Transcript of American YAWP - Chapter 25 - The Cold War

all right this is the American yach chapter 25 the Cold War so the cold war is the global event that follows World War II so recall last chapter World War II uh that started conventionally in 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and ended in 1945 immediately as World War II ends the world is sent into this other conflict we refer to it as the C war and in terms of the dates although you could make an argument that a lot of the features of the Cold War existed prior to World War II we typically say that it started in 1945 so that as soon as World War II ended the Cold War began and this lasted until 1989 so one important thing to keep in mind as we make our way through future chapters is that the cold war is going to be going on in the background for almost the rest this textbook so um you know do keep that in mind and understanding some of the key components in this chapter will help us understand future chapters we're introducing this chapter with an image here of a testing of a nuclear weapon in Nevada in 1962 and this points to uh an important feature of the Cold War and that something that we call the arms race and the arms race was a competition by the United States and the Soviet Union to develop the latest and greatest in terms of weapon technology and we can connect that back to the ending of World War II uh the atomic weapons that were used on Japan to force their surrender the idea is that um you know nations want to continue building bigger batter more destructive Weaponry so why don't we go ahead and just Define the Cold War here in terms of uh a definition and then we can uh we can progress from there so as far as the cold war is concerned we're going to Define this as the global uh political and ideological struggle between capitalists and communist countries so an important feature of the Cold War is this term ideological so when you see the term ideological think idea and that is to say the cold war is much more a battle over ideas than it is about let's say territory or resource ources although those things definitely do have a role here and the two ideas that are represented here are the ideas of capitalism on the one hand and communism on the uh on the other now these are mostly in terms of like uh you know economic modalities um but they end up being proxies for a lot of other things during this conflict now even though this is an ideological struggle and and and actually there's a a phrase here that will help us better understand what exactly the cold war is about and they said this in fact at the time and that was to quote unquote win the hearts and Minds so the idea is that for each side the capitalist and communist Nations is to convince the world that their economic system that their political system is superior now in terms of the major drivers or motivators of the Cold War it's going to be the the superpower Nations and this term superpower is something that we use in the post World War II period to describe two Nations specifically the superpowers we'll say these are the two Nations which emerged from World War II a leading the world in wealth power and influence you know the case in terms of you know geopolitics prior to World War I and during World War II itself is that you had world powers you know you had countries like Japan and Germany and Britain and France and the United States and Soviet Union and you know it wasn't really clear which nation was superior to the others and this had been the case for quite some time but after World War II because of the way that J Japan Was Defeated because of the way that Germany was defeated uh France was occupied Nations like uh Britain you even though they did emerge on the Victorious side the British had fought in World War II longer than any of the other Victorious powers and so they were forced to give up their empire so after the war was over there's really only two Nations that stand above everyone else in terms of wealth power and influence and we don't just call them world powers we call them superpowers because there's really nobody else close and it's the superpowers that lead uh this cold war um one is the United States and the United States represents and will fight and influence for the ideas of capitalism and democracy the other one is the Soviet [Music] Union which is for communism and if you're a little bit confused about okay what's capitalism and what's communism they're different economic models you know capitalism uh Champions individual ownership um communism is State ownership uh you might think about this in terms of a very simple uh example of something like private property right in the United States individuals own their own land uh in a communist system the resources are not or you know property is not owned by individuals but it's owned by the state right communally that's the idea um and in terms of the Soviet political system it's mostly one party rule you know the Communist Party uh you know they have elections within their own party but uh they're interested in advancing the ideology of uh of Communism so when we think about the Cold War conventionally you know in a broader sense yes it is a struggle between the capitalists and communist countries but a lot of times we say look the cold war is really the United States versus the Soviet Union capitalism versus communism you know that's a little bit more simplified of a uh of an explanation now an important thing to understand about the development of the Cold War