Union, technically in 1991,
but really it really
starts to end in 1989.
You get kind of a two
and a half year period
the Cold War actually ends.
But during the Cold War,
a lot is going to happen
in the United States.
You're going to have a
confident nation emerge.
You're going to have 60% of the country
going to be in the middle class
and you're going to have
the number one economy
in the world at one point.
Massive consumer spending.
You're also going to have
the Civil Rights movement
so there was a ton going
on after World War II.
And World War II,
both in world history
and American history,
is the greatest turning point
of the 20th century by far.
So much stuff happens in the war
and then also in the
United States as well.
We're going to talk about
all these different things
throughout this module.
Truman is going to be the
first Cold War president.
He actually, when he leaves office,
was a pretty unpopular president.
But history has gone back and
looked at Truman's presidency
and he actually is
recognized and is seen as
one of our better
foreign policy presidents
of the 20th century and
he is now more praised
in American history than he
was while his time in office.
Here's some kind of, some
important figure heads
during the Cold War and
we'll talk about this
throughout Module Three and
into part of Module Four
in the 1980s.
For instance, this right here
is Soviet tank commanders
going in Afghanistan,
what happens in 1979,
but they're occupied and pull out in 1988
out of Afghanistan and so forth.
What exactly was the Cold War?
It was a period of
heightened tensions, okay?
The Soviet Union and the United States
never actually officially go to war.
There is an arms race
where they both try to one-up each other
with building military weapons.
It was also a space race
where they're trying to race
to see who can get into outer space first,
who can get to the moon first,
and also media competition
where they would,
you have democratic radio
stations in Western Europe
blasting in Eastern Europe
how evil communism is
and then vice-versa, radio
stations in Eastern Europe
blasting into Western Europe
how evil capitalism is.
You see this happen, I
like to tell students
it's kind of a one-up competition.
The Soviet Union and the United States
are constantly trying
to one-up each other.
Oh, you did this?
Oh, well I'm going to do this
better than you, and so forth.
Both countries are
going to fight different
and different areas of the Cold War
but they never actually fought each other.
We're going to talk about proxy wars
versus full head-on wars.
This is US and the Soviet
Union, I want to repeat this,
never actually fight each other
head-on during the Cold War.
They came very close with
the Cuban Missile Crisis
but they never actually
did and in the 1980s
there was a computer malfunction that
where you almost had a nuclear
war take place as well.
But it's kind of a lesser known event
and it was kept hidden for a while.
But they are both are
going to fight proxy wars
and these are wars where
they don't actually
directly fight each other but
they fight in other conflicts
to expand either democracy or communism.
For instance, the Soviet Union
is going to fight in
Afghanistan as a proxy war
starting in 1979 through part of the '80s.
The United States is going
to fight a proxy war in Korea
to protect South Korea from
the invasion of North Korea.
Then also, the United
States is going to fight
a proxy war in Vietnam.
Those are indirect conflicts,
but not direct conflicts.
No actual war between the
two countries were fought.
You want to probably
underline that in your notes.
It goes from kind of late
1945, early beginning of 1946,
when the Soviet Union doesn't
allow free elections in Poland
all the way to the collapse
of the Soviet Union in 1991.
We've covered Yalta in
the World War II lecture
but let's kind of go over the highlights.
It does create a UN.
Germany is going to be
divided up into four zones.
We'll talk about how that's going to be
where the center of the Cold
War conflict is in Germany.
Four zones for Berlin as well.
You're going to have economic
and political tensions here as well.
The Soviet goals is they want
to build up Eastern Europe
as kind of a buffer zone
between themselves and Germany.
You've got to realize the
Soviet Union had been,
or Russia and then the Soviet Union,
had been invaded by Germany twice,
once in 1914 throughout World War I
and then in 1941 in World War II.
The Soviet Union wanted
a kind of a buffer state
where these countries would
be loyal to the Soviet Union.
They would get attacked first
while the Soviet Union could prepare
if Germany ever invaded again.
Germany does not and
they're relatively pacifists
to this day.
Stalin kind of called
them satellite nations.
Like a satellite rotates around the globe,
the satellite nations are going to rotate
around the Soviet Union.
Also, they wanted to
promote and spread communism
throughout the world.
It was without question,
the Soviet Union did
try to spread communism
into other parts of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America.
American goals are,
they want to spread
democracy and capitalism.
They wanted to expand American markets
for a great economic opportunity oversees
so they wanted capitalism that does that.
They wanted to stop the
expansion of communism.
