CHAPTER 24

The Cold War Dawns

1945–1963

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 The Perils of the Cold War

Americans, along with the rest of the world, lived under the threat of nuclear warfare during the tense years of the
Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. This 1951 civil defense poster, with the message “It can
happen Here,” suggests that Americans should be prepared for such a dire outcome.

CONTAINMENT IN A DIVIDED WORLD

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Origins of the Cold War
The Containment Strategy
Containment in Asia

COLD WAR LIBERALISM

Truman and the End of Reform
Red Scare: The Hunt for Communists
Modern Republicanism and the Liberal State

COLD WAR IN THE POSTCOLONIAL WORLD

Colonial Independence Movements
John F. Kennedy and Renewed East-West Tensions
Making a Commitment in Vietnam

LEARNING FOCUS
Why did the international rivalry of the Cold War create a climate of fear at home and how did it affect politics and society in
the United States?

In the autumn of 1950, a California congressman named Richard M. Nixon stood before reporters
in Los Angeles. The little-known Nixon was running for the Senate against his fellow House
member Helen Gahagan Douglas, a Hollywood actress and New Deal Democrat. Nixon told the
gathered journalists that Douglas had cast “Communist-leaning” votes and that she was “pink
right down to her underwear” — meaning nearly red, a symbol of communism. Douglas’s
congressional record was not much different from Nixon’s, but the accusation proved potent.
Nixon defeated the “pink lady” with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

A few months earlier, U.S. tanks and planes had arrived in French Indochina, a French colonial
possession comprised of present-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. President Harry S. Truman
authorized $15 million worth of military supplies to aid France, which was resisting an
independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh, a Vietnamese communist. According to Secretary
of State Dean Acheson, the military help was not meant to preserve France’s empire — but to
curtail the influence of communism. Both the Soviet Union and China were supporting Ho’s army.
“Neither national independence nor democratic evolution exists in any area dominated by Soviet
imperialism,” Acheson warned ominously as he announced the aid.

Though seemingly different events on the surface, Nixon’s political tactics in Los Angeles and
American military aid for the French empire in Vietnam were both part of the Cold War — the
geopolitical and ideological struggle between the capitalist, democratic United States and the

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communist, authoritarian Soviet Union. Both also signaled the return of heightened
anticommunism to the center of American political life. Beginning in Europe as World War II
ended and extending to Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa by the mid-1950s, the
Cold War reshaped international relations and dominated global politics for more than forty years
(see “Comparing Interpretations”).

As the scope and stakes of the Cold War became clear, the rivalry between the United States and
Soviet Union affected Americans at home in a number of ways. A hostility to “subversives” in
government, education, and the media gripped the United States. The escalating arms race
between the two superpowers prompted Congress to spend heavily on defense, and gave rise to
the military-industrial complex, the loose alliance between the Defense Department and the
network of large corporations that built planes, munitions, and electronic devices. In politics,
anticommunism challenged the liberal agenda of the New Deal coalition. The international and
the domestic began to run together, a process that has continued into the twenty-first century as
an enduring legacy of the Cold War.

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CONTAINMENT IN A DIVIDED WORLD
What primary factors caused the Cold War?

The Cold War followed on the heels of World War II and ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the
Soviet Union. This protracted conflict placed two far-reaching questions at the center of global
history: Would capitalism or communism dominate Europe and East Asia in the a ermath of war?
How would the European colonies and former colonies throughout Asia, the Middle East, and
Africa enter the world stage as independent nations? Each of the superpowers sought to dictate
the answers, as the United States embarked on an unprecedented engagement with world affairs.

Origins of the Cold War

With Germany and Japan defeated and Britain and France exhausted, only two geopolitical
powers remained standing at the end of World War II. Little had united the United States and the
Soviet Union, other than their commitment to defeating the Axis powers. It was likely that the
Americans and Soviets would have jostled each other as they moved to fill the postwar power
vacuum, even if they shared a common set of interests. But the nations were so sharply divided —
by geography, history, ideology, and strategic interest — that their rivalry hardened into a new
kind of war.

EXAM TIP
Evaluate the role of the Yalta Conference in undermining wartime cooperation among the Allied powers.

Yalta
President Franklin Roosevelt saw the American-Soviet alliance as essential for postwar global
stability, even as World War II was still being fought. But FDR also believed that permanent peace
and long-term American interests depended on the Wilsonian principles of collective security,
self-determination, and free trade (see “Catastrophe at Versailles” in Chapter 20), which ran
counter to Soviet aims. At the Yalta Conference of February 1945, these democratic ideals were
trumped by the realities of power politics and military might. As Allied forces neared victory in
Europe and advanced toward Japan in the Pacific, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met in Yalta, a
resort on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. Roosevelt focused on maintaining Allied unity and

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securing a Soviet commitment to enter the war against Japan. But the fate of Eastern Europe
divided the Big Three. Stalin insisted that Russian national security required pro-Soviet
governments in Eastern European nations. Roosevelt pressed for an agreement, the “Declaration
on Liberated Europe,” that guaranteed self-determination and democratic elections in Poland and
other countries in the East. However, given that Soviet troops were already in control of much of
Eastern Europe, FDR had to accept a lesser pledge from Stalin: to hold “free and unfettered
elections” at a future time. The three leaders also formally committed to dividing Germany into
four zones, each controlled by one Allied power (plus France), and to similarly partition the
capital city, Berlin, which was located within the Soviet zone.

At the Yalta Conference, the Big Three also agreed to establish an international body to replace
the discredited League of Nations. The new organization, to be known as the United Nations,
would have both a General Assembly, in which all nations would be represented, and a Security
Council composed of the five nations that prevailed over Germany and Japan — the United States,
Britain, France, China, and the Soviet Union — and six other nations elected on a rotating basis
(the number of rotating nations was increased to ten in 1965). The Big Three determined that the
five permanent members of the Security Council would have veto power over decisions of the
General Assembly. The United Nations was slated to convene for the first time in San Francisco on
April 25, 1945. (The current U.N. headquarters in New York City opened in 1952.)

Potsdam
Developments in the wake of the Yalta Conference hardened a split among the Allies, with the
Soviets on one side and the Americans and British on the other. At the Potsdam Conference
outside Berlin in late July and early August 1945, President Truman replaced the deceased
Roosevelt. Inexperienced in world affairs, Truman found himself thrown into enormously
complicated negotiations. His instinct told him to stand up to Soviet aggression. “Unless Russia is
faced with an iron fist and strong language,” he said, “another war is in the making.” But Truman’s
bluster had no effect in Eastern Europe, where Soviet-imposed governments in Poland, Hungary,
and Romania were backed by the Red Army. The elections called for at Yalta eventually took place
in Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, with varying degrees of democratic openness.
Nevertheless, Stalin got the client regimes he desired in those countries and would soon exert
near-complete control over their governments. Stalin’s unwillingness to honor self-determination
for nations in Eastern Europe was, from the American point of view, the precipitating cause of the
Cold War.

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 Potsdam Conference

British prime minister Winston Churchill and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin stand on opposite sides of U.S. president Harry
Truman, shaking hands during the Potsdam Conference. Concluding mere days before the United States dropped an atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, Potsdam determined the fate of postwar Germany and much of Eastern Europe.

The question of Germany posed the biggest challenge at Potsdam. American officials believed that
a revived German economy would ensure the prosperity of democratic regimes and capitalism
throughout Western Europe — and prevent Germans from turning again to Nazism. Stalin had a

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more immediate objective: extracting reparations from Germany in the form of industrial
machines and goods. To prevent the Soviets from dismantling German industry, and thereby
impoverishing Germans for a generation, Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes convinced
Stalin to take reparations only from the Soviet zone, which was largely rural and held little wealth
or industry to plunder. In exchange, the Americans recognized a redrawn German-Polish border
favored by Stalin. Compromises had been reached, but each side le Potsdam distrustful of the
other (Map 24.1).

The secret negotiations at Yalta and Potsdam demonstrated that the United States and the Soviet
Union had starkly different postwar objectives. A subsequent public war of words only intensified
those differences. In February 1946, Stalin proclaimed in a speech that, “the unevenness of
development of the capitalist countries” was likely to produce “violent disturbance” and even
another war. He seemed to position blame for any future war on the capitalist West. Churchill
responded in kind a month later. While visiting Truman’s home state of Missouri to be honored
for his wartime leadership, Churchill accused Stalin of drawing an “iron curtain” around Eastern
Europe and allowing “police government” to rule its people. He went further, claiming that “the
fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples,” and not Russians, ought to set the terms of
the postwar world.

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 MAPPING THE PAST

MAP 24.1 Cold War in Europe, 1955

This map vividly shows the Cold War division of Europe. The NATO countries (colored green) are allies of the United States the
Warsaw Pact countries (in purple) are allied to the USSR. In 1955, West Germany had just been admitted to NATO, completing Europe’s
stabilization into two rival camps. But Berlin remained divided, and one can see from its location deep in East Germany why the
former capital was always a flash point in Cold War controversies.

ANALYZING THE MAP: Using the map key, locate all the NATO, Warsaw Pact, and neutral countries. Note the position of Greece and
Turkey relative to other NATO countries.

MAKING CONNECTIONS: How does the map illustrate the containment strategy? How does the map illustrate change in the role of the
United States in the world? Why would the position of Greece and Turkey cause conflicts in the early Cold War?

The nations of Europe had barely known peace before the tense standoff between the Soviet
Union and the United States threatened another war. Stalin was intent on establishing client states
in Eastern Europe, and the United States was equally intent on reviving Germany and establishing
a system to ensure collective security in Western Europe. Among the Allies, anxiety about a Nazi
victory in World War II had been quickly replaced by the threat of a potentially cataclysmic war
with the Soviet Union.

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 SKILLS & PROCESSES
COMPARISON

How did American and Soviet viewpoints differ over the postwar fate of Europe?

COMPARING INTERPRETATIONS
How Did Cold War Interventions Differ Worldwide?

During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union forged a “Grand Alliance” with Great Britain to defeat Hitler’s Nazi
Germany. In the wake of victory, however, this marriage of necessity quickly dissolved, leaving the Americans and Soviets to face
each other in a Cold War that lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991. For decades, these superpowers
viewed each other’s intentions with suspicion and waged proxy wars around the globe to advance the security interests they
believed the other threatened. But how was the Cold War in Europe different from the Cold War in former colonized nations in
Asia, Africa, and Latin America? Why did the U.S.-Soviet rivalry play out in divergent ways in these places?

Historians continue to study and debate these questions. Stephen Ambrose’s account of postwar America’s rise to global
dominance offers a traditional explanation of the Cold War’s origins in Europe. His argument differs from that of Odd Westad,
who shi s the geographical focus of the Cold War rivalry from Europe itself to the rest of the globe.

STEPHEN AMBROSE
S Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy, 1938–1980 (Baltimore Penguin Books, 1980, second revised
edition), 92–94, 105.

There is no satisfactory date to mark the beginning of the Cold War, but it is certain that the issue that gave it life and shaped its early
course, was East Europe. For centuries East and West have struggled with each other for control of the huge area running from the
Baltic to the Balkans, an area rich in human and industrial resources and strategically vital to both sides, either to Russia as a buffer
against the West, or to Germany and France as the gateway for an invasion of Russia. Neither the West nor the East has been willing to
allow East Europe to be strong, independent, or neutral. Russia and the West each have wanted the area to be aligned with them.

… [During World War II], the West made no significant contribution to the liberation of East Europe, and when the end came the Red
Army was in sole possession of the area east of a line drawn from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic. Russia controlled East
Europe. This crucial result of World War II destroyed the Grand Alliance and gave birth to the Cold War.

