The United States and the Soviet Union worked together during World War II, but it was an
uneasy alliance.
There was mistrust on both sides because each country had opposing ideologies and aims.
The United States and its Western allies supported capitalism and democracy, while the Soviet
Union supported communism and totalitarianism.
However, they set aside their differences because they faced an enemy who was a great
danger to the entire world – Hitler.
The Soviet Union soon found itself repelling an unexpected attack from Nazi Germany after
Hitler broke his non-aggression pact with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1941.
The United States offered assistance to the Soviet Union in the form of weapons and supplies
through the Lend-Lease Act passed that same year, and the Soviet Union accepted it.
However, cooperation between the US and the USSR broke down after Nazi Germany was defeated.
Disputes emerged over various postwar issues, particularly over the fate of Poland.
According to a BBC article, the mistrust deepened because of these disagreements, leading British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill to warn in 1946 that an “iron curtain” was descending
through the middle of Europe.
The Cold War had begun.
The Cold War received its name because the US and the Soviet Union were not involved
in a direct confrontation or what The History Learning Site describes as a “hot war”
with each other.
Instead, as the JFK Presidential Library and Museum states, the “two superpowers continually
antagonized each other through political maneuvering, military coalitions, espionage, propaganda,
arms buildups, economic aid, and proxy wars between other nations.”
Striking examples of this mutual antagonism occurred in the late 1940s.
This is when Stalin created what biography.com describes as “a vast ‘buffer zone’ between
Western Europe and ‘Mother Russia.’”
This buffer zone consisted of Eastern European countries that were supposed to have free
elections under an agreement Stalin made with the US and Great Britain at the Yalta Conference
in 1945.
Breaking this agreement, Stalin installed communist regimes in these countries between
1945 and 1948.
US President Harry Truman countered Stalin’s expansionist move with a policy of containment.
One educational website defines containment as a strategy “in which the Soviets would
be prevented – militarily if necessary – from using force to export their ideology abroad.”
Containment resulted in a wide range of actions, including the US offering economic recovery
assistance to Western Europe through the Marshall Plan in 1948 and the formation of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) between the US, Canada, and other Western European
countries.
Stalin in turn attempted his own form of containment in response to what he perceived as a threatening
Western takeover of Germany in 1948.
He could not stop the US, Great Britain, and France from merging the zones of occupation
they acquired after World War II into the single economic entity of West Germany, but
he could make them suffer for it.
Berlin became his pawn in the famous Berlin Blockade.
The Soviets halted highway and railroad traffic between the newly merged zones and Berlin,
which was located deep in Soviet territory.
Like Germany, Berlin was also divided into four zones of occupation held by the Western
allies and the Soviet Union.
With their supplies cut off, West Berliners faced starvation and shortages of basic necessities.
As Stalin intended, the Berlin Blockade placed the Western allies in an awkward situation.
They would look weak if they gave in to Stalin.
They would look heartless if they simply abandoned Berlin.
However, they did not want to go to war over Berlin.
They found another option.
They countered the Berlin Blockade with the Berlin Airlift.
The Cold War Museum notes that “this airlift lasted for 324 days, and approximately 13,000
tons of supplies a day were delivered.”
The airlift was a success, and Stalin called the blockade off in 1949.
The Cold War waged on in the decades that followed.
The US mission to stop the spread of communism and the Soviet mission to expand it led to
their involvement in the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, and the Vietnam
War, which ran from the 1950s to the 1970s.
According to CNN, the US spent about $67 billion on the Korean War, and it resulted in the
deaths of 36,574 US troops.
Most Soviet aid to the North Koreans and their Chinese allies came in the form of military
weapons, including Soviet PPSh-41 submachine guns, T-34/85 medium tanks, and MiG-15 jet
fighters.
What did both superpowers get for all this money, blood, and weaponry?
The conflict ended with an armistice that kept North Korea and South Korea divided into
two separate regions with a demilitarized zone between them.
The USSR contributed to a communist victory in the Vietnam War.
It provided North Vietnam with arms and economic aid.
Globalsecurity.org states that “estimates of the total cost of the Soviet Union's support
to the North Vietnam government range from $3.6 billion to $8 billion [in then-year U.S.
dollars].”