is that these two Nations the United States and the Soviet unions had actually been allies during World War II you know you had the US and the Soviets but we saw that during World War II even though the Americans and the Soviets got along because they had a common enemy in Germany right you know that old adage the enemy of my enemy is my friend having a a mutual enemy in Germany made this Alliance possible but as Germany was being defeated you know even before their official surrender as the German threat was being put away this cooperation between the Americans and the Soviets began to disintegrate and you saw this happening a little bit during some of those post-war conferences where the Americans and the Soviets were trying to decide what are we going to do after the war and eventually they couldn't figure anything out the best example was the case of Japan remember that um during World War II an agreement that was made between the Soviets and the Americans was that the Americans had agreed to attack Germany if the Soviets agreed to attack Japan well by the time the war unfolded the Americans went at Japan alone without Soviet uh assistance they didn't want it and uh and they didn't need it so the Cold War and this animosity that develops between the Soviets and the Americans it's it's it's sort of uh you know step by by stamp and event by event the relationship deteriorates by the ending of World War II the American ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan sends a Long Telegram back to the United States outlining the current diplomatic situation between the Soviets and the Americans so The Long Telegram will say this is a communication uh from the uh we'll say the Soviet Ambassador I guess technically the proper I mean he technically wasn't the Ambassador I guess but still um from the US [Music] ambassador to the Soviet Union that proper way to put it oops and what he said in that Long Telegram George Canon was that cooperation is not possible and this outlined the approach that the United States would take diplomatically with the Soviet Union seeking other ways to deal with Communism and to deal with the Soviets Dena cooperation we have a quote here from Kennan in The Long Telegram he says quote World communism is like a malignant parasite which feeds only on disease tissue Russian nationalism in the new guise of international Marxism is more dangerous and Insidious than ever before George Kenan The Long Telegram 1946 this uh divide between the Soviets and American worlds was further solidified when Winston Churchill uh former prime minister in Great Britain and who was uh Britain's leader during World War II came to the United States and more or less airm this division between uh capitalism and communist uh capitalism and communism gave a speech called the Iron Curtain and in this speech Churchill said that the Eastern European block or we'll just say Eastern European nations they under Soviet influence had been cut off from the rest of the world right an iron curtain has descended over Eastern Europe and that was characteristic of the fact that as World War II ended when Soviet and American armies marched towards Germany the countries of Eastern Europe were liberated by the Soviet Union so after the war was over because the Soviets had liberated those Nations they had the boots on the ground so they were able to reconstruct those governments in a way that they saw fit and similarly for the Nations that the United States and Great Britain and other allies had liberated they got to control or influence what type of governments they constructed and so the dividing lines between where Soviet and American troops had met during World War II that became this great division um not just in Europe but around the world and you know going uh you know forward in the Cold War you know typically when the term West is used we mean the capitalist Nations and when the terms East are used we mean communist Nations right so east west um Soviet Union United States communism capitalism all of these things become you know synonyms right you can fill in one uh one for the other um as far as this conflict goes again an important thing to keep in mind I would say is that you know looking at it at a macro level um this quote here does come in very handy the idea is to win the hearts and minds of people around the world and one of the reasons why we call it a quote unquote Cold War it's because the idea is that cold means that no direct fighting occurred [Music] between the US and Soviet Union were a quote unquote Hot War now they don't have anything called the you know the the hot War but you know if a war were quote unquote hot that would be things like you know bombs guns you know etc etc so a a unique feature again it's called a war which might be a little bit misleading um but this war is much more a war of ideas now there will be conflicts and we will cover them in uh in this chapter and in future chapters but those conflicts are called proxy wars and a proxy wars a war that is not directly between the United States and the Soviet Union but the United States and the Soviet Union will be able to fight each other indirectly so again it's cold because there's no direct fighting between the United States and the Soviet Union as opposed to a you know Hot War um now as far as the Cold War goes there's pretty much three phases of it or we can track you know sort of three phases uh the first Cold War this is from you know the 1940s as World War II is coming to a conclusion up until the 19 1960s