The West, with America leading the way, was unwilling to accept Russian domination of East Europe. Although the Americans were
ready to admit that Stalin had earned the right to have the major say in the politics of the region, and that Russian security demanded
friendly governments there, they were not prepared to abandon East Europe altogether. They persisted in the illusion that it was
possible to have East European governments that were both democratic and friendly to Russia….

It was an impossible program. Given the traditions, economics, and social structures of East Europe, any freely elected government
would certainly be anti-Soviet. It may be that FDR realized this fact, but if so he was unwilling to explain it to the American people….

Many Americans, including leading figures in the government, believed that they could use their power to order the world in the
direction of democratic capitalism on the American model. But it could not be, for a reason that most Americans did not like to think
about, seldom discussed, and frequently ignored. This was the simple fact that however great America’s military and productive
power was, it had limits…. [President] Truman [who replaced FDR in April 1945] had unprecedented power at his fingertips and a
program for the world that he believed was self-evidently good. Yet he could not block Soviet expansion.

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 ODD WESTAD
S Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge Cambridge
University Press, 2007), 3–5.

The concept “Third World” came into being in the early 1950s, first in French and then in English, and gained prominence a er the
Bandung [in Indonesia] conference of 1955, when leaders from Asia and Africa met for the first large postcolonial summit…. [T]he
term “Third World” implied “the people” on a world scale, the global majority who had been downtrodden and enslaved through
colonialism, but who were now on their way to the top of the ladder of influence. The concept also implied a distinct position in Cold
War terms, the refusal to be ruled by the superpowers and their ideologies, the search for alternatives both to capitalism and
Communism, a “third way”… for the newly liberated states.

My use of these terms may therefore be seen to point in two opposing directions the term “Cold War” signals Western elite projects on
the grandest of possible scales, while the term “Third World” indicates colonial and postcolonial processes of marginalization (and the
struggle against these processes)….

[T]he argument that the Cold War conceptually and analytically does not belong in the south [i.e., Africa, South Asia, and Latin
America] is wrong, mainly for two reasons. First, US and Soviet interventionisms to a very large extent shaped both the international
and the domestic framework within which political, social, and cultural changes in Third World countries took place. Without the Cold
War, Africa, Asia, and possibly also Latin America would have been very different regions today. Second, Third World elites o en
framed their own political agendas in conscious response to the models of development presented by the two main contenders of the
Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union. In many cases the Third World leaders’ choices of ideological allegiance brought
them into close collaboration with one or the other of the superpowers, and led them to subscribe to models of [economic]
development that proved disastrous for their own peoples….

This book argues that the United States and the Soviet Union were driven to intervene in the Third World by the ideologies inherent in
their politics. Locked in conflict over the very concept of European modernity [whether “modern” people should value the individual
or the collective capitalism or socialism] — to which both states regarded themselves as successors — Washington and Moscow
needed to change the world in order to prove the universal applicability of their ideologies, and the elites of the newly independent
[Third World] states proved fertile ground for their competition. By helping to expand the domains of freedom or of social justice, both
powers saw themselves as assisting natural trends in world history and as defending their own security at the same time. Both saw a
specific mission in and for the Third World that only their own state could carry out and which without their involvement would
flounder in local hands.

SHORT ANSWER PRACTICE

1. Identify the major difference in these two scholars’ understanding of the Cold War’s geographical focus.
2. What does a focus on Eastern Europe (Ambrose) reveal about the motivations of the United States and Soviet Union in
the Cold War? What does a focus on the postcolonial world or “Third World” (Westad) reveal? To what extent do these
scholars agree on the factors driving the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union?
3. Identify in Chapter 24 the different dimensions of the Cold War discussed by Ambrose and Westad? Use evidence from
the chapter to explain the policy context of each historian’s perspective.

The Containment Strategy

In the late 1940s, American officials developed a strategy toward the Soviet Union that would
become known as containment. Convinced that the USSR sought to methodically expand its

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reach, the United States would counter by limiting Soviet influence to Eastern Europe while
reconstituting democratic governments in Western Europe. Three broad issues worried Truman
and his advisors. First, the Soviet Union was pressing Iran for access to oil and Turkey for access
to the Mediterranean. Second, a civil war roiled Greece, between monarchists backed by Great
Britain and insurgents supported by the Greek and Yugoslavian Communist parties. Third, as
European nations suffered through terrible privation in 1946 and 1947, Communist parties gained
strength, particularly in France and Italy. All three developments, as seen from the United States,
threatened to spread Soviet influence beyond Eastern Europe.

EXAM TIP
Being able to explain the policy of containment is critical to success on the AP® Exam.

Toward an Uneasy Peace

In this anxious context, the strategy of containment emerged gradually between 1946 and 1949. In
February 1946, American diplomat George F. Kennan first proposed the idea in an 8,000-word
cable — a confidential message within the U.S. State Department — sent from his post at the U.S.
embassy in Moscow. Kennan argued that communism was merely a flimsy cover masking Soviet
imperial aggression. A year a er writing this cable (dubbed the Long Telegram), Kennan argued
in an influential Foreign Affairs article that the West’s only recourse was to meet the Soviets “with
unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests
of a peaceful and stable world.” Kennan called for “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant
containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

Kennan contended that the Soviet system was unstable and would eventually collapse.
Containment would work, he reasoned, as long as the United States and its allies resisted Soviet
expansion worldwide. Kennan’s attentive readers included Stalin himself, who quickly obtained a
copy of the classified Long Telegram. Just as Kennan thought that the Soviet system was despotic
and unsustainable, Stalin believed that the United States was an imperialist aggressor determined
to replace Great Britain as the world’s dominant capitalist power. Neither side fully understood or
trusted the other, and each projected its worst fears onto its rival.

It was true that Britain was fading as an international power. Exhausted by the war, faced with
budget deficits and a collapsing economy at home, and confronted with growing independence
movements throughout its empire, particularly in India led by Mohandas Gandhi, the sun was
finally setting on British global influence. “The reins of world leadership are fast slipping from
Britain’s competent but now very weak hands,” read a U.S. State Department report. “These reins

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will be picked up either by the United States or by Russia.” The United States was wedded to the
notion — dating to the Wilson administration — that communism and capitalism were
incompatible on the world stage. With Britain waning, American officials saw little choice but to
fill its shoes as the leading capitalist nation worldwide.

In February 1947, London informed Washington that it could no longer afford to support the
anticommunists in the Greek civil war. Truman worried that a communist victory in Greece would
lead to Soviet domination of the eastern Mediterranean and embolden Communist parties
elsewhere. In response, the president announced what became known as the Truman Doctrine.
In a speech on March 12, he asserted an American responsibility “to support free peoples who are
resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” To that end,
Truman proposed large-scale financial assistance for Greece and Turkey (then involved in a
dispute with the Soviet Union over access to the Mediterranean). “If we falter in our leadership,
we may endanger the peace of the world,” Truman declared (see “Thinking Like a Historian”).
Congress quickly approved Truman’s request for $300 million in aid to Greece and $100 million for
Turkey.

Soviet expansionism was but one part of a larger unfolding drama. Europe was sliding into
economic chaos. The winter of 1946–1947 brought the worst economic conditions in memory to a
continent still reeling from the war. People starved, wages stagnated, and consumer markets
collapsed. For both humanitarian and political reasons, Truman’s advisors believed action was
necessary. A global depression might ensue if the European economy, the largest foreign market
for American goods, did not recover. Worse, unemployed and dispirited Western Europeans might
join communist movements, threatening political stability. Secretary of State George C. Marshall
came up with a remarkable proposal: a massive infusion of American capital to rebuild the
European economy. In a June 1947 speech, Marshall laid out a daring challenge to the nations of
Europe: work out a comprehensive recovery program, and U.S. aid would finance it.

EXAM TIP
Describe how the use of international aid impacted the policy of containment.

This pledge of financial assistance, known as the Marshall Plan, still required approval from a
skeptical Congress. Republicans castigated the proposal as a huge “international WPA,” their
criticism harkening back to the New Deal. But on February 25, 1948, in the midst of a
congressional stalemate, Stalin supported a communist-led coup in Czechoslovakia. Congress
rallied and voted overwhelmingly to approve the financial plan. Over the next four years, the
United States contributed $13 billion to a highly successful recovery effort. European industrial

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production increased by 64 percent, and Communist parties faded in Western European politics.
Markets for American goods grew stronger and fostered economic interdependence between
Europe and the United States. However, the Marshall Plan also intensified Cold War tensions.
American officials invited the Soviets to participate but insisted on terms that virtually
guaranteed Stalin’s refusal. An embittered Stalin did just that, and ordered Soviet client states to
follow his lead.

SKILLS & PROCESSES

MAKING CONNECTIONS

Why did the United States enact the Marshall Plan, and how did the program illustrate America’s new role in the world?

East and West

As the most important industrial economy and the strategic linchpin of Europe, Germany
remained a flash point for a potential hot war. When no agreement could be reached with the
Soviet Union to unify the four zones of occupation, the Western allies consolidated their three
zones in 1947. They then prepared to establish an independent federal German republic, with an
economy jump-started by the Marshall Plan. Funds were also slated for West Berlin, in hopes of
creating a capitalist showplace 100 miles inside the Soviet zone.

Stung by the West’s plans, Stalin blockaded all traffic to West Berlin in June 1948. Instead of
dropping West Berlin from Marshall Plan funding, as Stalin had expected, Truman and the British
grew more resolute. “We are going to stay, period,” Truman said plainly. Over the next year,
American and British pilots improvised the Berlin Airli , which flew 2.5 million tons of food and
fuel into the Western zones of the city — nearly a ton for each resident. The Soviets did not
retaliate against the airli , however, and on May 12, 1949, Stalin li ed the blockade. The Berlin
standoff was the closest the two sides came to actual war prior to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962
(see “Crises in Cuba and Berlin” ahead in this chapter).

The survival of a democratic West Berlin became a symbol of resistance to communism and
motivated Western European nations to forge a collective security pact with the United States. In
April 1949, the United States secured that pact, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
the country’s first peacetime military alliance outside the Western hemisphere. Under the NATO
treaty, twelve nations — Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States — agreed that “an armed
attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack

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against them all.” In May 1949, those nations also agreed to the creation of the Federal Republic of
Germany (West Germany), which eventually joined NATO in 1955.

In response, the Soviet Union established the German Democratic Republic (East Germany); the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON); and, in 1955, the Warsaw Pact, a military
alliance for Eastern Europe that included Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. These parallel steps bore out Churchill’s 1946
claim that an “iron curtain” stretching “from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic” now
divided Europe. Stalin’s tactics were o en ruthless, but they were not without reason. The Soviet
Union acted out of the sort of self-interest long practiced by powerful nations — ensuring a
defensive perimeter of allies, seeking access to raw materials, and pressing the advantage earned
at great cost in war.

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The Marshall Plan

A poster declaring, in German, that “The Marshall Plan Helps Europe.” A waiting family sees the arrival from the United
States of goods labeled “ERP,” which stands for the European Recovery Program, the Marshall Plan’s official name.

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NSC-68
Atomic developments also played a critical role in the emergence of the Cold War. The United
States had entertained the possibility of sharing its nuclear technology following the surrender of
Japan, but did not wish to lose a key advantage over the Soviet Union. A 1946 American proposal
for United Nations oversight of atomic energy would have assured near-total control of the
technology by the United States. The proposal was rejected by the Soviets and only added to
mounting tensions. America’s brief tenure as sole nuclear power ended in late August 1949,
however, when the USSR successfully tested an atomic bomb in what is now Kazakhstan.

The Berlin Airli

For 321 days, U.S. planes like this one flew missions to bring food and other supplies to Berlin a er the Soviet Union
had blocked all surface routes into the former German capital. The blockade was finally li ed on May 12, 1949, a er
the Soviets conceded that it had been a failure.