The Soviet Union wants to stop
the expansion of capitalism,
America wants, or the
United States wants to stop
the expansion of communism.
Pretty simple there.
Thankfully none of these
countries actually go to war
against each other directly.
Otherwise, we probably
wouldn't be sitting here today.
But we're going to talk about
the arms race and space race as well.
It's kind of democracy and
capitalism versus communism.
Now, Winston Churchill,
after he was voted out of
the office as prime minister,
traveled to the United States
and at the University of
Missouri gave a famous speech
where he said that an iron curtain
has descended upon Europe.
What he's referring to
is this iron curtain
is going to be division
between communist countries
and Eastern Europe while the Soviet Union
versus the democratic capitalistic nations
of Western Europe.
Now, you look at some of these countries
are not really affiliated with that
because you have NATO
versus the Warsaw Pact.
Yugoslavia is a unique country.
They are communist but
they don't ally themselves
with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.
You look at Switzerland,
a capitalistic country
but it doesn't ally itself in NATO.
Switzerland's always kind of chilling
and making lots of money
off of other countries
with their investment banking system.
You look at these areas of
the world are going to be
either allied to the US or
allied to the Soviet Union.
You can see this region right here
is allied with the Soviet Union
along with some other areas
like North Vietnam, North Korea.
You're going to have, later
you're going to have Cuba,
who is going to be allied to
the Soviet Union and so forth.
Then later you're going to
have different African nations
that are going to eventually
become communist as well
and then some are not.
Stalin, one of the things
that made Stalin difficult,
later his successor, Nikita
Khrushchev, is not like this,
he said that capitalism and communism
could peacefully coexist but Stalin argued
that it never could.
Communism doesn't allow
freedom of religion.
In fact, Stalin had
suppressed religion big time
in the Soviet Union.
Then during the war he allowed
Eastern Orthodox Christian
churches to open back up
and then he shut them back
down right after the war
and so forth.
The, it is a state-run economy.
The government controls everything.
It is a one-party system, no
private ownership of land,
and there's no freedom
of speech or the press.
The US is the opposite of that.
Now, so we talked about
the Cold War beginning.
Also the Soviet Union
wanted to try to capture
some of the oil areas of
Iran and, particularly,
two of the earliest
conflicts in the Cold War
is going to be Greece and Turkey
because the Soviet Union was
pressuring Turkey and Greece
to become communist nations.
We're going to talk
about how that plays out.
Now, what is going to be the policy
for the United States under Truman,
and historians have gone back
and looked at Truman's policy
and it was very wise, is
he is going to advocate
for a containment.
Now, he didn't come up with that.
An American ambassador to the Soviet Union
named George F. Kennan,
Kennan, a containment,
he's going to advocate
that the United States
should just try to contain
the spread of communism
and so forth.
What he's advocating for is,
it's kind of like I use this analogy.
Let's say you spill a
cup of water on a table.
When you go to clean it up,
you don't grab a table and put,
or grab a towel and put it
right in the middle of the table
and cause more water
to spill off the table.
What you do is you try to
stop it from spreading first.
You stop it from going
off, running off the table,
and then you eventually
clean it up and so forth.
But what the policy of containment is,
you don't confront
communism head on, okay,
you just contain its spread, okay,
try to prevent it from going
into new areas such as China
or South Korea or South Vietnam
and eventually communism
will collapse from within.
Now, Kennan's prediction came
true because it does collapse
in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
starting in 1989 until 1991.
It was long dead since then
but his prediction came accurate.
That's why we don't have World War III
is that we don't typically
confront them head on.
Eisenhower is a little more aggressive.
Kennedy wanted to be a
little more aggressive.
Johnson not as, not quite
as much except for Vietnam.
Then Nixon is going to be a little more
not confronting communism head
on and neither will Carter.
Reagan is going to kind of
try to confront communism
a little more head on in the 1980s.
You've got to know what
containment is and so forth.
We're going to talk about
each of these things,
the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall
Plan, the Berlin Airlift,
and NATO.
This is an important
slide that you may want to
either print off or take,
definitely take notes on.
That's what Truman's policy is going to be
is containment and it
really kind of continues,
for the most part, throughout the Cold War
for other presidents.
One of the things that Truman
is going to have passed
or Congress is going to pass
is what's called the
National Security Act.
It does create the
Department of Defense, okay,
which we still have that
department in our government today.
It plays a very important role.
Also, the president is going to establish
the National Security Council.