then we enter into the period known as Deton Deton is a period say of relaxed tension and this is mostly the 1970s so in the 1970s the competition between the Americans and the Soviets tends to die down a little bit um there's a little bit more cooperation going on in this period um than in earlier periods um but the cold war picks back up again in the quote unquote second Cold War and this is from 1979 to 1989 so once again you know as we make our way through the next couple of chapters um this conflict will be going on in the background from the 1940s all the way until 1980 section two political economic and Military Dimension so like we mentioned earlier at some of the post-war conferences specifically Yalta and potam uh these were conferences of the Allied powers during World War II so conferences uh with United States Britain and Soviet Union and early on in the war most of these conferences were dedicated to coordinating the war effort you know how are we us three nations how are we going to defeat the Germans how are we going to defeat uh the Japanese well these later conferences Yalta and potam they were much more about what was going to happen uh after the war was over you know how are we going to rebuild once we win because by that time victory was a little bit more clear for the Allied side how can we reconstruct the post-war world and uh they were really mired by non-cooperation between the US and Soviet Union you know Britain's going to have to take a back seat uh a little bit here in the cold war and some examples that we find of non-cooperation is one well we'll just list these things here a divided Germany so there was no consensus in terms of what to do with Germany after the war was over so instead what the Allied Powers agreed upon was to divide Germany in four different parts now at this time they had hoped that this was only going to be temporary that perhaps you know they might not be able to find a solution right here right now but maybe in the future they can figure something out this agreement to divide Germany into four parts this ends up being a permanent condition right for Germany and part of it was because they couldn't find anything uh cooperating with uh another reason is that Roosevelt died in 1945 just right before Germany surrendered and his successor Harry Truman was more well say har Truman was uh Truman was we'll say anti-communist might be a good way of uh putting it no he was not as interested in cooperating with the Soviet Union as Roosevelt was and you know there was a certain degree of familiarity between Roosevelt and Stalin for example the two had been meeting they had an opportunity to build a relationship with each other and you know when Truman came in you know he wasn't as familiar with the process of diplomacy and and uh wasn't really looking to cooperate maybe as much and the third thing is that the United States by this point had an atomic bomb and so from the perspective of the United states with the atomic weapon there was certainly a sentiment or a feeling that we don't need any help or cooperation in fact you saw that in how the war unfolded in Japan um you know the United States defeated Japan without Soviet assistance with the use of this Atomic weapon so those are just three examples of the type of non-cooperation that started to emerge in some of these post-war uh meetings um this non-cooperation only continues right as as the Cold War progresses on another great example of this is the Breton Woods conference the Breton Woods conference this was a conference say conference to establish the [Music] postwar onomy right what would the economy look like after the war was over because foras deadly and destructive that the war was uh there was an entire side of uh you know the economy that needed also to be uh considered and what this essentially did was to create say an international primarily capitalists system and a lot of nations were represented at the bretonwood conference United States would take uh somewhat of a leading role there in reestablishing or rebuilding the post-war Global Financial system and the Soviet Union who attended it uh they rejected it rejected it know they did not want to be part of this new international order uh you know on the side of the the economic so we can see the political disagreements and the economic disagreements um you know happening immediately after the war was was over now as far as the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union goes there was essentially three choices that the United States could take or not three choices but there was a range of actions the United States could have taken in response to Communism on the one hand the most aggressive action would have been something like World War III you know was the tension and non-cooperation between the Soviets and the Americans so intense that perhaps World War I was required or desired well considering that World War II was so deadly and so destructive neither side really had an appetite for another War so as much as the Soviets and the Americans dislike each other neither side was really wanting another conflict there was also the ability to Simply do nothing and that is to allow communism to influence and spread around the world while the United States returns back to a period of isolationism and if we recall from World War I that's exactly the uh uh position that the United States had taken that taken an isolationist uh position well after World War II uh many Americans you know those especially in in leadership