The Cold War and Beyond

I.               Containment

A.     Key Points

1.     The Soviet Union (USSR) dominated much of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII. Winston Churchill warned that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

2.     Containment was a foreign policy designed to contain or block expansion.

3.     Containment was the primary U.S. foreign policy from the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

B.     The Truman Doctrine

1.     The immediate goal of the Truman Doctrine was to block the expansion of Soviet influence in Greece and Turkey.

2.     On March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman asked Congress for $400 million in economic aid for Greece and Turkey.

3.     Truman justified the aid by declaring that the United States would support “free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugations by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” This sweeping pledge became known as the Truman Doctrine.

C.     The Marshall Plan

1.     WWII left Western Europe devastated and vulnerable to Soviet influence.

2.     The Marshall Plan was a program of economic aid designed to promote the recovery of war-torn Europe while also preventing the spread of Soviet influence.

3.     The Marshall Plan was an integral part of Truman’s policy of containment.

4.     The Marshall Plan dramatically increased American political and economic influence in Western and Southern Europe.

D.    The NATO Alliance

1.     Ten Western European nations joined with the United States and Canada to form a defensive military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO coordinated defense preparations among the nations of Western Europe.

2.     The NATO alliance marked a decisive break from America’s tradition of isolationism.

E.     The Warsaw Pact

1.     The Soviet Union responded to NATO by forming the Warsaw Pact.

2.     The alliance linked the Soviet Union with seven Eastern European countries: Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania.

F.     The Berlin Airlift

1.     The Allies failed to agree on a peace treaty with Germany.

2.     In 1945, the Allies divided Germany into four occupation zones, one each for the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. The city of Berlin lay 110 miles inside the Soviet occupation zone. Like Germany, it was divided into four occupation zones.

3.     Fearing a resurgent Germany, the Soviet Union cut off Western land access to West Berlin. This action provoked the first great Cold War test of wills between the United States and the Soviet Union.

4.     President Truman ordered a massive airlift of food, fuel, and other supplies to the beleaguered citizens of West Berlin.

5.     The Berlin Airlift marked a crucial and successful test of containment.

6.     Following the Berlin Airlift, the United States, Great Britain, and France created the Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany. The Soviet Union responded by establishing the East German state, the German Democratic Republic.