Lesson One
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USA vs. USSR
Outcomes (SWBAT)
Evaluate the methods used by the super powers in their global hegemony
Identify the growing fear of communism in the States
Identify the factors that led to war in Korea and how it became a client
war of the cold war
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Activities
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6.
Cold War– USA vs. USSR – diagram on the white board using Eagle and
Bear
Causes of the Cold War – ideologies and the domino effect
Truman Doctrine & Marshall Plan, Berlin Blockade & Airlift, NATO vs.
Warsaw Pact– put all of these on a Cold War map with important notes
USSR has the bomb – add to map! 1949 first successful test of RDS
(Joe) – 1
McCarthyism in the USA – CNN DVD “Cold War” – disc 2 “The Reds”
chapter – show first 20 minutes on McCarthyism in the USA.
New Fears and Alarms assignment.
Materials
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2.
3.
4.
USA vs. USSR notes
Cold War map and cut-outs
Nationalism & Imperialism notes
lecture notes for Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Berlin Blockade &
Airlift, NATO/Warsaw Pact, McCarthyism
Lecture Notes – a Bipolar World
POST WWII:
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Continental Europe is in ruins
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Germany as a nation, did not exist
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Italy was crushed
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Eastern Europe had been a major battlefield
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Russia was spent, and it may not have been in the “winner’s circle” if not
for the Lend-Lease program of the USA
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Britain is in serious decline
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Japan occupied by the USA
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China in a civil war
USA
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12.5 million men in uniform
7.5 of those overseas
1200 major warships centred around dozens of aircraft carriers
no other country possessed a fleet worth mentioning at that time
air force has 2000 heavy bombers, 1000 ultra-long-range B-29s, and jet
powered strategic bombers
for a brief time after the war she had no more atom bombs, but no one
else knew that
USSR
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was a military giant at the end of the war, but could not rival the USA
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economically poor, deprived, and unbalanced
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Stalin turned his energies to “purifying” not only the Soviet state itself, but
also the communist parties of satellite states
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Internal discipline and absolute conformity
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Anyone with foreign connections is a suspect… Stalin shot or
imprisoned most of his own returning POW’s
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Israel = new wave of anti-Semitism
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Army cut down to size… Zhukov dismissed
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Censorship intensified
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Similar practices in her satellite states
Bulgaria – referendum, 1945
Led to the creation of a
communist regime
Yugoslavia – Marshall Tito
Never absorbed under the Iron
Curtain due to Tito’s popularity
Not liberated by Soviets in WWII
Hungary, Poland, Albania, &
Romania, 1947
Communists seized power in
these countries
Czechoslovakia, 1948
Benes and Jan Masaryk
pressured into taking more
communists into gov’t. Masaryk
killed, Czech again loses her
independence
Finland
Neutral, but under the watchful
eye of the U.S.S.R.!
Greece – Civil War
Was a “British” area of influence,
& Stalin stayed out during the
war, which would have been an
easy time for him to intervene.
Soviet expansion into Balkans
Threatens security of Greece and
Turkey
=
TRUMAN DOCTRINE
$400 million in economic and
military aid to Greece & Turkey in
order to prevent expansion of
communism into those countries
Asia and Africa
Conflict between colonial
European nations and resurgent
nationalism in Asia and Africa
provided areas for a clash
between communism and the
economic and political doctrines
of the West.
NATO- 1949
Prompted by the Berlin Blockade
12 original members
(UK/Fr/Belg/Neth/Lux/It/Por/Nor
/Den/Ice/Can/USA)
1952 – Greece/Turkey
1954 – West Germany
-renounce war
-mutual assistance
-aggression determined by
signatory state involved
-20 year treaty
-permanent HQ in Paris
MARSHALL PLAN
USA gives aid to European
nations in order that they rebuild
their economies, balance
budgets, and within 4 years, be
free of American aid
OEEC = $28 billion in aid
Berlin Blockade & Airlift
1948 – a new currency was
introduced by the West into
Berlin
USSR refuses to accept this
USSR refused western nations
the right to transport goods into
Berlin
US transfers B-29’s to UK
West counters with a massive
airlift for 15 months
UN resolution – 2 separate
gov’ts in Berlin
Japan – occupied by the US Army 1945-52
Under MacArthur – virtual dictator over 90 million
Japanese
Treaty of San Francisco
Japan as the bastion of anti-communism
Japan as a sovereign nation – but territory reduced
to 4 islands
US-Japan military alliance = int’l security
New Fears and Alarms – lecture notes
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once NATO formed, USA poured money into Western Europe
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22 September, 1949 – Truman discovers the Soviets also have the bomb.
