The Policy of Containment
Chapter 26 Section 2
6.0 Notes

Objectives…
• Contrast and compare the leadership styles of President Roosevelt and Truman
• Explain the overall goal of the
Containment Policy
• Identify and explain the individual components of the Containment Policy
• Evaluate the success of Truman’s enforcement of the Containment Policy

Who would lead the U.S. during the beginning of the Cold War?
President Harry Truman
– Honest and willing to make tough decisions
– Not in the inner circle
– No – nonsense approach with Soviets
– Plain speaker

Truman taking the oath of office…

Truman as President?
• Time to stop “babying the Soviets”
• Replaced FDR’s diplomatic advisers with hard-line team
• Goals:
– Maintain U.S. military superiority
– Prevent communism from spreading

What was the Truman Doctrine?
“It must be the policy of the
United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure” - HST

What was the situation in Greece and Turkey?
• Greece – civil war
• Turkey – insurgents coming across the border
• Great Britain announced withdrawal of economic and military aid to Greece
• U.S. feared Soviet involvement

How and where was the Truman
Doctrine applied?
• $400 million
• Greece and Turkey
• Economic and military aid
• Truman warned the American people of the serious threat to national security posed by Soviet influence
• Committed the U.S. to the role of world policeman

What was the significance of the
Truman Doctrine?
• Generated distrust against the Soviet
Union and popular support for the campaign against communism at home and abroad
• Truman would be able to wield executive power to control legislation – similar to wartime power
• U.S. declared the right to intervene to save other countries from communist subversion

What were the conditions in Europe after WWII?
• Western Europe in chaos
• Factories were bombed and looted
• Refugee – displaced persons camps
• Winter of 1946-47 = worst in over a century
• “a rubble heap – a charnel house, a breeding ground for pestilence and hate” -
Churchill

What was the Marshall Plan?
• European Recovery Program
• Secretary of State George Marshall
• $13 billion in economic aid to 17 countries
1948-1951
• Britain, France, and W. Germany received over half
• U.S. approved of General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – reduced commercial barriers among member nations and opened trade to U.S.

The Marshall Plan becomes law

Why should the U.S. give $13 billion in aid?
• Fear of political consequences of total collapse of Europe’s economy
• Aimed at turning back socialist and communist bids for power in northern and western Europe

How successful was the Marshall
Plan?
• Created a climate favorable to capitalism
• Industrial production increased 200%
1947-1952
• Standard of living rose
• Western Europe became a major center of American trade and investment

What was Stalin’s reaction?
• Stalin denounced the plan
• Said Marshall Plan was an
American scheme to rebuild
Germany and to bring it into an anti-Soviet bloc

How was Germany treated after
WWII?
• Germany divided into 4 zones
– U.S., British, French, and Soviet
• Berlin divided in the same way
• 1948 – U.S., G.B., and France combined their zones in Germany and Berlin creating the Federal Republic of West Germany
• W. Berlin was surrounded by Soviet occupied territory
• A threatened Stalin closed all highway and rail routes into W. Berlin

What was the significance of the
Berlin Airlift – Operation Vittles?
• 2.1 million residents of Berlin had enough food and fuel for 5 weeks
• America and Britain flew in food and supplies
–2.3 million tons of food, fuel, medicine, even Christmas presents
–277,000 flights over 327 days

“Candy Bomber”

Berlin Airlift
• May, 1949 – Soviet Union gave up
–Formed in East Germany a rival government in the German
Democratic Republic

NATO
• Blockade increased W. European fears of
Soviet aggression
• April 1949 – 12 members pledged military support to one another in case any member was attacked
– U.S., Canada + 10 European nations
• 1 st peace-time military alliance for the U.S.
• $1.3 billion in military aid and creation of U.S. bases overseas

What policies shaped the
Cold War?
• Truman Doctrine – ideological basis of containment
• Marshall Plan – economic
• NATO – military enforcement

How was Japan treated after the war?
• Military occupation – General Douglas
MacArthur
• Interim government  reforms
– Land reform
– Creation of independent trade unions
– Abolition of contract marriages
– Women’s suffrage
– Demilitarization
– Constitutional democracy – barred communists

What were the consequences of these reforms?
• Rebuilt Japanese economy - capitalist
• Integrated Japan into the anti-Soviet bloc
• 1952 – Japan received sovereignty and agreed to house U.S. troops and weapons
• Cultivated new business leaders
• Japan could not trade with the Soviet
Union or later with Red China

What was our atomic policy?
• Truman relied on our monopoly of atomic weapons to pressure the
Soviets to cooperate
• After the war many wanted control of atomic power by the U.N.
• An American plan was submitted and rejected by the Soviets
• America put aside plans for international cooperation

U.S. atomic energy policy?
• 1946 Atomic Energy Act
– Atomic Energy Commission control of all research and development according to strictest standards of national security
• U.S. stockpiled weapons and conducted tests – 50 bombs
• Believed Soviets nowhere close to nuclear capability

Buster Dog Test, NV

Then what happened?
• August, 1949 – the Soviet Union tested their first A-bomb
• Then we both tested hydrogen bombs
– 1000x greater than Hiroshima
• Stockpiled more bombs and put nuclear warheads on missiles  nuclear arms race
• “loss” of China to Mao Zedong’s communist regime + Russian bomb =
Hysteria and the RED SCARE PART 2

Castle Bravo, Bikini Atoll – March
1956

Nuclear Test Sites in the 1950s

At times during the
Cold War, nuclear war planners have defined deterrence as America's ability to destroy at least one-quarter of an enemy's citizens in any nuclear-war scenario. This is
1960s-era secretary of defense Robert
McNamara's infamous doctrine of "mutually assured destruction"
(MAD), in which the nuclear powers maintain stability by holding each other's citizens hostage.
• The map above shows where, given today's high-yield nuclear weapons, an opponent would have to explode a mere 300 warheads to kill 25 percent of the population of all NATO member countries -- nearly 189 million people.

This map shows that 25 percent of the Chinese population, or 320 million people, could be threatened with only 368 high-yield warheads.