positions don't think it's the wisest idea to just Retreat from the world uh especially considering some of the lessons that were learned from World War II uh you know some would point out that it was because of American isolationism that you know Fascism and other radical uh regime spread so doing nothing is rejected and what the Americans eventually settle on is a strategy that is somewhere in the middle and that is containment and uh here in this uh you know section here these two policies of containment and the Truman Doctrine these end up being very important guiding principles as far as the cold war is concerned both of these will more or less be followed by the United States from 1945 to 1989 so um you know get these policies down now and it helps explain American action in the world again for the next 40 years or so so containment this is the policy say the US policy of preventing the spread of [Music] Communism and this was inspired by The Long Telegram and George Kennan inspired by Kennan again it's not World War III it's not doing nothing essentially what the United States is saying is that currently where communism exists that's okay that's acceptable but if communism is to spread to another area that's going to call for United States action and that's pretty much the the position that the US will uh will approach according to George Kennan in 19 uh 1947 the Soviet Union quote should be sorry the United States quote should regard the Soviet Union as a rival and not a partner and that is very much the relationship now another guiding principle besides containment is the Truman Doctrine which is named for the uh the president Harry Truman who came in into office after Roosevelt passed away in 1945 in fact it was Truman who was president during the ending of World War II and it was Truman who decided to use the atomic weapons Truman is also someone that believes in containment and wants the United States to take a much more proactive approach but he is concerned about some of the isolationist sentiment that is happening now the Truman Doctrine there's two ways of looking at it one is a literal way and in terms terms of what the Truman Doctrine was literally was that this was a speech given by [Music] Truman to Congress to get Aid get pretty much mean money right get money to prevent communism specifically in the countries of Greece and Turkey so uh you know with um the defeat of Nazism the question of well what government is going to succeed in places like Greece and Turkey these were Nations that the British had historically had a lot of influence over but the British after World War II are are forced to give up their empire so the British are retreating from the world and the question is well what is going to fill that vacuum and the Americans and Truman specifically fear that in Greece and Turkey that communism might take hold so he's trying to get Congress to say look we need to reject isolationism we need to put money towards uh Greece and Turkey and prevent communism there now in the short term Truman is successful he gets money from Congress uh communism is defeated in Greece and Turkey and Greece and Turkey become two uh important uh allies in the broader Cold War but in Truman's speech he he outlines a vision for American action in the world and it really becomes a guiding principle for American foreign policy um going forward um in this speech and we have a little bit of a quote here from Truman in his uh Doctrine he says qu or first of all it says it falls on the United States to quote support free people's resisting attempt tempted sub subjugation by outside pressures so this dichotomy between free and subjugated uh the Truman Doctrine in some sense Paints the world in quote unquote black and white and what black and white mean are you know free which means capitalists and subjugated which means [Music] communist and what that means for the United States is that um as far as the uh the world goes there's really just two sides you know you're either uh either free or either subjugated uh it's either free or subjugated and that's very much the Outlook that the United States has you know it's you know free and subjugated are you know kind of coded terms for capitalist and Communists but as far as the American perspective goes towards the rest of the world there's just two sides right you're either with us or against us and the Truman Doctrine doesn't leave a lot of room for countries to for example be neutral or stay out of it um not according to the United States and it also commits the US us to Global I mean maybe not so much Global at this time I mean that's yeah we we'll keep Global in here it's it's somewhat inferred uh intervention in other words the Truman Doctrine rejects isolationism so this idea that there's only two sides right capitalist and communist no room in between the idea that the United States is committing itself to other countries around the world that it's rejecting isolationism all these things are again these are the guiding principles that motivate US foreign policy for the next 40 years so containment Truman Doctrine and their uh and their significance now one of the first areas that we find these policies in action is in Europe and in Europe following World War II Not only was world to the deadliest conflict killing 80 million people but it was severely disrupting in terms of like damaging infrastructure you know roads Bridges uh you know telephone wires you know everything has been destroyed there's homelessness and so one of the great fears for