In the wake of this major shi in the balance of power, Truman turned to a new government
advisory board for a strategic reassessment. Congress had established the U.S. National Security
Council (NSC) via the National Security Act of 1947 — which brought together the State and
Defense Departments, as well as intelligence analysts from the military branches and CIA — and
tasked it with advising the president on vital matters of foreign affairs. In April 1950, the NSC
delivered the report Truman had requested, known as NSC-68. Bristling with alarmist rhetoric,

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the document marked a decisive turning point in U.S. Cold War strategy. The report’s authors
described the Soviet Union not as a typical great power but as one with a “fanatic faith” that seeks
to “impose its absolute authority.” Going beyond even the stern language used by George Kennan,
NSC-68 cast Soviet ambitions as nothing short of “the domination of the Eurasian landmass.”

To prevent that outcome, the report proposed “a bold and massive program of rebuilding the
West’s defensive potential to surpass that of the Soviet world.” The new program would include
the development of a hydrogen bomb, a thermonuclear device that would be a thousand times
more destructive than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, as well as dramatic increases in
conventional forces. Critically, NSC-68 called for Americans to pay higher taxes and to accept
further sacrifices out of a national unity of purpose. Many historians see the report as having
“militarized” the American approach to the Cold War, which had to that point relied largely on
economic measures such as the Marshall Plan. Truman was reluctant to commit to the drastic
defense buildup called for in NSC-68, fearing that it would overburden the national budget. But
events in Asia would soon lead him to reverse course.

EXAM TIP
Summarize the debates over increasing reliance on nuclear weapons and the power of the military-industrial complex.

THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN

The Global Cold War

Until the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, the U.S. policy of containment was confined to economic measures, such
as financial assistance to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan, and focused on Europe. That changed between 1950 and
1954. In those years, containment became militarized, and its scope was expanded to include Asia and Latin America. What had
begun as a limited policy to contain Soviet influence in war-torn Europe had by the mid-1950s become a global campaign
against communism and social revolution.

1. President Harry S. Truman, address before joint session of Congress, March 12, 1947.

Known as the Truman Doctrine, this speech outlined Truman’s plan to give large-scale assistance to Greece and Turkey as part of a
broader anticommunist policy.

To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the
United Nations. The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not
realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity
against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes….

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At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too o en not a
free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free
elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a
controlled press and radio fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed
minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly
political processes.

2. President of South Korea Syngman Rhee, Criticism of U.S. policy toward Korea,
1950.

Shortly before North Korean troops invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, the president of South Korea, an American ally, pressed
the United States for military assistance.

A few days ago one American friend said that if the U.S. gave weapons to South Korea, she feared that South Korea would invade
North Korea. This is a useless worry of some Americans, who do not know South Korea. Our present war is not a Cold War, but a real
shooting war. Our troops will take all possible counter-measures…. In South Korea the U.S. has one foot in South Korea and one foot
outside so that in case of an unfavorable situation it could pull out of the country. I daresay that if the U.S. wants to aid our country, it
should not be only lip-service.

3. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Testimony regarding the Korean War before the
Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Relations Committee, 1951.

The American secretary of state explains North Korea’s invasion of the South, which precipitated the Korean War, as a form of
“aggression” that could not be met with “appeasement,” employing the Munich analogy of European leaders appeasing Hitler in
1938.

The attack on Korea was … a challenge to the whole system of collective security, not only in the Far East, but everywhere in the
world. It was a threat to all nations newly arrived at independence….

This was a test which would decide whether our collective security system would survive or would crumble. It would determine
whether other nations would be intimidated by this show of force….

As a people we condemn aggression of any kind. We reject appeasement of any kind. If we stood with our arms folded while Korea was
swallowed up, it would have meant abandoning our principles, and it would have meant the defeat of the collective security system
on which our own safety ultimately depends.

4. Prime minister of Japan Shigeru Yoshida, speech before the Japanese Diet
(parliament), July 14, 1950.

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 The prime minister of Japan expresses his concern that the war in Korea might engulf his nation, which was militarily dependent on
the United States.

It is heartening … that America and so many members of the United Nations have gone to the rescue of an invaded country regardless
of the heavy sacrifices involved. In case a war breaks out on an extensive scale how would Japan’s security be preserved [since we are
disarmed]?… This has been hotly discussed. However, the measures taken by the United Nations have done much to stabilize our
people’s minds.

5. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, radio and television address to the American
people about the coup in Guatemala, June 30, 1954.

Elected as Guatemala’s president in 1951, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán pursued reform policies that threatened large landholders,
including the United Fruit Company, an American business. In 1954, the United States CIA engineered a coup that overthrew Arbenz
Guzmán and replaced him with Carlos Castillo Armas, a colonel in the Guatemalan military.

Tonight I should like to speak with you about Guatemala. It is the scene of dramatic events. They expose the evil purpose of the
Kremlin to destroy the inter-American system, and they test the ability of the American States to maintain the peaceful integrity of the
hemisphere.

For several years international communism has been probing here and there for nesting places in the Americas. It finally chose
Guatemala as a spot which it could turn into an official base from which to breed subversion which would extend to other American
Republics.

This intrusion of Soviet despotism was, of course, a direct challenge to our Monroe Doctrine [which declared U.S. dominion over the
Western Hemisphere], the first and most fundamental of our foreign policies.

6. Guatemalan foreign minister Guillermo Toriello, speech to delegates at the Tenth

Inter-American Conference of the Organization of American States in Caracas,
Venezuela, March 5, 1954.

Two months before the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated a coup against the democratically elected president of
Guatemala, that country’s foreign minister sharply criticized the United States for its support of the United Fruit Company [a major
American corporation in Guatemala] rather than the “legitimate desires” of the Guatemalan people.

What is the real and effective reason for describing our government as communist? From what sources comes the accusation that we
threaten continental solidarity and security? Why do they [United States] wish to intervene in Guatemala?

The answers are simple and evident. The plan of national liberation being carried out with firmness by my government has necessarily
affected the privileges of the foreign enterprises that are impeding the progress and the economic development of the country…. With
construction of publically owned ports and docks, we are putting an end to the monopoly of the United Fruit Company….

They wanted to find a ready expedient to maintain the economic dependence of the American Republics and suppress the legitimate
desires of their peoples, cataloguing as “communism” every manifestation of nationalism or economic independence, any desire for
social progress, any intellectual curiosity, and any interest in progressive and liberal reforms.

7. Herblock cartoon from the Washington Post, February 11, 1962.

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 Many Latin American countries were beset by a wide gap between a small wealthy elite and the mass of ordinary, much poorer
citizens. American officials worried that this made social revolution an attractive alternative for those at the bottom.

S (1) The Avalon Project at [Link] (2) Reinhard Dri e, “Japan’s Involvement in the Korean War,” in The Korean
War in History, ed. James Cotton and Ian Neary (Atlantic Highlands, NJ Humanities Press International, 1989), 43 (3) Glenn D. Paige,
The Korean Decision (New York The Free Press, 1968), 175–176 (4) Dri e, 122 (5) Jonathan L. Fried et al., eds., Guatemala in Rebellion:
Unfinished History (New York Grove Press, 1983), 78 (6) Stephen C. Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the
American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, NY Doubleday, 1982), 143–144.

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 ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
1. In source 1, Truman presents the choice facing the world in stark terms totalitarianism or democracy. Why would he
frame matters in this way in 1947? What was the purpose of this speech? How did Truman anticipate the militarization
of the containment strategy, which did not take place until the Korean War?
2. Analyze the audience, purpose, and point of view presented in the documents dealing with the war in Korea (sources
2–4). What does Acheson mean by “collective security” and “appeasement”? Why is Yoshida thankful for the UN
intervention? What can you infer about U.S. involvement in world affairs during the postwar period based on these
documents?
3. In source 6, how does Toriello characterize accusations that the elected Guatemalan government is communist? What
are his accusations of the United States? Compare the main ideas in sources 5 and 6. How do the documents inform
the analysis of one another?
4. How does source 7 express one of the obstacles to democracy in developing nations?

DBQ PRACTICE
Using these documents, and based on what you have learned in class and in this chapter, write an essay in which you analyze
the role of the Korean War (1950–1953) and the 1954 Guatemalan coup in shaping American foreign policy and perceptions of
the United State abroad in the early years of the Cold War.

Containment in Asia
American officials believed that rebuilding the Japanese economy and dismantling Japan’s
military would ensure prosperity and contain communism in East Asia — much like their
approach in the case of Germany. Following Japan’s surrender, American occupation forces under
General Douglas MacArthur dra ed a democratic constitution and paved the way for the
restoration of Japanese sovereignty in 1951. Considering the scorched-earth war that had just
ended, this was a remarkable achievement, owed partly to the imperious MacArthur but mainly
to the Japanese, who embraced peace and accepted U.S. military protection. However, events on
the mainland of Asia proved much more challenging to American interests.

Civil War in China

A civil war had been raging in China since the 1930s, subsiding during the Japanese occupation
only to reignite in 1945. Communists led by Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) battled Nationalist forces
under Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). Fearing a Communist victory, between 1945 and 1949 the
United States provided $2 billion to Jiang’s army. Pressing Truman to “save” China, conservative
Republican senator Robert A. Ta of Ohio predicted that “the Far East is ultimately even more
important to our future peace than is Europe.” By 1949, Mao’s forces held the advantage, and
Truman reasoned that saving Jiang would require military intervention. Unwilling to go to war in

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China, he cut off support and le the Nationalists to their fate. Jiang’s forces retreated and
ultimately fled to Taiwan, and the People’s Republic of China was formally established under
Mao’s leadership on October 1, 1949.

Communist China

Chinese Communists carry placards with pictures of Joseph Stalin, premier of the Soviet Union and self-proclaimed
leader of global communism. Under the leadership of General Mao Zedong, the Communist Party of China defeated
its rivals in a civil war and founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Mao’s victory meant that from East
Germany to the Pacific Ocean, much of the Eurasian landmass (including Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and
China) was ruled by Communist governments.

Truman expected Mao to take an independent line from Moscow, as the Communist leader Tito
had just done in Yugoslavia. But the new Chinese leader aligned himself with the Soviet Union,
partly out of fear that the United States would re-arm the Nationalists and invade the mainland. As
Cold War attitudes hardened, many Americans viewed Mao’s success as a defeat for the United
States. The pro-Chinese Nationalist “China lobby” held Truman’s State Department responsible
for the “loss” of China. Sensitive to these charges, the Truman administration refused to recognize
“Red China” and blocked its admission to the United Nations. But the United States also pointedly
declined to guarantee Taiwan’s independence, and in fact accepted the outcome on the mainland.

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 EXAM TIP
Recognize the Korean War as an expression of containment policy through military action.

The Korean War

The United States took a stronger stance in Korea. Truman and Stalin had agreed at the close of
World War II to occupy the Korean peninsula jointly, temporarily dividing the former Japanese
colony at the 38th parallel. As tensions rose in Europe, the 38th parallel turned into a permanent
demarcation line. The Soviets supported a Communist government, led by Kim Il Sung, in North
Korea; the United States backed a right-wing Nationalist, Syngman Rhee, in South Korea. The two
sides had waged low-level war since 1945, and both leaders were spoiling for an opportunity to
unify Korea under a single regime. However, neither Kim nor Rhee could launch an all-out
offensive without the backing of his sponsor. Washington repeatedly said no, and so did Moscow.
But Kim continued to press Stalin to permit him to reunify the nation through military action.
Convinced by the North Koreans that victory would be swi , the Soviet leader finally relented in
the late spring of 1950.

The Korean War

As a result of President Truman’s 1948 Executive Order 9981, for the first time in the nation’s history all troops in the
Korean War served in racially integrated combat units. This photo taken during the Battle of Ch’ongch’on in 1950
shows a sergeant and his men of the 2nd Infantry Division.

