Roots+of+the+Cold+War+p13-18+weiweil2013+14.4.11

THE MARSHALL PLAN THE BERLIN AIRLIFT NATO AND THE WARSAW PACT THE HISS CASE MCCARTHYISM NSC-68
 * = European joint recovery plan (self-help, resource sharing, German reintegration, wanted US funding)
 * goal = promote European economic recovery, halting political destabilisation caused by economic hardship
 * opposed by Stalin (integrated European market, free movement of goods + services = free movement of people?)
 * European Recovery Program (ERP) involved 17 billion dollars, US hesitant at first
 * USSR overthrew democratic government with Soviet government, opposition disappeared
 * USSR prefer disintegrated, unstable Germany
 * US + UK introduced new currency (Deutsche mark), enabled shopkeepers to accept cash instead of trade items
 * appeared June 23, USSR cuts off all road, rail, water access to West Berlin the next day
 * US + UK reaction = massive airlift, seems impossible at first (45 hundred tons a day, 3 tons per aircraft)
 * US sent 100 large-capacity aircraft, make up for difference (fourteen hundred flights = 13 000 tons of cargo)
 * militarisation = unwise, unnecessary (blockade expansionism using economic and political counterpressure, militarisation only provoke Stalin)
 * Allies nervous, had quickly demobilised after WW2, but USSR still huge army
 * safety in numbers = Treaty of Brussels (Western European countries)
 * NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, formal, permanent military alliance between US and EU allies
 * Warsaw Pact = USSR treaty with Eastern European countries (including East Germany), is counterattack to NATO
 * Whittaker Chambers = Time magazine senior editor, told congressmen he was part of secret Communist cell in Washington DC
 * told about another member of cell = Alger Hiss, former State Department official (accompanied FDR to Yalta, imporant individual)
 * Hiss denied everything, Chambers deemed to be lying, but Chambers questioned again and seemed to be telling the truth
 * re-hearing = Hiss lost composure, would have slid by had he not sued Chambers
 * Chambers produced State Department documents in Hiss's hand, etc, proof that Hiss had committed espionage
 * Hiss convicted, served 44 months
 * psychological impact of Hiss case = focus for American anxiety about Communist infiltration
 * Nixon (aggressive anticommunist) elected to Senate, joining McCarthy, also aggressive anticommunist
 * McCarthy used to be obscure Republican elected from self-inflated war record
 * February 9, 1950: "I have here in my hand a list of Communists in the State Department"
 * never proved, but launched wave of anticommunist hysteria, manipulating domestic fears for political gain
 * National Security Act (NSA) = reorganised government's military + foreign policies
 * streamlined armed forces by grouping War and Navy Deparments, created CIA and National Security Council (NSC)
 * NSC-68 = review of US national security strategy (w/ developments like Soviet bomb, Communist China)
 * defeat of Germany, Japan, decline of Britain, France = US + USSR as only two world powers
 * USSR motivated by new faith, antithetical to USA's, seeking to impose absolute authority over the entire world
 * solution to new Soviet threat = massive military buildup
 * oppositions = Kennan + followers, convinced that threat was primarily political
 * military buildup = not security but destabilising arms race
 * winning argument until Communist NKorea invaded SKorea, leading to charges that Truman was soft on Communism