the United States was that communism would spread in Europe and the reason why communism would spread in Europe was because the economic situation was so poor that people would elect communist repres representatives and this was somewhat the case during uh the Great Depression you know when they're bad Economic Times people are willing to embrace more radical ideas and so for fear we'll say the martiall plan for fear that communism say may be they voted voted in so this is not a fear of communist takeover from the outside this is a fear that the ideas of Communism will appeal to war torn countries the US provided and this is what the Marshall Plan is uh what is it $13 billion for European the reconstruction after World War II so essentially the best way to prevent communism is to just dump a bunch of money on war torn Europe and the Marshall Plan ends up being a very successful plan you know those Nations that get um United States Aid uh they end up rebuilding their economies rather quickly I think you know some textbook call it the economic Miracle the rebuilding from 1945 to 1950 and strong stable capitalist economies end up being a pretty good deterrent against the ideas of Communism so not only does Europe properly rebuild after the war is over but for the countries that received martial Aid dollars um you know they became allies for the United States for a very long time and were not enticed by the ideas of of Communism here we have a quot qu from General George Marshall for who the Marshall Plan is named after says quote United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world without which there can be no peace so major economic plan economic aid rebuild Europe Stave off communism uh that was the idea now the Marshall Plan interestingly enough was designed to go to All European countries however the Nations that were under Soviet control that had installed Communist governments the quote unquote satellite States these are the we're going to call them the quote unquote independent because technically these are nations that are independent nations of Eastern Europe these were the ones that were liberated by the Soviet Union so now that the war is over their policies and governments are going to be dictated by the Soviet Union this is the independent nations of Eastern Europe under Soviet control with Communist governments right this is what uh we might also describe if we use the uh previous term the Iron Curtain Nations right when Winston Churchill said that an iron curtain had descended over Europe he was talking about these satellite states which again technically they're independent but in reality um the Soviet Union really dicks gets to dictate what goes on uh as this foreign minister from uh I guess at the time would have been Czechoslovakia the Czech foreign minister said quote we went to Moscow Moscow is the capital of the Soviet Union we went to Moscow as the foreign minister of an independent and sovereign state but returned as a Lackey of the Soviet government as like a stoe or a fool of the Soviet government so this foreign minister is very much reflecting the idea that um you know these nations truly are independent now Stalin who was the uh leader of the Soviet Union again Stalin is the Soviet leader Stalin saw the Marshall Plan Aid as somewhat of a a trojan horse right he didn't trust that the aid was going uh to Europe just out of the you know Goodwill of the Americans which it wasn't it had political motives so what he did for the satellite States He forced them to reject it rejected the Marshall Plan and um you know this will create and ends up creating a a pretty significant divide between the Western and Eastern uh European nations as far as their economies are concerned not just the fact that the West accepted Marshall Plan Aid in the East didn't that contributes to it but it's the way in which the two economies are oriented under uh the respective U you know superpowers right superpowers now up until this point the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union has has grown more non-cooperative you know diplomacy Has Broken down but it hasn't turned outright violent and certainly considering that World War II just ended neither side really wanted conflict again but pretty soon uh this uh tension that was building up between the Soviets and the United States would have the potential for violence not that it would break out in violence but both sides would realize that a war might be possible and all of this occurred over the city of Berlin now weall that Berlin is the German capital and the German Capital as a result of you know not being able to really figure out an agreement was divided into four zones along with Germany which was divided into four zones so it's a little bit weird in terms of uh you know how it looks but let's uh do our best to uh draw Germany here I have no you know no idea how Germany is shaped it's shaped something like this um but uh the way that Germany had been divided after the war was that Soviets got a big chunk in the East that's where the Red Army had invaded and the Americans and the British and the French they would divide up the rest of Germany so you had you know American Zone French Zone and a British Zone and then you had a Soviet zone the city of Berlin which was the capital was located in the Soviet zone right but this city was also divided into four different pieces so uh you had in Berlin what we might describe right if this is you know all the Soviet zone and we'll you put it red for the Soviet Union