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 MAP 24.2 The Korean War, 1950–1953

The Korean War, which the United Nations officially deemed a “police action,” lasted three years and cost the lives of more than
36,000 U.S. troops. South and North Korean deaths were estimated at more than 900,000. Although hostilities ceased in 1953, the
South Korean Military (with U.S. military assistance) and the North Korean Army continue to face each other across the demilitarized
zone, more than sixty years later.

On June 25, 1950, the North Koreans launched a surprise attack across the 38th parallel (Map
24.2). Truman immediately asked the UN Security Council to authorize a “police action” against
the invaders. The Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council over China’s exclusion from
the United Nations and therefore could not veto the request. With the Security Council’s approval
of a “peacekeeping force,” Truman ordered U.S. troops to Korea. The rapidly assembled UN army
in Korea was overwhelmingly American, with General Douglas MacArthur in command. At first,
the North Koreans held a distinct advantage, but MacArthur’s surprise amphibious attack at
Inchon gave the UN forces control of Seoul, the South Korean capital, and almost all the territory
up to the 38th parallel.

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The impetuous MacArthur then led his troops across the 38th parallel all the way to the Chinese
border at the Yalu River. This was a major blunder, certain to draw China into the war. Sure
enough, a massive Chinese counterattack forced UN forces into headlong retreat back down the
Korean peninsula. Then stalemate set in. With weak public support for the war in the United
States, Truman and his advisors decided to work for a negotiated peace. MacArthur disagreed,
declaring, “There is no substitute for victory.” On April 11, 1951, Truman relieved MacArthur of
his command. Truman’s decision was highly unpopular, especially among conservative
Republicans, but likely saved the nation from a costly war with China.

Notwithstanding MacArthur’s dismissal, the war dragged on for more than two years. An
armistice in July 1953, pushed by the newly elected president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, le Korea
divided at the original demarcation line. North Korea remained firmly allied with the Soviet
Union; South Korea signed a mutual defense treaty with the United States. Korea was the first
major proxy war between the Soviet Union and United States, in which the rivals took sides in a
conflict without directly confronting one another militarily. It would not be the last.

The Korean War had far-reaching consequences. Truman’s decision to commit troops without
congressional approval set a precedent for future undeclared wars. His refusal to unleash atomic
weapons, even when American forces were reeling under a massive Chinese attack, set ground
rules for Cold War conflict. The war also expanded American involvement in Asia, transforming
containment into a truly global policy. Finally, the Korean War dispelled Truman’s resistance to a
major military buildup (Map 24.3). Defense expenditures grew from $13 billion in 1950, roughly
one-third of the federal budget, to $50 billion in 1953, nearly two-thirds of the budget (Figure
24.1). American foreign policy was now more global, more militarized, and more expensive. Even
in times of peace, the United States maintained a state of permanent military mobilization.

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 MAP 24.3 The Military-Industrial Complex

Defense spending gave a big boost to the Cold War economy, but, as the upper map suggests, the benefits were by
no means equally distributed. The big winners were the Middle Atlantic states, the industrialized Upper Midwest,
Washington State (with its aircra and nuclear plants), and California. The epicenter of California’s military-
industrial complex was Los Angeles, which, as is evident in the lower map, was studded with military facilities and
major defense contractors like Douglas Aircra , Lockheed, and General Dynamics. There was work aplenty for
engineers and rocket scientists.

The Munich Analogy

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The memory of appeasement lay behind much of U.S. foreign policy in the first two decades of the
Cold War. The generation of leaders who designed the containment strategy had witnessed the
failure of the 1938 Munich conference, at which the Western democracies had appeased Hitler by
offering him part of Czechoslovakia, unwittingly paving the road to World War II. Applying the
lessons of Munich, American presidents believed that “appeasing” Stalin (and subsequent Soviet
rulers Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev) would have the same result: wider war. Thus in
Germany, Greece, and Korea, and later in Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam, the United States
staunchly resisted the Soviets — or what it perceived as Soviet influence. Standing up to the USSR
worked in some disputes, particularly over the fate of Germany. But it also drew the Americans
into armed conflicts — and convinced them to support repressive, right-wing regimes — that
compromised stated American principles.

FIGURE 24.1 National Defense Spending, 1940–1965

In 1950, the U.S. defense budget was $13 billion, less than a third of total federal outlays. In 1961, U.S. defense spending
reached $47 billion, fully half of the federal budget and almost 10 percent of the gross domestic product.

SKILLS & PROCESSES

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COMPARISON

How did U.S. containment strategy in Asia compare to containment in Europe?

1694
COLD WAR LIBERALISM
What were the defining ideas of Cold War liberalism, and why did the Democratic Party embrace them?

As president, Harry Truman sought to position himself as Franklin Roosevelt’s successor, using
the possibilities afforded by victory in World War II to expand the New Deal at home. But the
crises in Europe and Asia, combined with the swi rise of anticommunism in domestic politics,
forced him along a different path. Truman went down in history as a Cold Warrior rather than a
New Dealer. The Cold War consensus that he ultimately embraced — that resisting communism at
home and abroad was America’s foremost goal — shaped the nation’s life and politics for decades
to come.

Truman and the End of Reform

Truman and the Democratic Party of the late 1940s and early 1950s forged what historians call
Cold War liberalism. They preserved the core programs of the New Deal welfare state, developed
the containment policy to oppose Soviet influence throughout the world, and fought so-called
subversives at home. But there would be no expansive second act for the New Deal — no national
health insurance or bold initiatives to tackle poverty. Democrats adopted this combination of
moderate liberal policies and anticommunism — Cold War liberalism — partly by choice and
partly out of necessity. Communist victories in Eastern Europe and China, combined with several
high-level espionage scandals at home, reenergized the Republican Party, which forced Truman
and the Democrats to retreat to what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the “vital center.” Cold
War liberalism was a practical centrist program for a turbulent era. It would take hold, but only
lasted until the even more turbulent 1960s tore it asunder.

Organized labor remained a key force in the Democratic Party and played a central role in
championing Cold War liberalism. Union membership swelled to more than 14 million by 1945,
making labor stronger than ever politically. Determined to redeem their wartime sacrifices and to
make up for government controls that kept wages low during the war, unionized workers made
aggressive demands and mounted major strikes in the automobile, steel, and coal industries a er
the war, as they had a er World War I (for the same reasons). Probusiness Republicans responded
just as aggressively. In 1946 they regained control of the House in a sweeping repudiation of
Democrats and promptly passed — over Truman’s veto — the Ta -Hartley Act (1947).

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Ta -Hartley overhauled the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, introducing changes that gradually
weakened the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Unions especially disliked
Section 14b, which allowed states to pass “right-to-work” laws prohibiting the union shop (where
workers are required to belong to a union — a requirement that aids union strength). Additionally,
the law forced unions to purge communists, who had been among the most successful labor
organizers in the 1930s, from their ranks. Trade unions would continue to support the Democratic
Party, but the labor movement would penetrate neither the largely non-union South nor the many
American industries that remained unorganized. In a sense, Ta -Hartley effectively “contained”
the labor movement.

EXAM TIP
Identify the forces that limited the expansion of New Deal policies following World War II.

The 1948 Election

Democrats would have dumped Truman in 1948 had they found a better candidate. But the party
itself was in disarray. The le wing split off and formed the Progressive Party, nominating Henry
A. Wallace, an avid New Dealer and former vice president whom Truman had fired as secretary of
commerce in 1946 for his vocal opposition to the Cold War. A right-wing challenge came from the
South. When northern liberals pushed through a strong civil rights platform at the Democratic
convention, the southern delegations bolted and, calling themselves Dixiecrats, nominated for
president South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond, an ardent supporter of racial segregation.
The Republicans meanwhile renominated New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, a moderate who
had run a strong campaign against FDR in 1944.

Truman surprised everyone. He launched a strenuous cross-country speaking tour and

hammered away at the Republicans for opposing progressive legislation and running a “do-
nothing” Congress. Combining these issues with attacks on the Soviet menace abroad, Truman
salvaged a campaign that had appeared hopeless. An accidental president who some thought was
overwhelmed by his office in 1945, Truman transformed himself into a savvy political fighter. At
his rallies, enthusiastic listeners shouted, “Give ’em hell, Harry!” In the November election,
Truman won 49.6 percent of the vote to Dewey’s 45.1 percent (Map 24.4).

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MAP 24.4 The Presidential Election of 1948

Truman’s electoral strategy in 1948 was to concentrate his campaign in areas where the Democrats had their greatest
strength. In an election with a low turnout, Truman held on to enough support from Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition of
blacks, union members, and farmers to defeat Dewey by more than two million votes.

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 Truman Triumphant

In one of the most famous photographs in U.S. political history, Harry S. Truman gloats over an erroneous headline in the
November 3 Chicago Daily Tribune. Pollsters had predicted an easy victory for Thomas E. Dewey. Their polling techniques,
however, missed the dramatic surge in support for Truman during the last days of the campaign.

This unlikely result foreshadowed coming political turmoil. Truman occupied the center of FDR’s
sprawling New Deal coalition. On his le were progressives, civil rights advocates, and peace
activists critical of the Cold War. On his right were segregationist southerners, who opposed civil
rights and were allied with Republicans on many economic and foreign policy issues. In 1948,
Truman performed a delicate balancing act, largely retaining the support of Jewish and Catholic
voters in the big cities, black voters in the North, union voters across the country, and a still
considerable bloc of white southerners. But Thurmond’s strong showing — the Dixiecrat carried
four states in the Deep South — demonstrated the fragility of the Democratic coalition. As Truman
wrangled opposing forces within his own party, he also faced mounting pressure from
Republicans to denounce radicals at home and to take a tough stand against the Soviet Union.

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The Fair Deal
Balancing act or no, Truman and progressive Democrats forged ahead. In his State of the Union
speech on January 5, 1949, Truman proposed an ambitious extension of the New Deal, which he
dubbed the Fair Deal: national health insurance, civil rights legislation, education funding, a
housing program, expansion of Social Security, a higher minimum wage, and a new agricultural
program. The Fair Deal’s attention to civil rights reflected the growing influence of African
Americans in the Democratic Party. In 1948, Truman had desegregated the armed forces, and his
Fair Deal proposals included desegregation, fair employment, and voting rights legislation. A
March 1949 editorial in the Chicago Defender, a leading African American newspaper, credited the
“Negroes, labor and liberal whites who joined hands to put the Democrats in power” and
promised that “the civil rights program to which the Democratic Party dedicated itself … is not
going to be scuttled by entrenched hate-mongers.”

Congress, however, remained a huge stumbling block, and the Fair Deal fared poorly. The same
conservative coalition that blocked Roosevelt’s initiatives in his second term stymied Truman’s as
well. Civil rights went nowhere, blocked by southern Democrats and probusiness Republicans.
Cold War pressure shaped debates about domestic social programs, while the nation’s growing
paranoia over internal subversion weakened support for bold extensions of the welfare state.
Truman’s proposal for national health insurance, for instance, was a popular idea, with strong
backing from organized labor. But the plan was denounced as “socialized medicine” by the
American Medical Association and the insurance industry. In the end, the Fair Deal’s only
significant successes were improvements to the minimum wage and Social Security, and the
National Housing Act of 1949, which authorized the construction of 810,000 low-income units.

SKILLS & PROCESSES

ARGUMENTATION

Compare the years immediately following World War I (Chapter 21) and the years a er World War II. In what ways were they similar,
especially with respect to politics, radicalism, and organized labor?