The president still has that today
where it gives advice on the
president's security matters
and they, because the president
can't physically do everything,
you've got to have great
people to work under you
to be effective and it
expands and that's their role
is to look at national security worldwide.
Of course, the CIA, this
was our main intelligence
during the war and now it is the CIA.
The Soviet Union had
originally created the NKVD
but after World War II,
they changed it to the KGB.
You're going to see
lots of spying going on
between the CIA and the KGB.
Also, the Voice of America
is going to be created
to radio broadcast about
the evils of communism
in Eastern Europe and then, of course,
you're going to have Radio Moscow
blasting into Western Europe
how bad capitalism is.
Also, Congress brought
back the military draft
and so there's going
to be an American draft
basically from 1940
through the early 1970s
when eventually the draft ends
at the end of the
Vietnam War and so forth.
If you're an 18, once you turn 18,
as a male citizen of the United States,
you are required to register
for the selective service.
I had to do it when I turned 18.
It doesn't mean you're
going to be drafted,
it just means if the
draft ever comes back,
you could potentially
be drafted and so forth.
Let's look at the Truman Doctrine,
the first attempt at
containment in American history.
What ends up happening is Stalin, who,
they controlled the northern
part of the Black Sea
with Ukraine and Russia here.
You've got Ukraine right here
and then Russia up here today.
They wanted to control
completely this strait right here
through present day Turkey
and so Greece and Turkey
allowed you to do that.
The communist parties were trying to kill
the democratic leaders and so forth there
and you had other problems.
What Truman says is that, look, with,
it's called the Truman Doctrine,
that we're going to
pledge financial support
to any nation that's
actively resisting communism.
How you remember the Truman Doctrine
it's what you have for
Thanksgiving, greasy turkey,
okay, Greece and Turkey.
The United States gives
$400 million dollars
to help Greece and Turkey remain
democratic and guess what?
They are democratic to this day.
The Truman Doctrine is
a thumbs-up success.
It prevents the Soviet
Union for complete control
of the Black Sea and
the Dardanelles Strait
and so the Truman Doctrine is a success.
Way to go, Harry S. Truman.
Now, George Marshall
was a five-star general
during World War II and
had retired from that role
and actually was asked by Truman
to be his Secretary of State.
Now, George C. Marshall
in the 20th century
is one of our best and most
famous Secretaries of State.
You have to really know the Marshall Plan.
It is going to be on a quiz.
Typically it will be on your test
so it's very important to
know the Marshall Plan.
It was an overwhelming success.
I have never heard a historian
say the Marshall Plan
was not a success.
It doesn't matter the historian's views,
the Marshall Plan is successful.
What it was is Western
Europe is in shambles
from World War II and
Marshall's like, hey,
communism doesn't happen
in good economic times,
it always happens in bad economic times.
We need to give money to
Western European countries
to rebuild.
They can hire workers,
get them out of this terrible depression
that they're in after World War II,
and they can rebuild their country
and then that will keep
communism from spreading there.
It works brilliantly.
The US gives $13 billion dollars
to various Western European countries.
It leaves a legacy of European friendship
that lasts all the way today.
And it's a double thumbs-up success
and Stalin is very
frustrated because he offers
what is called the Molotov Plan
to try to give communist dollars
to those Western European
countries and they reject it.
None of those countries in
Western Europe become communist
and it works brilliantly.
Applaud George C. Marshall,
the Marshall Plan in
Congress voting to pass it
because today it is
seen as very successful.
You can see how much money was given
and as a result of this money,
it's works brilliantly economically.
Thirty-three and a half percent increase
in the Gross National
Product for those countries.
It's without question it was successful.
I love this political cartoon.
Stalin can't block the Marshall Plan
even though he offers a Molotov
Plan and it was rejected.
Take that Stalin.
Now the Berlin Blockade
was another conflict
that emerged in the Cold War
and Truman handles brilliantly as well.
This is another reason
why Truman is praised
since his death in American history.
Stalin is frustrated
because Berlin is in the
middle of East Germany.
There was four divided zones of Germany.
The British, the French,
and the American sectors of
West Germany end up uniting
to create a country of West Germany
and West Germany actually joins NATO,
which I'll cover later.
Berlin, though, was divided
up into a British, French,
American, and Soviet zone and
it's also West Berlin combines
and then East Berlin is part of Germany.
A lot of the Germans wanted
to get the heck out of
communist East Germany
because Soviet Union forces
had to be communist.
