The+Cold+War+Notes+3

THe Marshall Plan
 * On June 5th 1947, Secretary of State Marshall described the foreign policy problems the United States had in Europe, claiming that Europe requires much more than what they have and they need a large amount of help or they shall face serious consequences.
 * In this, he proposed a creative and bold solution, asking for the European nations to devise a joint recovery plan based on self-help, resource sharing and German reintegration.
 * He also mentioned that all this would be funded by the United States, resulting the in the British and French foreign ministers taking up the offer.
 * A join communique was quickly issued and 22 nations were invited along with representatives of occupied Germany. The conference was held in Paris and 16 of the invitees took part to draw up the plan, only exceptions being the USSR and 5 of their client states.
 * Stalin opposed the plan because free trade and services meant that people had free movement. Other western leaders saw this as another one of his effort to lock postwar stabilization, this resulted in growth of international tension.
 * The European plan was presented in September and became the basis of the European Recovery Program, proposed to Congress in December.
 * It was steep and required 17 billion dollars even though few Americans expected their country to pull out of international engagement, 17 billion was still a lot of money.
 * Opponents argued that the US economy could not handle this, while those in favor argued that it would create new export markets for US good and if it was not passed soon, European democracies may no longer exist.
 * The decision was settled by events abroad, after a Soviet backed coup d'etat defeated Czechoslovakia's democratic government in February 1948.
 * This allowed the bill to be passed in April, and for the next 4 years the US government spent 13.3 billion, 5-10 percent of their annual budget on the ERP aid making it the most expensive foreign policy initiative in US history.
 * Along with the Truman Doctrine, it signaled America's step to become a global leader.

THe Berlin Airlift
 * The Soviet's goal for a disintegrated, unstable Germany soon became clear and the Americans and British moved to strengthen their country.
 * In January 1947, with Soviet objections, they had merged their occupation zones to create a single political unit known as Bizonia.
 * In March 1948, France agreed to join, creating Trizonia, territory that would later become West Germany.
 * In mid-June, the US and British took an even greater step to create an independent state in western Germany and introduced a new currency, the Deutsche mark.
 * This played a major role in economic recovery of western Germany since the Nazi Reichsmark currency was worthless.
 * This resulted in nearly all transactions of postwar Germany being taken place on the black market.
 * The new currency allowed merchandise to fill empty stores and shopkeepers to begin accepting cash again.
 * The new currency appeared in West Berlin on June 23 and the next day, the Soviets cut off all road, rail and water access to the city, halting all vital supplies for the area. The allies protested this, saying that their occupation rights included right of access, but the Soviets still disagreed.
 * The Americans and British were left with only one option, to being a massive airlift to transport supplies which began on June 26.
 * It seemed impossible at first, since West Berlin needed 4500 tons of supplies for 2.5 million people each day while the C-47 cargo planes available could only carry 3 tons a flight.
 * However, Truman quickly sent over 100 large capacity C-54s to balance the difference. On April 16-17 of 1949, over 400 Allied aircraft made 1400 flights, each one a minute delivering 13,000 tons of cargo.
 * By May 12 when Soviets had lifted their blockade, West Berlin did not become the start of World War III but an international symbol of the US counter against the Soviet aggression without direct conflict.

NAto and the Warsaw Pact
 * According to Kennan's theory, militarization of the Cold War was unwise and unnecessary. The Soviets themselves were not likely to use their army beyond their Easter European security corridor.
 * It was believed that economic and political counter pressure was enough to meet any form of expansionism.
 * If the United States took part in creating military alliances, Kennan believed the Soviets would do the same.
 * Although America's European allies understood this theory, they were afraid since they had demobilized their army while the Soviet Union still kept theirs and had extensive military infrastructure.
 * They wanted to seek for safety in numbers, Britain, France and Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) signed the Treaty of Brussels on March 1948 which provided mutual defense.
 * However, this alliance had no chance against the Soviet Union without the help of the United States. The blockade of Berlin was an example like this.
 * Negotiations between the European allies and the United States began, resulting in the North Atlantic Treaty being signed on April 1949 which established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Along with the US, the European allies, other countries included Canada, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Portugal.
 * The last three countries were initially denied by the European members, claiming that they were too different from each other.
 * The same happened to Greece and Turkey although both were offered to join in 1952.
 * The addition of West Germany was difficult for NATO since they could not build enough military to fend off Soviet attacks without German manpower.
 * However, the idea of forming allies with the aggressor of World War II was distasteful for countries and they knew the Soviets would react negatively to this.
 * In fact, 5 days after West Germany's formal admission into NATO, the Soviets responded with a similar alliance called the Warsaw Treaty Organization, or the Warsaw Pact.
 * They composed of the USSR and its client states in Eastern Europe, (East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.)