Red Scare: The Hunt for Communists

The suspicion of subversives that helped to thwart the Fair Deal turned into a much wider Red
Scare that would prove longer lasting and farther reaching than the one that followed World War I
(see “The Red Scare” in Chapter 21). Many Americans believed that Communists and Communist
sympathizers posed a significant threat to American life. There were legitimate reasons for

1699
concern, including leaks of information to the Soviet Union from the highest levels of
government. Soviet intelligence records released a er the 1991 disintegration of the USSR showed
that an assistant secretary of the treasury, White House aids, scientists and technicians working
on the Manhattan Project, and hundreds more across departments and agencies passed secrets to
Moscow. How was this to be explained and what, many inside and outside of government asked,
ought to be done about it?

EXAM TIP
Evaluate the debates over the methods and policies related to exposing communist spies in the 1950s.

Many who leaked information were idealistic New Dealers, who entered government at a moment
when the Soviet-backed Popular Front made communism appear merely a more le -leaning
version of liberalism and progressivism, and thus sympathetic to many liberals. But passing
secrets to another country, even a wartime ally, was simply indefensible to many Americans —
particularly when it came to atomic secrets. Historians generally conclude that the flow of
information to the USSR had largely ceased by 1947, due to vigorous counterintelligence and the
departure of many amateur spies for careers in the private sector. But the danger of espionage
and Communist sympathizers remained potent — and ripe for political opportunism.

Loyalty-Security Program
To insulate his administration against charges of Communist infiltration, Truman issued
Executive Order 9835 on March 21, 1947, which created the Loyalty-Security Program. The order
permitted officials to investigate any employee of the federal government (some 2.5 million
people) for “subversive” activities. This profound centralization of power had unforeseen
consequences. Truman intended the order to apply principally to actions against the national
interest (sabotage, treason, etc.), but many federal employees found themselves accused of
subversion for far different reasons — for marching in a Communist-led demonstration in the
1930s, for instance, or signing a petition endorsing public housing. Even sexuality came under
suspicion. Along with suspected political subversives, more than a thousand gay men and
lesbians were dismissed from federal employment in the 1950s, victims of an obsessive search for
anyone deemed “unfit” for government work.

Following Truman’s lead, many state and local governments, universities, political organizations,
churches, and businesses launched their own antisubversion campaigns, which o en required
that employees or members take loyalty oaths. In the labor movement, charges of Communist
domination led to the expulsion of a number of unions from the Congress of Industrial

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Organizations (CIO) in 1949. Civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League also expelled
Communists and “fellow travelers,” as Communist sympathizers were known. From Truman’s
1947 order, the Red Scare radiated outward from the federal government across the broad sweep
of American public life.

HUAC
The Truman administration had legitimized the vague and malleable concept of “disloyalty.”
Other parts of the government went much further, beginning with the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC), which Congressman Martin Dies of Texas and other conservatives
had launched in 1938. In 1947, HUAC stoked the growing Red Scare with widely publicized
hearings on alleged Communist infiltration in the movie industry. A group of writers and
directors dubbed the Hollywood Ten went to jail for contempt of Congress a er they refused to
testify about their past associations. Hundreds of other actors, directors, and writers investigated
by HUAC were unable to get work, victims of an unacknowledged but very real blacklist honored
by industry executives.

Other HUAC investigations proved more legitimate. One was the so-called Hiss case. In 1948,
Whitaker Chambers, a former Communist spy turned conservative journalist, alleged that a
former State Department official named Alger Hiss — who had accompanied FDR to Yalta — was
part of a secret Communist cell. Hiss denied the allegations, but California Republican
congressman Richard Nixon doggedly pursued the case against him, and raised his own profile in
the process. In early 1950, Hiss was found guilty not of espionage but of lying to Congress about
his Communist affiliations and was sentenced to five years in federal prison. Many Americans
doubted whether Hiss was a spy, although intelligence declassified in the 1990s corroborated a
great deal of Chambers’s testimony. No definitive proof has emerged, but many historians now
recognize the strong circumstantial evidence against Hiss. Whether Hiss spied or not, the
incident was a national scandal that fed the Red Scare.

McCarthyism
The meteoric career of Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin marked both the height and the
rapid decline of the Red Scare. In February 1950, the previously unremarkable McCarthy
delivered a bombshell during a speech to the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West
Virginia: “I have here in my hand a list of 205… a list of names that were made known to the
Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still
working and shaping policy in the State Department.” McCarthy would cite different numbers in

1701
different speeches, and never released any names or proof. But he had gained the attention he
sought from the press and the public (see “Firsthand Accounts”).

For the next four years, McCarthy waged a virulent smear campaign from his position as chair of
the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Critics who disagreed with him exposed
themselves to charges of being “so ” on communism. McCarthy was distinctly unsuccessful in
proving communist influence in the government, but he rose to national prominence by
aggressively grilling witnesses he called before the committee and through his appearances on
radio and television. He was poor at investigating but skilled at publicity. Truman condemned
McCarthy’s accusations as “slander, lies, [and] character assassination,” but could do nothing to
curb him. McCarthy’s fellow Republicans largely refrained from publicly challenging the
outspoken senator and, on the whole, were content to reap the political benefits. McCarthy’s
charges almost always targeted Democrats.

Despite McCarthy’s failure to identify a single Communist in government, other developments

gave his charges credibility with the public. The dramatic 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, followed around the world, was fueled by what had become known as “McCarthyism.”
An electrical engineer who worked with the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Julius Rosenberg passed
atomic secrets to the Soviets in the 1940s. A er a contentious trial in which Julius and Ethel were
both convicted, the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953. Documents released decades later
confirmed Julius Rosenberg’s guilt, though not Ethel’s. Their execution remains contentious — in
part because some felt that anti-Semitism played a role in their sentencing. Also fueling
McCarthy’s investigations were a series of trials of American Communists between 1949 and 1955
for violation of the 1940 Smith Act, which prohibited Americans from advocating the violent
overthrow of the government. Though civil libertarians and two Supreme Court justices
vigorously objected, dozens of Communist Party members were convicted. McCarthy was not
involved in either the Rosenberg trial or the Smith Act convictions, but these sensational events
lent his wild charges some plausibility.

In early 1954, McCarthy finally overreached with an investigation into subversive activities in the
U.S. Army. When lengthy hearings — the first of their kind broadcast on the new medium of
television — brought McCarthy’s tactics into the nation’s living rooms, support for him
plummeted. The senator’s bullying and self-serving accusations, captured by live television
cameras broadcasting coast to coast, offended Americans who had previously only read about
McCarthy in newspapers and magazines. In December 1954, the Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure
McCarthy for unbecoming conduct. He died from an alcohol-related illness three years later at the
age of forty-eight. His name became the symbol of a period of political repression of which he
was only the most flagrant manifestation.

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 SKILLS & PROCESSES
CAUSATION

What factors led to the postwar Red Scare, and what were its ramifications for civil liberties in the United States?

The Army-McCarthy Hearings

These 1954 hearings contributed to the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy by exposing his reckless accusations and bullying tactics
to the huge television audience that tuned in each day. Some of the most heated exchanges took place between McCarthy (center) and
Joseph Welch (seated, le ), the lawyer representing the army. When the gentlemanly Welch finally asked, “Have you no sense of
decency sir, at long last? Have you le no sense of decency?” he fatally punctured McCarthy’s armor. The audience broke into applause
because someone had finally had the courage to stand up to the senator from Wisconsin.

FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS
Hunting Communists: The Case of Paul Robeson

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 The Cold War campaigns against American communists and other radicals reached their peak between 1949 and 1954.
Anticommunists searched for signs of “disloyalty” to the United States, especially among public figures such as politicians,
artists, athletes, and actors. Few Americans came under greater suspicion than the black athlete, singer, civil rights advocate,
and political radical Paul Robeson. Having traveled the world as a successful actor and vocalist in the 1930s, Robeson o en
spoke positively about the Soviet Union, where he was celebrated as a great artist. He was an outspoken advocate for black
equality in the United States and a fierce critic of American political leaders for doing little to end Jim Crow and other forms of
racial discrimination and racial violence a er World War II.

In 1949, while speaking at a peace conference in Paris, Robeson was misquoted in the United States as having said that African
Americans (“Negroes” in the standard usage of the period) would not fight in a potential war against the Soviet Union. On his
return to the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held hearings at which prominent African
Americans were encouraged to denounce Robeson. Among them were Thomas Young and Manning Johnson, as well as Jackie
Robinson, the black baseball star who had integrated Major League Baseball in 1947. (Young was editor of a prominent black
newspaper, and Johnson was a former member of the Communist Party who had turned against it.) Branded as disloyal,
Robeson fought back, insisting that HUAC was disloyal for ignoring white violence and continued systematic discrimination
against African Americans. This Cold War episode from 1949 shows how civil rights and anticommunism collided, with black
leaders pressured by HUAC and others to choose sides.

THOMAS YOUNG

Testimony Before House Committee on Un-American Activities, July 13, 1949

S : Hearings Regarding Communist Infiltration of Minority Groups — Part 1: Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, July 13, 14, and 18, 1949 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949), 453.

“I am happy to accept the invitation extended to me to appear before this committee because I feel very strongly the need for bringing
into proper perspective some of the opinions that have been expressed publicly concerning the loyalty of the American Negro….

Please bear this in mind, that there is no evidence on record of the disloyalty of their country on the part of Negroes generally [sic]. It
has not been charged, even, that there have been overt acts by Negroes on which suspicion of disloyalty could be predicated. On the
other hand, the entire record of the American Negro’s service to his country, from the Revolutionary War, in which Crispus Attucks, a
Boston Negro, was among the first to shed blood for this nation’s independence, down to the recent World War II, in which members
of this group played important and heroic roles on every front, is a satisfactory refutation of such charges….

What basis, if any, is there for believing Paul Robeson when he says that in the event of a war with Russia the Negro would not fight for
his country against the Soviets?…

The plain truth about the matter is that in his Paris declaration Mr. Robeson has done a great disservice to his race — far greater than
that done to his country. And if Mr. Robeson does not recognize the injury he has done to the cause of the Negro in this country, then
that underscores his disqualification as a representative of the race.”

MANNING JOHNSON

Testimony Before House Committee on Un-American Activities, July 14, 1949

S : Hearings Regarding Communist Infiltration of Minority Groups: Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, July 14, 1949 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949), 505.

“I have met Paul Robeson a number of times in the headquarters of the national committee of the Communist Party, going to and
coming from conferences with Earl Browder, Jack Stachel, and J. Peters [high-ranking officials of the Communist Party USA in the
1940s]. During the time I was a member of the Communist Party, Paul Robeson was a member of the Communist Party…. In the Negro
commission of the national committee of the Communist Party we were told, under threat of expulsion, never to reveal that Paul
Robeson was a member of the Communist Party, because Paul Robeson’s assignment was highly confidential and secret….

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Paul’s assignment was to work among the intellectuals, the professionals, and artists that the party was seeking to penetrate and
influence along Communist lines….

Of course Paul Robeson has, by background and international connections developed a complex. You recall the role he played, the
role of Emperor Jones. He has delusions of grandeur. He wants to be the Black Stalin among Negroes. The Communist Party is
encouraging that desire, because the Communist Party can very effectively use Robeson to further their penetration among Negroes.”

JACK “JACKIE” ROBINSON

Testimony Before House Committee on Un-American Activities, July 18, 1949

S : Hearings Regarding Communist Infiltration of Minority Groups: Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, July 18, 1949 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949), 481.

“We’re going to make progress in other American fields besides baseball if we can get rid of some of the misunderstanding and
confusion that the public still suffers from. I know I have a great desire and I think that I have some responsibility for helping to clear
up that confusion. As I see it there has been a terrific lot of misunderstanding on this subject of Communism among the Negroes in
this country, and it’s bound to hurt my people’s cause unless it is cleared up.

The white public should start toward real understanding by appreciating that every single Negro who is worth his salt is going to
resent any kind of slurs and discrimination because of his race, and he is going to use every bit of intelligence such as he has to stop it.
This has got absolutely nothing to do with what Communists may or may not be trying to do.

