The Cold War Begins: Europe, China and Korea, 1945–1962

Allies become rivals

In April 1945, American and Soviet soldiers met at the Elbe River in Germany and shook hands as allies. Within three years they were rivals in a struggle that would shape the world until 1991: the Cold War. It was "cold" because the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, never fought each other directly. But it produced hot wars that killed millions, a nuclear arms race that could have ended civilization, and a race to space.

In Grade 10 you studied Canada's part: the Gouzenko affair, NATO, NORAD and Korea. Here you will look at how the Cold War began, and how it spread from Europe to Asia.

Why did the Cold War begin?

• Different systems: the U.S. stood for multi-party democracy and capitalism; the USSR for one-party communism and a state-run economy. Each believed its system should spread.
• Security fears: the USSR had been invaded through Eastern Europe twice in 30 years and lost about 27 million people. Stalin wanted friendly governments on his borders. Western leaders saw Soviet control of Eastern Europe as expansion.
• Broken promises: at Yalta (February 1945) Stalin promised free elections in Eastern Europe. Instead, by 1948, communist governments loyal to Moscow controlled Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia.

In March 1946, Winston Churchill told an audience in Fulton, Missouri: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent." Stalin replied in the Soviet press, comparing Churchill to Hitler.

In March 1947, U.S. President Harry Truman asked Congress for aid to Greece and Turkey, saying "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." This Truman Doctrine launched the policy of containment: stopping communism from spreading. The Marshall Plan (1948) gave Western Europe billions of dollars to rebuild; the USSR refused it for its satellites.

Europe divides

• Berlin: Germany and Berlin were divided into occupation zones. When the Western powers introduced a new currency, Stalin blockaded West Berlin (June 1948). The U.S., Britain and allies flew in food and coal in the Berlin Airlift for almost a year until Stalin lifted the blockade in May 1949.
• Two Germanys were founded in 1949: the Federal Republic (West) and the Democratic Republic (East).
• Alliances: NATO (1949), with Canada as a founding member; the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact (1955).
• Nuclear arms race: the USSR tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949, years earlier than Americans expected. Both sides built hydrogen bombs in the early 1950s. Nuclear deterrence came to rest on mutually assured destruction (MAD): neither side could attack without being destroyed itself.
• Revolts in the East: after Stalin died (1953), Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes in a "secret speech" (1956). When Hungarians rose up in October 1956 and announced they would leave the Warsaw Pact, Soviet tanks crushed the revolution. About 200 000 Hungarians fled; about 37 000 came to Canada.
• The Berlin Wall: millions of East Germans escaped through Berlin. On August 13, 1961, East Germany began building a wall to stop them.

The Cold War comes to Asia

China. After Japan's defeat, the civil war between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists and Mao Zedong's Communists resumed. The Communists won peasant support with land reform and discipline; the Nationalists suffered from corruption and inflation. On October 1, 1949, Mao proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Chiang's government retreated to Taiwan.

Mao's rule transformed China, at enormous cost:

• Land reform gave land to peasants, but landlords were attacked in mass campaigns, and many were killed.
• The Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) tried to industrialize overnight through giant communes and backyard steel furnaces. False production reports and grain seizures caused one of the deadliest famines in history; estimates of the death toll, reconstructed mostly from population data, run from about 15 million to 45 million or more.
• China and the USSR split bitterly around 1960 over ideology and leadership.
• In the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Mao mobilized young Red Guards against "bourgeois" teachers, officials and traditions; schools closed, and millions were persecuted.

Korea. Korea had been divided at the 38th parallel in 1945. On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded the South. A UN force led by the U.S. (including Canadians) pushed north; China sent hundreds of thousands of troops to support the North. An armistice in July 1953 left Korea divided, as it still is.

Cuba. In January 1959, Fidel Castro's revolutionaries overthrew the Batista dictatorship. Castro nationalized U.S.-owned businesses and turned to the USSR. A CIA-backed invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs (April 1961) failed.

Thirteen days: the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962)

In October 1962, U.S. spy planes photographed Soviet nuclear missile sites being built in Cuba, about 150 km from Florida. President John F. Kennedy announced a naval "quarantine" of Cuba. For about two weeks the world feared nuclear war. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in return for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba and, secretly, the later removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. Afterward, the superpowers set up a direct communication link, the hotline (1963), and signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963).