THe Hiss Case
 * On August 3, 1948, just over a month into the Berlin airlift, Time magazine senior editor Whittaker Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
 * He told the congressmen he was once part of a secret Communist cell in Washington DC.
 * He also claimed that another member of this cell was Alger Hiss, the former State Department official who accompanied FDR to Yalta and watched over the creation of the United Nations.
 * On August 5, Hiss appeared before the HUAC, even though it seemed that Chambers was lying and the committee backed Hiss up. One of its members, Richard M. Nixon questioned Chambers again and decided he was telling the truth.
 * Another hearing was held on August 25 and was televised live for the first time.
 * Under intense questioning, Hiss lost his cool and parts of his story unravelled, but he could have gotten away if he had not tried to sue Chambers for slander.
 * Chambers provided State Department documents from 1937 and 1938 showing Hiss's hand writing and typings from his own personal typewriter.
 * If these were genuine, the documents would have proved that Hiss committed espionage.
 * Even when Hiss's statue of limitations on espionage had run out, he was still charged with perjury and on December 15 was convicted in his second trial and sentenced 5 years of prison where he only served 44 months.
 * The issue is still debated today whether Hiss was innocent or not, however, the important part of the case was its psychological impact.
 * Between 1941-1945, Americans were told that the Russians were their friends and were not told and proven that this was no longer the case.
 * The people became anxious over this case, if a man as important as Hiss had been a Soviet spy, it made them wonder if anyone could be trusted.

MCcarthyism
 * Richard M. Nixon became so famous after this case that in 1950 he was able to secure a Senate nomination just three years in the House.
 * His opponent was Helen Gahagan Douglas, a Democratic congresswoman whom Nixon called the Pink Lady, based on her "softness" on Communism, a condition Nixon claimed President Truman's administration suffered from.
 * Once Nixon was elected to the Senate, he joined the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee chaired by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisonsin.
 * McCarthy was also making a name for himself as an agresive anticommunist.
 * On February 9 1950, McCarthy had delivered a Lincoln Day speech to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Viginia.
 * He was eager to rouse the bored crowd and held up a sheet of paper, declaring that he has a list of 205 names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party and are still working in shaping policy in the State Department.
 * This unsupported claim immediately made him famous over night and launched a wave of anticommunist hysteria that dominated politics for the next decade.
 * This period was named for McCarthy because it was characterized by constant use of misleading information and hints which he specialized.
 * It did not matter that McCarthy never produced any names or the fact that he kept changing the number of people or that in 4 years of investigation he never documented a single case of espionage.
 * The fears of Communist infiltration that the Hiss case had aroused along with the August 1949 explosion of a Soviet atomic bomb and the victory of Mao's Communists in China a month later created a large anticommunist audience.

NSC-68
 * Learning from World War II and the developing Soviet threat, Congress passed the National Security Act of 1947 which recognized the government's military and foreign policy and establishments.
 * It grouped the war and navy departments together into a single Department of Defense.
 * The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was also formed to take over the Office of Strategic Services
 * National Security Council (NSC) was also formed as a focus for national security planning in the executive branch. Members of the NSC include the President, vice president, secretary of state, secretary of defense, director of central intelligence and several other sub-cabinet officials.
 * On January 1950, Truman requested the NSC conduct a review of US national security strategy on recent developments like the Soviet bomb and Communist takeover of China.
 * This resulted in a 58 page record called NSC-68 and was delivered on April 7 under the direction of Paul Nitze (replaced Kennan).
 * This document laid out the national security strategy that the US would follow for the next 20 years.
 * Nitze's group began with two bases, that the defeat of Germany and Japan and the decline of Britain and France have made the US and USSR the only two world powers.Second was that the USSR followed different political ideas from the US and wants to impose Communism all over the world.
 * After pointing out several possibilities, NSC-68 said that the only way to counter the Soviet threat was with massive military buildup.
 * Others led by Kennan disagreed, not even the new Soviet bomb had shaken Kennan's decision that the threat from the Soviets were political.
 * He criticized Nitze's assumption that the Soviets wanted to take over the world with force.
 * Kennan warned that the buildup would not produce security but a destabilizing arms race.
 * Even though he seemed to be winning the argument, on June 25, Communist NOrth Korea invaded the US-backed SOuth Korea resulting in more Republicans claiming Truman was soft on Communism.
 * To respond to this, Truman's administration tripled their defense spending, increasing it from 5% in 1950 to 14% in 1953.