… I’ve been asked to express my views on Paul Robeson’s statement in Paris to the effect that American Negroes would refuse to fight
in any war against Russia because they love Russia so much. I haven’t any comment to make on that statement except that if Mr.
Robeson actually made it, it sounds very silly to me. But he has a right to his personal views…. ”

PAUL ROBESON

News Release Commenting on House Un-American Activities Committee, July 20, 1949
S : Paul Robeson, “Statement on Un-American Activities Committee,” in Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews,
1918–1974, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1978), 218.

“Quite clearly America faces a crisis in race relations. The Un-American Activities Committee moves now to transform the
Government’s cold war policy against the Negro people into a hot war. Its action incites the Ku Klux Klan, that openly terrorist
organization, to a reign of mob violence against my people in Florida and elsewhere. This Committee attempts to divide the Negro
people from one another in order to prevent us from winning jobs, security and justice under the banner of peace.

The loyalty of the Negro people is not a subject for debate. I challenge the loyalty of the Un-American Activities Committee. This
committee maintains an ominous silence in the face of the lynchings of Maceo Snipes, Robert Mallard, the two Negro veterans and
their wives in Monroe, Georgia, and the violence and unpunished murders of scores of Negro veterans by white supremacists since V-J
Day…. Every pro-war fascist-minded group in the country regards the Committee’s silence as license to proceed against my people,
unchecked by Government authorities and unchallenged by the courts.

Our fight for peace in America is a fight for human dignity, and an end to ghetto life. It is the fight for constitutional liberties, the civil
and human rights of every American. This struggle is the decisive struggle with which my people are today concerned….

It is not the Soviet Union that threatens the life, liberty and the property and the citizenship rights of Negro Americans. The threat
comes from within. To destroy this threat our people need the aid of every honest American, Communist and non-Communist alike.
Those who menace our lives proceed unchallenged by the Un-American Activities Committee. I shall not be drawn into any conflict
dividing me from my brother victim of this terror. I am wholly committed to the struggle for peace and democratic rights of free
Americans.”

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 QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
1. What do you think Young means by “a great disservice to his race”? What is the basis of Jackie Robinson’s testimony?
Why do you think Robinson insists that black resistance to discrimination has nothing to do with communism?
Compare the purpose and historical situation to each source author.
2. What is Johnson’s intention in identifying Robeson as a Communist? What would have been the effect of such charges
in 1949?
3. How does Robeson challenge the meaning of “disloyal” in his statement? How would you compare his version of
disloyalty with HUAC’s?

Modern Republicanism and the Liberal State

As the 1952 election approached, the nation was embroiled in both the Cold War and a “hot” war
in Korea. Though the opposition Republicans captured the White House, radical change was not
in the offing. The new president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was not a career politician. The former
commander of Allied forces in Europe embraced what his supporters called “modern
Republicanism,” an updated approach that aimed at moderating, not dismantling, the New Deal.
Eisenhower Republicans were as much successors of FDR as of Herbert Hoover. Foreign policy
reflected a similar continuity. Like the Truman administration, the Republican leadership saw the
world in Cold War polarities.

Despite Eisenhower’s enormous popularity, divisions persisted among Republicans. Conservative

party activists preferred Robert A. Ta of Ohio, the Republican leader in the Senate who was an
outspoken opponent of the New Deal, a close friend of business, and a vocal critic of labor unions.
Though an ardent anticommunist, Ta was far more of an isolationist than most Cold Warriors,
and he criticized Truman’s aggressive containment policy and opposed U.S. participation in
NATO. Ta ran for president three times, and though he never claimed the Republican
nomination, he did earn the loyalty of conservative Americans who deemed the welfare state
wasteful and international initiatives dangerous.

In contrast, moderate Republicans looked to Eisenhower, a man without a political past. Believing
that democracy required the military to stand aside, the career soldier had never voted. In
contrast to Ta , Eisenhower was ideologically closer to more liberal-minded Republican party
leaders like Nelson Rockefeller, who supported programs such as the Marshall Plan and NATO
and were willing to tolerate labor unions and the welfare state. Rockefeller, the scion of one of the
richest families in America, was a quintessential Cold War internationalist. He served in a variety
of capacities under Eisenhower, including as an advisor on foreign affairs. Rockefeller was elected

1706
the governor of New York in 1958 and became the de facto leader of the liberal wing of the
Republican Party.

SKILLS & PROCESSES

DEVELOPMENTS AND PROCESSES

How was the Republican Party divided in the 1950s, and what were its primary constituencies?

Between 1952 and 1960, Eisenhower maintained peace between conservative Ta Republicans
and liberal Rockefeller Republicans, though more ardent conservatives considered him a closet
New Dealer. “Ike,” as he was widely known, proved willing to work with the mostly Democratic-
controlled Congresses of those years. Eisenhower signed bills increasing federal outlays for
veterans’ benefits, housing, highway construction, and Social Security, and increased the
minimum wage from 75 cents an hour to $1. Like Truman, Eisenhower accepted some
government responsibility for the economic security of individuals as part of a broad consensus
in American politics in these years.

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 Dwight Eisenhower

In this photo taken during the 1952 presidential campaign, Dwight D. Eisenhower acknowledges cheers from supporters in
Chicago. “Ike,” as he was universally known, had been a popular five-star general in World War II (also serving as supreme
allied commander in the European theater) and turned to politics in the early 1950s as a member of the Republican Party.
However, Eisenhower was a centrist who did little to disrupt the liberal social policies that Democrats had pursued since the
1930s.

The political landscape that birthed the containment strategy also guided Eisenhower’s foreign
policy. But the tone of the Cold War changed with Stalin’s death in March 1953. A er a prolonged
power struggle, Nikita Khrushchev emerged as Stalin’s successor. The new first secretary of the

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Communist Party soon startled the world by denouncing Stalin and detailing his crimes and
blunders. He also surprised many Americans by calling for “peaceful coexistence” with the West.
But the conciliatory outlook of the new Soviet leader had limits: when Hungarians rose up in 1956
to demand independence from Moscow, Khrushchev crushed the incipient revolution.

With no end to the Cold War in sight, Eisenhower focused on limiting the cost of containment.
The president hoped to economize by relying on a nuclear arsenal instead of expensive
conventional forces. Under this “New Look” defense policy, the Eisenhower administration
stepped up production of the hydrogen bomb and developed long-range strike capabilities. The
Soviets, however, matched the United States weapon for weapon. By 1957, both nations had
intercontinental ballistic missiles. When an American nuclear submarine launched an atomic-
tipped Polaris missile in 1960, Soviet engineers quickly produced an equivalent weapon. This
arms race was another critical feature of the Cold War. American officials believed the best
deterrent to Soviet aggression was the threat of an all-out nuclear response, dubbed “massive
retaliation” by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Although confident in the international arena, Eisenhower was a novice in domestic affairs. In
the wake of the rancorous Truman years, the new president sought a less confrontational tone. He
was reluctant to speak out against Joe McCarthy and did not lead on civil rights. Democrats
remained strong in Congress but proved weak in the two presidential contests of the decade. In
the 1952 election, Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson was hampered by the unpopularity of the
Truman administration. The deadlocked Korean War and a series of scandals that Republicans
dubbed “the mess in Washington” combined to give the war-hero general an easy victory. In 1956,
Ike won an even more impressive victory over Stevenson, an eloquent and sophisticated
spokesman for liberalism but an ineffectual politician.

During the Eisenhower era, particularly at the national level, Democrats and Republicans seemed
in broad agreement about the realities of the Cold War and how to sustain both a welfare state and
a modern industrial economy. Indeed, respected commentators in the 1950s declared “the end of
ideology” and wondered if the great political clashes that had wracked the 1930s were gone
forever. Underneath the apparent calm, however, new forces on both right and le were stirring,
with starkly opposed ideas about the direction of the nation. Their differences would bitterly
divide the country in the 1960s and bring an end to the brief and fragile Cold War consensus
(Chapters 26 and 27).

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COLD WAR IN THE POSTCOLONIAL WORLD
What objectives guided U.S. foreign policy in the postcolonial world during the Cold War?

Even as the Cold War froze Europe, the rest of the global map changed rapidly. New nations were
emerging across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, o en as the culmination of decades-long
anticolonial movements. Between 1947 and 1962, the British, French, Dutch, and Belgian empires
largely disintegrated in a momentous collapse of European global power. During the war years,
FDR had supported the idea of national self-determination, o en to the fury of his British and
French allies. He saw emerging democracies as future partners in an American-led, free-market
world system. But colonial revolts produced many independent- or socialist-minded regimes in
the so-called Third World, as well. Third World was a term that came into usage a er World War II
to describe developing or former colonial nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle
East that were not aligned with the Western capitalist countries led by the United States or the
socialist states of Eastern Europe led by the Soviet Union. Though used throughout the Cold War,
the term “Third World” has declined in usage in recent years in favor of terms like “postcolonial”
or “Global South,” since so many of these nations are in the southern hemisphere (see
“Comparing Interpretations”).

Colonial Independence Movements

Wanting every nation to choose a side in the Cold War, the United States drew as many countries
as possible into collective security agreements, with the NATO alliance as a model. Secretary of
State Dulles orchestrated the 1954 creation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO),
which linked the United States and its major European allies with Australia, New Zealand,
Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand. An extensive system of these defense alliances eventually
tied the United States to more than forty other countries (Map 24.5). The United States also
sponsored a strategically instrumental alliance between Iraq and Iran, on the southern flank of
the Soviet Union.

EXAM TIP
Describe the goals and methods of the U.S. in seeking alliances among new nations a er decolonization.

1710
The United States o en invoked lo y rhetoric in its foreign policy, but in practice proved more
interested in stability than democratic ideals. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations
tended to support overtly anticommunist governments, no matter how repressive. Some of
America’s staunchest allies — the Philippines, South Korea, Iran, Cuba, South Vietnam, and
Nicaragua — were governed by dictatorships or right-wing regimes that lacked broad-based
support. Moreover, secretary of state Dulles o en resorted to secret operations against
governments that, in his opinion, were too closely aligned with the Soviets.

MAP 24.5 American Global Defense Treaties in the Cold War Era

The advent of the Cold War led to a major shi in American foreign policy — the signing of mutual defense treaties. Dating back to
George Washington’s call “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” the United States had avoided
treaty obligations that entailed the defense of other nations. As late as 1919, the U.S. Senate had rejected the principle of “collective
security,” the centerpiece of the League of Nations established by the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. But a er World War
II, in response to fears of Soviet global expansion, the United States entered defense alliances with much of the non-Communist
world.

For such clandestine work, Dulles turned to the new Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), created in
1947 and run by his brother, Allen Dulles. When Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically
elected premier of Iran, nationalized British-owned oil properties with the approval of the Iranian

1711
parliament in 1951, CIA and British agents developed a covert plan to depose him. Through
Operation Ajax in 1953, those agents orchestrated Mossadegh’s ouster and reinstalled Mohammad
Reza Pahlavi as shah of Iran, the ancient Persian title of king. Opposition to the coup and the
subsequent decades of U.S. support for the shah fueled Iranian nationalism and anti-
Americanism, which would eventually spark the 1979 Iranian Revolution (see “The Carter
Presidency” in Chapter 29). In 1954, the CIA also engineered a coup in Guatemala against the
democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, who had seized land from the
American-owned United Fruit Company. Arbenz Guzmán offered to pay United Fruit the declared
value of the land, but the company rejected the overture and sought help from the U.S.
government. Eisenhower specifically approved those CIA efforts and expanded the agency’s
mandate from gathering intelligence to intervening in the affairs of sovereign states (see
“Thinking Like a Historian”).