With Soviet and Chinese assistance, the North Vietnamese and communist guerilla fighters
known as the Viet Cong were motivated to continue fighting despite suffering heavy troop losses.
As history.com notes, they “refused to stop fighting, encouraged by the fact that they
could easily reoccupy lost territory with manpower and supplies delivered via the Ho
Chi Minh Trail through Cambodia and Laos.”
Their determination to fight to the finish played an important role in their victory.
While the US had a formidable force of 2,594,000 soldiers in South Vietnam according to CNN,
troop morale and public support waned in the later years of the Vietnam War.
History.com notes that a “robust anti-war movement” took hold, leading to the desertions
of “more than 503,000 U.S. military personnel” and widespread anti-war protests in the US.
In 1973, the US entered a peace agreement with North Vietnam.
However, South Vietnam continued to battle the North Vietnamese until communist fighters
overran Saigon on April 30, 1975.
With the fall of Saigon, the South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam, and South Vietnam
has remained under communist control ever since.
Another Cold War crisis began in 1958.
The Soviet leader at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, did not like West Berlin because of its capitalism
and because of the large scale exodus of skilled East Germans into West Berlin.
He wanted to oust the US, Great Britain, and France out of West Berlin and turn Berlin
into what one source describes as a “free, demilitarized city” controlled by the Soviet
Union.
The three countries refused to leave, so he decided to address the migration problem another
way.
East Germany attempted to stop East German migration with the construction of a barrier,
the infamous Berlin Wall.
The US made no attempt to stop the construction of the wall, but tensions rose when East German
border guards attempted to block Allied officials’ access to East Berlin.
Checkpoint Charlie became famous as the setting of a 16-hour tank standoff between the US
and the USSR.
Fortunately, back channel negotiations between US President John Kennedy and Khrushchev resolved
the crisis, and the tanks left the following day.
One year later, Kennedy and Khrushchev faced off again in another Cold War showdown: the
Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Kennedy did not want Khrushchev positioning nuclear missiles so close to the US mainland
in Cuba.
He told Khrushchev to move them away, and he ordered a naval blockade around Cuba to
persuade Khrushchev to do so.
Khrushchev sent Soviet ships near the US ships forming the blockade.
The two superpowers were playing a dangerous game of chicken, and “many people feared
the world was on the brink of nuclear war” according to history.com.
Khrushchev backed down, with Soviet ships falling short of breaking the US blockade.
An agreement involving Khrushchev’s removal of the missiles, Kennedy’s pledge not to
invade Cuba, and a secret deal for the removal of US missiles in Turkey resolved the crisis.
After a period of détente or improved relations between the two superpowers in the 1970s,
Cold War tensions reemerged in the 1980s under US President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan took a more aggressive approach toward dealing with the Soviet Union than his predecessors
did.
To weaken the USSR, he would hit it in its weak spot.
He planned to cripple the Soviets economically.
The economy of the Soviet Union was already stagnant, “with productivity growth falling
below zero by the early 1980s” according to one source.
He kept the economic pressure on them by drawing them into an expensive arms race.
The US dramatically boosted its military spending.
For instance, the Cato Institute reports that defense spending rose “from $214 billion
in 1982 to $258 billion in 1983.”
The Soviet Union could not keep spending money to keep up with US development of new weapons
such as the stealth bomber.
International relations expert Harry Papasotiriou argues that US plans for the high-tech Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI) persuaded the Soviet Union to “bid for a de-escalation of the
arms race.”
The US found other ways to hurt the Soviet Union economically.
For example, Norwich University Online describes this strategy: “The United States isolated
the Soviets from the rest of the world economy, and helped drive oil prices to their lowest
levels in decades.
Without oil revenue to keep their economy solvent, the Soviet Union began to crumble.”
And crumble it did.
Reagan’s policies combined with other factors noted by the BBC, including growing “opposition
to Soviet policies” in Eastern Europe and Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika policies,
led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In his famous 1987 Berlin Wall speech, Reagan urged Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!”
In 1989, others actually did, using picks, hammers, bulldozers, and cranes.
With the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Cold War officially came
to an end.
Do you think the Cold War is really over?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video called The Deadliest Submarine the USSR Ever
Built!
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