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October, 1949 – communists establish the new regime in China, led by
Mao  dominoes!
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Alger Hiss, a communist spy, is found out through Richard Nixon’s
(congressman) anti-Communist Congressional Investigation
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Witch-hunt or “Red Scare” ramps up under Senator Joseph McCarthy
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In Britain, Klaus Fuchs, a physicist, was found selling secrets to the
Soviets
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February, 1950, China and the USSR signed a treaty of friendship and
mutual assistance
DVD “Cold War” here.
History 12
Ms. Lacroix
Name ___________________________________
McCarthyism
Source A - Statements made by Senator
Joseph McCarthy to the Senate inquiry
into communist penetration of the State
Department, March 8, 1950
“Professor Owen Lattimore has been a ‘procommunist’ for many years. He is the architect
of our Far-Eastern policy and is the leading
member of a group which has delivered China
to communism and has done everything in the
Far East that Russia wants. He is the top
Russian espionage agent.”
Source B – Statement on April 6, 1950 by
Professor Owen Lattimore to the same
inquiry mentioned in Document A
“I have never been a communist or a
sympathizer with communism. I have never
held a position in the US government in which
I could make policy. Far from accepting
communist policy on China I vigorously
supported Chiang Kai-shek when the
communists were attacking him. By telling the
kind of lies about the USA that Russian
propagandists couldn’t invent, Senator
McCarthy is accomplishing results for Russia
which exceed their wildest hopes. I accuse
Senator McCarthy of making the US
government an object of suspicion in the eyes
of the anti-communist world and, undoubtedly,
the laughing stock of the communist
governments. He has surrounded himself with
crackpots, professional informers, and
hysterics.”
Source C – Speech by US President Harry
Truman, Washington, April 24, 1950
“The Federal Employee Loyalty Program was
set up to ensure that no disloyal person,
whether a communist or a member of the Ku
Klux Klan should be employed by the
government and that loyal employees should
be protected against false, malicious and illfounded accusations. The government is
fighting communism without headlines or
hysteria, but does not intend to turn the FBI
into a Gestapo, or to try to control what our
people read and say and think, or to turn the
USA into a right wing totalitarian country.”
Source D – British Cartoon, 1948
History 12
Ms. Lacroix
Name __________________________________
Complete the following chart by defining/explaining each of the factors that
contributed to an increase of tension in the world (particularly America) during
the 1950s.
Type of Threat
Definition/Explanation
Atomic Bomb
Creation of a new
Regime in China
Significance:
Nixon’s discovery
of Alger Hiss
McCarthyism
Klaus Fuchs
Treaty between
China and the
U.S.S.R.
History 12
Ms. Lacroix
Name __________________________________
Complete the following chart by defining/explaining each of the factors that
contributed to an increase of tension in the world (particularly America) during
the 1950s.
Type of Threat
Definition/Explanation
USSR – 1949 – has the bomb = deterrence
Atomic Bomb
Creation of a new
Regime in China
Mao – China is now a communist country –adding
millions more communists to the world “count”
Significance:
Domino theory increases as an American concern
US state official is a Soviet Spy
Nixon’s discovery
of Alger Hiss
McCarthyism
Klaus Fuchs
Treaty between
China and the
U.S.S.R.
The Red Scare!!!
House of Un-American Activities
-reduces civil rights and liberties in a democratic nation
“jingoism”
In Britain, a physicist is discovered giving secret
information to the Soviets
This alliance of friendship and mutual assistance
furthers the Red Scare in America