EXAM TIP
Compare the foreign policies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

Vietnam
When covert operations failed or proved impractical, the American approach to emerging nations
risked entanglement in deeper, more intractable conflicts. One example was already unfolding in
a distant country unknown to most Americans: Vietnam. At the close of World War II, the
Japanese occupiers of the area surrendered to China in the north of the country and to Britain in
the south. The Vietminh, the nationalist movement that had led the resistance against the
Japanese (and the French, prior to 1940), seized control in the north. But their leader, Ho Chi
Minh, was a Communist, and this fact outweighed American and British commitment to self-
determination. When France moved to restore colonial control of Vietnam, the United States and
Britain sided with their European ally. President Truman rejected Ho’s plea to support the
Vietnamese nationhood, and France rejected Ho’s offer of a negotiated independence. Shortly
a er the French returned in late 1946, the Vietminh resumed their war of national liberation.

Eisenhower picked up where Truman had le off. If the French failed, Eisenhower argued, all
non-Communist governments in the region would fall like dominoes. This so-called domino
theory — which represented an extension of the containment doctrine — guided U.S. policy in
Southeast Asia for the next twenty years. The United States eventually provided most of the
financing for the French war, but money was not enough to defeat the determined Vietminh. A er
a fi y-seven-day siege in early 1954, the huge French fortress at Dien Bien Phu fell, and with it
France’s hopes of victory. Later that year, the Geneva Accords partitioned Vietnam temporarily at

1712
the 17th parallel and called for elections within two years to form a single government for a
reunited Vietnam.

The United States rejected and undermined the Geneva Accords. With the help of the CIA, a pro-
American government took power in South Vietnam in June 1954. The next year, in a rigged
election, the anticommunist Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem became president of an independent South
Vietnam. Facing certain defeat by the popular Ho Chi Minh in the scheduled reunification vote,
Diem simply called off the vote. The Eisenhower administration propped up Diem with an
average of $200 million a year in aid and a contingent of 675 American military advisors. This
support was just the beginning.

EXAM TIP
Evaluate U.S. policy in Vietnam as a commitment to containment policy.

The Middle East

Vietnam remained out of the public spotlight even as American support ramped up. The same
could not be said of the Middle East, an area rich in oil, political complexity, and the legacy of
European colonialism. The most volatile area was Palestine, which had a majority Arab
population but was also historically the ancient land of Israel and desired by the Zionist
movement as the site of a Jewish national homeland. Jewish immigration to Palestine had begun
in the a ermath of World War I, and thousands of Jews arrived as anti-Semitism in Europe
steadily intensified in the 1930s. A er World War II, many survivors of the Nazi extermination
camps resettled in Palestine, which was still controlled by Britain under a 1922 mandate from the
defunct League of Nations. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition
Palestine between Jewish and Arab sectors. When the British mandate ended in 1948, Palestinian
leaders rejected the partition as a violation of their right to self-determination, while Zionist
leaders embraced the partition and proclaimed the state of Israel. In response, the Arab nations
of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt invaded the newly proclaimed state. The infant nation of Israel
survived, and many Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven from their homes by the Israeli army
during the fighting. The Arab defeat le these people permanently stranded in refugee camps or
exiled in foreign countries. President Truman recognized the new state immediately, which won
him crucial support from Jewish voters in the 1948 election but aroused opposition in the Arab
world.

Southwest of Palestine, Egypt began to assert its presence in the region. Having gained
independence from Britain several decades earlier, Egypt remained a monarchy until 1952, when

1713
Gamal Abdel Nasser led a military coup that established a constitutional republic. Caught
between the Soviet Union and the United States, Nasser sought an independent route: a pan-Arab
socialism designed to sever colonial relationships with the West. When negotiations with the
United States over Nasser’s plan to build a massive hydroelectric dam on the Nile broke down in
1956, he nationalized the Suez Canal, which was the lifeline for Western Europe’s oil shipments.
Britain and France, in alliance with Israel, attacked Egypt and seized the canal. Concerned that
the invasion would push Egypt toward the Soviets, Eisenhower successfully pressured France and
Britain to pull back. A er reclaiming the Suez Canal, Nasser built the massive Aswan Dam on the
Nile with Soviet support. Eisenhower had likely avoided a larger war, but the West lost a potential
ally in Nasser.

EXAM TIP
Recognize the impact of U.S. policy on nationalist movements in the Middle East.

Egyptian President Challenges the West

Waving to wildly cheering crowds as he is driven through a street in Cairo on July 28, 1956, is Gamal Abdel Nasser, the
president of Egypt. Nasser became beloved in the region for nationalizing the Suez Canal — seizing it from Western
interests — and for advocating a pan-Arab socialism allied with neither the United States nor the Soviet Union in the
Cold War.

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In early 1957, concerned about Soviet presence in the region, the president delivered a “Special
Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East.” The document outlined a policy that
came to be known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, which stated that American forces would assist
any nation in the region that required aid “against overt armed aggression from any nation
controlled by International Communism.” Invoking the doctrine later that year, Eisenhower
helped King Hussein of Jordan put down a Nasser-backed revolt and propped up a pro-American
government in Lebanon. The Eisenhower Doctrine was further evidence that the United States
had extended the global reach of containment, by incorporating the Middle East into the Cold
War’s rigid binary logic. In search of regional allies, always with an eye on the West’s vital oil
supply, the United States had initiated a commitment to intervening in the region that would
endure for decades.

SKILLS & PROCESSES

MAKING CONNECTIONS

How did the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union affect disparate regions such as the Middle East and Southeast
Asia?

John F. Kennedy and Renewed East-West Tensions

Eisenhower’s successor in the presidency, John F. Kennedy, was a conventional Cold War
politician in most regards, raised in an era defined by Munich, Yalta, and McCarthy. Kennedy
would introduce new Cold War tactics without fundamentally altering the containment strategy
pursued by American presidents since Truman. Born into a prominent Massachusetts family,
Kennedy’s rise was steady and fast. He performed heroically in World War II, and he had the
familiar Harvard pedigree of previous leaders. But Kennedy used charisma, style, and personality
— more than platforms and issues — to define a new brand of politics. Kennedy had inherited his
love of political combat from his grandfathers — colorful, and o en ruthless, Irish Catholic
politicians in Boston. Elected to congress in 1946 and to the senate in 1952, in 1960 he set his
sights on the presidency. Ambitious and image savvy, the forty-three-year-old Kennedy made use
of his many advantages to become, as novelist Norman Mailer put it, “our leading man.” His chief
political disadvantage — that he was Catholic in a country that had never elected a Catholic
president — he skillfully neutralized. Thanks to both media advisors and his youthfulness, he
cultivated an air of idealism, but his international outlook relied on old-style power politics.

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 The Kennedy Magnetism

John F. Kennedy, the 1960 Democratic candidate for president, used his youth and personality (and those of his
equally personable and stylish wife) to attract voters. Here the Massachusetts senator draws an enthusiastic crowd
on a campaign stop in Elgin, Illinois.

The Election of 1960 and the New Frontier

Kennedy’s Republican opponent in the 1960 presidential election was Eisenhower’s vice president,
Richard Nixon, a seasoned politician and Cold Warrior himself. The great innovation of the 1960
campaign was a series of four nationally televised debates. Nixon, less photogenic than Kennedy,
looked pasty and unshaven under the intense studio lights. Voters who heard the first debate on
the radio concluded that Nixon had won, but those who viewed it on television favored Kennedy.
Despite Kennedy’s success in the debates, he won the narrowest of electoral victories, receiving
49.7 percent of the popular vote to Nixon’s 49.5 percent. Kennedy attracted Catholics, African
Americans, and the labor vote; his vice-presidential running mate, Texas senator Lyndon Baines
Johnson, helped bring in white southern Democrats. Only 120,000 votes separated the two
candidates, and a shi of a few thousand votes in key states would have reversed the outcome.

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Kennedy brought to Washington a host of both young, ambitious newcomers and trusted advisors
and academics, who flocked to Washington to join the New Frontier — Kennedy’s term for the
challenges the country faced. They included Robert McNamara, a renowned systems analyst and
former head of Ford Motor Company, as secretary of defense and Kennedy’s younger brother
Robert, who had made a name as a hard-hitting investigator of organized crime, as attorney
general. Relying on an old American trope, Kennedy’s New Frontier evoked masculine toughness
and uncharted terrain. That terrain quickly proved treacherous, however, as the new
administration faced an immediate international incident.

Crises in Cuba and Berlin

In January 1961, the Soviet Union announced that it intended to support “wars of national
liberation” wherever in the world they occurred. Kennedy took Soviet premier Khrushchev at his
word, especially regarding Cuba, where in 1959 communist revolutionaries under Fidel Castro
had overthrown the right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista. Determined to keep Cuba out of the
Soviet orbit, Kennedy followed through on Eisenhower administration plans to orchestrate a raid
by Cuban exiles meant to launch an anti-Castro uprising. The invaders, trained by the CIA, proved
ill-prepared for the task. Shortly a er the force of 1,400 landed at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs on April 17,
1961, Castro’s troops crushed them. Kennedy prudently rejected CIA pleas for a U.S. air strike.
Accepting the defeat, the new president went before the American people and took full
responsibility for the fiasco (Map 24.6).

EXAM TIP
The role of the United States in Latin America during the Cold War is important to know on the AP® Exam.

1717
 MAP 24.6 The United States and Cuba, 1961–1962

Fidel Castro’s 1959 Communist takeover of Cuba brought Cold War tensions to the Caribbean. In 1961, the United States tried
unsuccessfully to overthrow Castro’s regime by sponsoring the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuban exiles launched from Nicaragua and
other points in the Caribbean. In 1962, the United States confronted the Soviet Union over Soviet construction of nuclear missile sites
in Cuba. A er President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of the island, the Soviets backed down from the tense standoff and
removed the missiles. Despite the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union and the official end of the Cold War, the United States
continued to view Cuba, governed by Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, since 2008, as an enemy nation until 2016, when President Barack
Obama began the process of normalizing relations between the two countries.

Already strained by the Bay of Pigs incident, U.S.-Soviet relations deteriorated further in June 1961
a er Khrushchev stopped movement between Communist-controlled East Berlin and the city’s
Western sector. Kennedy responded by dispatching 40,000 additional troops to Europe. In mid-
August, to stop the exodus of East Germans fleeing to the West, the Communist regime began
constructing the Berlin Wall, policed by border guards under shoot-to-kill orders. Kennedy again
responded, though this time rhetorically, by criticizing the wall in a June 1963 speech in West
Berlin, calling it “the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist
system.” Until the 12-foot-high concrete barrier came down in 1989, it served as the supreme
symbol of the ongoing Cold War.

Perhaps the most perilous episode of that conflict arrived in Autumn 1962. In a somber televised
address on October 22, Kennedy revealed that U.S. reconnaissance planes had spotted Soviet-built

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bases for intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba — easily capable of striking the continental
United States. Some of those weapons had already been installed, and more were on the way.
Kennedy announced that the United States would impose a “quarantine on all offensive military
equipment” bound for Cuba. As the world held its breath, ships carrying Soviet missiles turned
back on October 25. A er a week of tense negotiations, both sides made concessions: Kennedy
pledged not to invade Cuba, and Khrushchev promised to dismantle the missile bases. Kennedy
also secretly ordered U.S. missiles to be removed from Turkey, at Khrushchev’s insistence. The
Cuban missile crisis proved the closest the Cold War came to a nuclear exchange. The terrifying
stakes led to a slight thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations. As National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy
put it, both sides were chastened by “having come so close to the edge.”

VISUAL ACTIVITY

The Berlin Wall

A West Berlin resident walks alongside a section of the Berlin Wall in August 1962, a year a er its construction. The wall divided the
Soviet-controlled zone, which became East Berlin, from the three zones controlled by the United States, Britain, and France, which
became West Berlin. Berlin itself lay in East Germany, the independent state created in 1949 from the Soviet-occupied portion of
Germany.

