The American Yawp — Chapter Twenty-Three: The Cold War
Abridged for Intermediate-High Learners

The Cold War was a long political and ideological struggle between capitalist and communist countries — above all between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was called "cold" because the two superpowers never fought each other directly. In February 1946, American diplomat George Kennan sent his famous "Long Telegram" from Moscow, arguing that Soviet expansion had to be met with a policy of containment. Two weeks later, Winston Churchill declared that an "iron curtain" had divided Europe in half.

President Harry Truman took a hard line against the Soviets. In 1947 he announced the Truman Doctrine, giving $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey to help "free peoples" resisting subjugation. The same year, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed the Marshall Plan, which invested $13 billion from 1948 to 1952 to rebuild Western Europe. When the Soviets blockaded West Berlin in 1948, the US answered with a massive airlift until the blockade ended in 1949. America and its allies formed NATO in 1949; the Soviets answered with the Warsaw Pact in 1955.

Attention soon shifted to Asia, where Mao Zedong's communists won China's civil war in 1949 and the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb. On June 25, 1950, communist North Korea invaded South Korea. UN forces pushed north, but China entered the war and the fighting settled into a bloody stalemate along the 38th parallel. MacArthur wanted to use nuclear weapons; Truman fired him instead. An armistice ended the fighting on July 27, 1953, after more than 30,000 Americans and millions of Koreans had died.

The US intervened around the world to stop communism, fighting proxy wars in Asia, Africa, and Latin America instead of fighting the Soviets directly. In 1953 the CIA helped overthrow Iran's leader after he nationalized the oil industry. In 1959 Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and allied with the Soviet Union. In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world close to nuclear war. After France's defeat in Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the country was divided; by the time President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, he had sent 16,000 American military advisors to South Vietnam.

The nuclear arms race terrified the world. The US tested the first hydrogen bomb in 1952, and the Soviets tested their own in 1953. President Eisenhower promised "massive retaliation" against any Soviet attack, and both sides relied on nuclear deterrence. Competition spread to space: the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957 and sent Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961. The US created NASA in 1958 to catch up.

Fear of communism also spread at home. In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had a list of 205 communists in the State Department — though he actually had no list at all. His wild accusations fueled a "Red Scare": the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated suspected communists, government workers faced loyalty tests, and Hollywood studios kept a blacklist of writers and actors who could not find work.

Anticommunism pushed Americans toward conformity. The words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and "In God We Trust" became the national motto in 1956, as the nation defined itself against "godless communism." Women who had worked during the war were told to return to housekeeping, and gay Americans faced a "lavender scare" of firings. Fear of subversion ruined many careers and silenced dissent.

The Cold War finally ended when the Soviet system collapsed. In 1987 President Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and demanded, "Tear down this wall!" In November 1989 joyful crowds tore the wall down. In 1991 the Warsaw Pact ended, and on December 25, 1991, the Soviet Union itself voted to dissolve.