In fact, East Germany's
going to be very poor
throughout all of the Cold War
while West Germany's
going to be very wealthy
because of capitalism and democracy.
A lot of Germans were
escaping West Germany
through West Berlin.
They would get to West
Berlin and they would either
catch a flight or a train to West Germany.
Stalin was livid about this.
He wanted the allies in Western Europe
to give up West Berlin so what he did
is he blockaded it where
it prevented people
from coming in and out
and he was going to
starve out the Berliners
to basically abandon the Western Europeans
and the United States and
become part of East Germany.
Stalin, or sorry, Truman
has three options.
He can either A) give in to
Stalin and let him have Berlin,
which probably would send a
message that the Soviet Union
could do other, more aggressive measures
and expand communism to other countries.
Or Option B, he could confront
the Soviet Union head-on
and have World War III and
let thousands and millions
of loss of life.
Or he could do Option C and outsmart them.
As you can imagine, he goes with Option C
and he doesn't confront him head-on
but he's not going to give in either
so what he does is for about a
year, it was about 11 months,
the United States,
around the clock, takes,
has planes take off from West Germany
and they drop in supplies
everyday to West Berlin.
He doesn't starve them out,
he doesn't allow them to starve out
and Stalin is kind of tied
with his hands behind his back
and he can't do anything.
He also doesn't want a World War III
and he's forced to abandon
the blockade of Berlin.
It's, Truman brilliantly outsmarts Stalin
and it's one of my favorite
moments of the 20th century
because anytime Stalin
looks like an idiot,
it's a good day for the United
States during the Cold War.
Stalin backs down and the Berlin
Airlift worked brilliantly.
Milk, a new weapon of democracy.
Dropping off milk and so forth.
The Berlin Airlift is a Cold War success
for the United States.
Now, what was not a Cold War
success is the, same year,
is two things happened.
One, China falls to communism,
which I'll cover a little bit later.
And then also, the Soviet
Union successfully tests
their first atomic bomb.
Now, we knew the Soviet
Union was going to acquire
atomic weapon but we thought
it would probably take
until 1951, maybe 1952ish to develop it.
They develop it much sooner than that
because Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
gave away nuclear secrets
to the Soviets.
Now it, critics at the
time argued that they were
falsely accused and so forth
but one of the things that
happens in the mid-1990s
when the KGB released their, well,
the former KGB released
their Soviet era records,
it is uncovered that there were paid spies
on the Soviet payrolls and the
Rosenbergs was one of them.
Another one was Alger Hiss.
We'll cover Alger Hiss later
with the second red scare.
They are tried with espionage,
are convicted in 1953,
and they're both actually electrocuted.
Now what ends up
happening once the Soviets
test their first atomic
bomb, it leads to a panic.
Americans are like, holy cow!
If the Soviet Union have an
atomic bomb, they can bomb us.
That's where you start
seeing these Cold War era,
these Cold War era bomb
drills and so forth
where people were
getting under their desks
and they called them duck and
cover drills and so forth.
What ends up happening with this
kind of testing of the Soviet
Union's first atomic bomb,
it leads to what's called
MAD, not to confuse it
with the comedy show.
But Mutual Assured Destruction.
If you, if the Soviet Union attacked us,
we're going to attack them back
and we're both going to
destroy each other, okay,
and vice versa.
If we attacked them,
they would destroy us.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed
even in the Cuban Missile Crisis
that neither one pulls the trigger.
The US tests our first hydrogen bomb,
which is far bigger than the
original atomic bomb in 1952
and the Soviets did
the same thing in 1953.
It's a one-up competition
with this arms race.
Arms race is referring to the
build up of military weapons.
Now, one of the things
that's going to lead to
post-war prosperity economically
is a massive spending bill.
It was a deficit spending bill.
Also, it increased taxes in the country.
It's called NSC-68.
All that stands for National
Security Council-68.
It proposed a tax increase and
a massive government spending
on the military and so you had
tons of defense contractors
such as Lockheed Martin, L3,
and many others, Raytheon,
Washton, Demilitarization and others
that are going to benefit
from these massive government projects
and it led to tons of
jobs in the United States
and great economic prosperity.
The problem is though, in
order for that to continue,
you're going to have to continue
that kind of military spending.
When the United States stops
doing that in the early 1990s,
we're going to have a
recession as a result of that.
The reason why it's passed by Congress
is it's seen as anti-communist.
Now, I originally was going to cover
China falling to communism
in the Korean War
in this lecture but I've
gone a little bit long
and so I'm going to cover
this in Part Two of this.