READING THE IMAGE: What do you notice about the materials in and around the wall? What purpose do you think the loud speakers on
the East German side might have served?

MAKING CONNECTIONS: The wall divided neighborhoods and neighbors, but it also divided two nations, East and West Germany. How
would the construction of the Berlin Wall be explained from the point of view of the Soviet Union? How would it be explained from the

1719
 point of view of the United States? How did other events in the early Cold War impact the decision to construct the Berlin Wall?

Kennedy and the World

Kennedy also launched a series of international initiatives that captured the idealism of the early
1960s. One was the Peace Corps, which embodied the call to public service put forth in his
inaugural address (“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your
country”). Thousands of men and women agreed to devote two or more years as volunteers for
projects such as teaching English to Filipino schoolchildren or helping African villagers obtain
clean water. The Peace Corps also proved a low-cost Cold War weapon — and an extension of
American “so power” — that showed the developing world an alternative to communism.
Kennedy championed space exploration as well. In a 1962 speech, he proposed that the nation
commit itself to landing a man on the moon within the decade. The Soviets had already beaten
the United States into orbit with the 1957 Sputnik satellite and the 1961 flight of cosmonaut Yuri
Gagarin. Capitalizing on America’s fascination with space, Kennedy persuaded Congress to
increase funding for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which
completed the research and development that pushed the United States ahead in the space race.
In 1969, American astronauts would fulfill Kennedy’s ambition by walking on the lunar surface.

Making a Commitment in Vietnam

When Kennedy became president, he inherited American involvement in Vietnam. Truman had
sent aid to the French, and in the wake of French defeat Eisenhower had molded South Vietnam
into an American client state. Like his predecessors, Kennedy understood Vietnam as another
front of the Cold War. But the nuclear brinksmanship of the Cuban missile crisis led this time to a
more moderate interventionism. In 1961, he increased military aid to the South Vietnamese and
expanded the role of U.S. Special Forces (“Green Berets”), who would train the South Vietnamese
army in unconventional, small-group warfare tactics.

But the corrupt and repressive Diem regime, propped up by Eisenhower since 1954, was losing
ground in spite of American support. By 1961, Diem’s opponents, with backing from North
Vietnam, had formed a revolutionary movement known as the National Liberation Front (NLF).
The Vietcong, as the NLF’s guerrilla fighters were known, found allies among peasants harmed by
Diem’s “strategic hamlet” program, which had uprooted entire villages to break up support for the
NLF. Furthermore, members of the country’s Buddhist majority charged Diem, a Catholic, with
religious persecution. Starting in May 1963, militant Buddhists staged dramatic demonstrations,

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which in June came to include self-immolations (burning to death) recorded by reporters
covering the activities of the 16,000 U.S. military personnel then in Vietnam.

These gruesome protests, broadcast on television for a shocked global audience, illustrated the
dilemma of American policy in Vietnam. To ensure a stable government in the South and check
Ho Chi Minh and the North, the United States had to support Diem’s authoritarian regime. But the
regime’s repression of its political opponents destabilized South Vietnam as a whole. The turmoil
escalated with Diem’s assassination on November 2, 1963. American involvement in Vietnam
would massively expand, but the elemental paradox remained unchanged: in its efforts to achieve
victory, the United States took actions that brought defeat ever closer.

SKILLS & PROCESSES

COMPARISON

How was Kennedy’s approach to the Cold War similar to and different from Eisenhower’s and Truman’s?

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SUMMARY
The Cold War began as a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union over the fate of
post-World War II Germany and Eastern Europe. Early on, the United States adopted a strategy of
containment, meant to curtail the spread of Soviet influence. A er Mao Zedong and the Chinese
Communist Party gained power in China, America’s containment policy expanded to Asia. The
first effect of that expansion was the Korean War, a er which containment became America’s
guiding principle across the developing world — o en called the Third World in that era. Cold War
tensions relaxed in the late 1950s but erupted again under John F. Kennedy with the Cuban missile
crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, and major increases in American military assistance to
South Vietnam. The twenty years a er World War II saw a major military buildup, a massive
nuclear arms race, and unprecedented entanglements across the globe.

On the domestic front, Harry S. Truman started out with high hopes for an expanded New Deal,
only to be confounded by resistance from Congress and the competing demands of the Cold War.
A climate of fear over internal subversion by Communists gave rise to McCarthyism and a new
Red Scare. Truman’s successor, Eisenhower, brought the Republicans back into power. Although
personally conservative, “Ike” did not dismantle the New Deal. When Eisenhower le office and
Kennedy became president, it seemed that a “liberal consensus” reigned over a nation enjoying
widespread prosperity.

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 CHAPTER 24 REVIEW

CONTENT REVIEW
Answer these questions to demonstrate your understanding of the chapter’s main ideas.

1. What primary factors caused the Cold War?

2. What were the defining ideas of Cold War liberalism, and why did the Democratic Party
embrace them?
3. What objectives guided U.S. foreign policy in the postcolonial world during the Cold War?

TERMS TO KNOW
Identify and explain the significance of each term.

Key Concepts and Events

Yalta Conference
United Nations
Potsdam Conference
containment
Truman Doctrine
Marshall Plan
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Warsaw Pact
NSC-68
Cold War liberalism
Ta -Hartley Act
Fair Deal
Loyalty-Security Program
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
New Look
domino theory
Eisenhower Doctrine

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Bay of Pigs
Cuban missile crisis
Peace Corps

Key People
Joseph Stalin
George F. Kennan
Nikita Khrushchev
Joseph McCarthy
Ho Chi Minh
John F. Kennedy
Fidel Castro

MAKING CONNECTIONS
Recognize the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters by answering these
questions.

1. How was America’s Cold War foreign policy an extension of principles and policies
from earlier eras, and in what ways was it a break with those traditions? Was the Cold
War inevitable? Support your descriptions of continuity and change with evidence
from the text.
2. Look at the map of the military-industrial complex (Map 24.3) and the map of
population changes (Chapter 25, Map 25.2). Where were the majority of military
weapons manufactured? What were the connections between weapons and geography?
How did those connections affect population distribution in the United States and
within individual metropolitan areas?

KEY TURNING POINTS

Refer to the timeline at the start of the chapter for help in answering the following question.

What turning points and crises defined American containment policy between 1946 and
1954? Explain your answer with evidence from the timeline and chapter.

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 PRACTICE QUESTIONS

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

Choose the correct answer for each question.

Questions 1–4 refer to the excerpt provided.

“I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Sovietism in our country today if the realities of this
situation were better understood by our people. There is nothing as dangerous or as terrifying as the unknown….

World communism is like a malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue. This is the point at which domestic
and foreign policies meet. Every courageous and incisive measure to solve the internal problems of our own society …
is a diplomatic victory over Moscow….

Many foreign peoples, in Europe at least, are tired and frightened by experiences of the past, and are less interested in
abstract freedom than in security. They are seeking guidance rather than responsibilities. We should be better able
than Russians to give them this. And unless we do, the Russians certainly will.”

George Kennan, United States diplomat in Moscow, “Long Telegram” to the Secretary of State, February 1946

1. The arguments expressed in the excerpt are best understood in the context of the
a. U.S. military involvement in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
b. fluctuation between confrontation and coexistence with the Soviet Union.
c. emergence of nationalist movements across the globe a er World War II.
d. end of the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union.

2. The “hysteria” referenced by Kennan in the excerpt refers most directly to

a. widespread public protests against the dra .
b. growing scientific concern about environmental dangers of a nuclear war.
c. a domestic search for communists working in the government or mass media.
d. legislation restricting free speech and limiting criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

3. Kennan’s arguments expressed in the excerpt most directly supported a foreign policy
of
a. détente.
b. containment.
c. isolationism.
d. imperialism.

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 4. The most direct result of Kennan’s ideas expressed in the excerpt was the
a. establishment of the United Nations.
b. spread of Cold War competition to Latin America.
c. North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
d. growth of a large military-industrial complex in the United States.

Questions 5–6 refer to the excerpt provided.

“In Korea the Government forces, which were armed to prevent border raids and to preserve internal security, were
attacked by invading forces from North Korea. The Security Council of the United Nations called upon the invading
troops to cease hostilities and to withdraw to the 38th parallel. This they have not done, but on the contrary have
pressed the attack. The Security Council called upon all members of the United Nations to render every assistance to
the United Nations in the execution of this resolution. In these circumstances I have ordered United States air and sea
forces to give the Korean Government troops cover and support.

The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to
conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.”

President Truman, Statement on the Situation in Korea, June 1950

5. The sentiments expressed in the excerpt share the greatest similarity to those who
used to support U.S. entry into which of the following conflicts?
a. The Spanish-American War
b. World War I
c. Vietnam War
d. Persian Gulf War

6. The events described in the excerpt most immediately led to

a. growing power of the executive branch to conduct foreign policy.
b. the rise of independence movements in the former colonies of European countries.
c. a New Le govement challenging United States military interventionism.
d. the increasing immigration to the United States from countries in Asia.

SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS

Read each question carefully and write a short response. Use evidence from the text to support
your claims.

“Whatever date is chosen to mark the declaration of [the Cold War], it is certain that the issue that sparked it, gave it
life and shaped its early course, was East Europe. For centuries East and West have struggled … for control of the huge
area running from the Baltic to the Balkans, an area rich in human and industrial resources and one that is
strategically vital to both sides…. Neither the West nor the East has been willing to allow East Europe to be strong,

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independent, or neutral. Russia and the West each have wanted the area to be aligned with them and open for their
own economic exploitation…. [During World War II], the West made no significant contribution to the liberation of
East Europe and when the end came the Red Army was in sole possession of the area…. This crucial result of World
War II destroyed the Grand Alliance and gave birth to the Cold War.”

Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, 1971

“[T]he argument that the Cold War conceptually and analytically does not belong in the south [i.e., Africa, South Asia,
and Latin America] is wrong…. US and Soviet interventionisms … shaped both the international and the domestic
framework within which political, social, and cultural changes in Third World countries took place…. The United
States and the Soviet Union were driven to intervene in the Third World by the ideologies inherent in their politics….
Washington and Moscow needed to change the world in order to prove the universal applicability of their ideologies,
and the elites of the newly independent [Third World] states proved fertile ground for their competition…. [B]oth
powers saw themselves as assisting natural trends in world history and as defending their own security at the same
time. Both saw a specific mission in and for the Third World that only their own state could carry out and which
without their involvement would flounder in local hands.”

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 2005

1. Using the two excerpts provided, answer (a), (b), and (c).
a. Briefly explain ONE major difference between Ambrose’s and Westad’s historical
interpretations of the Cold War.
b. Briefly explain how ONE specific historical event or development from the period
1945 to 1980 that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support
Ambrose’s interpretation.
c. Briefly explain how ONE specific historical event or development from the period
1945 to 1980 that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support
Westad’s interpretation.

Government Military Expenditures (In Billions of Dollars)

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2. Using the graph provided, answer (a), (b), and (c).
a. Briefly explain ONE specific historical event or development that caused the trend
depicted in the graph.
b. Briefly explain ANOTHER specific historical event or development that caused the
trend depicted in the graph.
c. Briefly explain ONE specific historical effect in United States society of the change
depicted in the graph.

3. Answer (a), (b), and (c).

a. Briefly explain ONE specific historical difference between U.S. foreign policy in the
period 1920–1940 from U. S. foreign policy in the period 1945–1963.
b. Briefly explain ONE specific historical similarity between U.S. foreign policy in the
period 1920–1940 to U. S. foreign policy in the period 1945–1963.
c. Briefly explain ONE specific historical effect on U.S. society of the nation’s foreign
policy in the period 1920–1940 OR in the period 1945–1963.

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