you had this little tiny island of Berlin that served somewhat like uh you know quote unquote an island of capitalism in a sea of Communism all right so is the second I mean it looks really small but we're talking about like three million people of a capital city but this this section of American occupied and American controlled territory surrounded by uh Eastern Germany which eventually became uh called and it was this little speck uh of Berlin that uh you had a again a pretty significant situation unfold which almost led the Americans and the Soviets into war and we call this the Berlin blockade or the Berlin airlift so essentially what happened was that the Americans the British and the French because they all you know represented the capitalist Democratic side of the Cold War they decided essentially to use a uniform currency uh in the western part of Germany in some sense combining their sections together so we might say in response do the US British and French we'll call it quote unquote a combined currency Stalin blockaded I'll say blockaded we'll just say American Berlin so you can imagine right from this again very poorly drawn map here that in this you know quote unquote island of capitalism there would have been roads and trains and all sorts of other things leading into the city well Stalin effectively blockaded that entire section and what Stalin was counting on was that the Americans and the British would just give up right this this section here that it wasn't essentially worth fighting over and in some sense he was right because the Americans were not interested in fighting over it right this wasn't reason enough to call uh you know to to declare World War II but the Americans were also not willing just to stand by and do nothing and that was rather than let the people in Western Berlin be starved out of you know food and resources and other things the Americans the British and the French and other allies would airlift supplies to the people of Western Berlin effectively making the blockade uh um uh obsolete right effectively making it so that it had no effect so the Berlin blockade Stalin's blockading of Western Berlin was responded with the Berlin airlift this is the US response to the blockade it lasted and and and to you know clear it up it's uh blockade we'll just say uh airlifted supplies to West Berlin for 11 months this went on and again you can imagine you know things had gotten pretty tense because yes uh you know the Soviets were counting on the fact that the United States was not willing to wage war over a blockade but you know when Nations start blockading each other there you know there have been lesser offenses that have led to war between two Nations and when the Americans started airlifting supplies into Berlin you know it might have just taken one Rogue Soviet officer to start shooting at American airplanes that could have caused World War too so a very tense situation It ultimately did not lead to a direct War but it led to a sense that a war could be possible right maybe in the future um eventually though as Americans continued to airlift in supplies and showed no uh willing this to uh to back down or to stop the Soviets or Stalin removed the blockade and this was considered a tremendous American you know Victory I mean at least in terms of just the Optics of it that the th was forced to relent and the United States would retain control of Western Berlin for the duration of uh of the Cold War eventually they would build a wall oops eventually they would build a wall around this island here and that wall that they built around that that was that would be known as the Berlin wall and uh what result Ed from this and you know if this wasn't already clear from before was that this temporary division in Berlin and this temporary division of Germany became permanent so uh Germany became divided the western part of Germany so essentially the British the Americans and um uh the French all combined their uh section into West Germany the Soviets Eastern Germany and uh that pretty much remained the case all the way until 1989 right Germany would provided here so uh let's just your textbook mentions the actual names of these nations so let's go ahead and outline them so West this was called the federal repu of Germany the East it's called the German Democratic Republic and Germany was permanently be divided until 1989 right so this temporary division turned permanent and uh Germany became uh kind of a Berlin especially right Berlin became a a microcosm of the Cold War East West divide literally a wall eventually being built between the two sides and um when we say that the Cold War ended in 1989 it's actually because the Berlin Wall is destroyed and and you know because the Wall came to symbolize the Cold War its destruction symbolized the uh but you can see the American British and Canadian effort to airlift all the supplies um you know I believe that like uh an airplane landed every 90 seconds or something like that so um it was um you know a very big um project that was undertaken by the United States to preserve Western Berlin on the side of um capitalism and democracy now in response to the Berlin blockade and the Berlin airlift this increased tension this sort of ramping up of potential outbreak for War uh left both sides seeking military alliances and that's exactly what they did in 1949 the United States and Allied Nations created the military Alliance known as NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization this was a military Alliance uh milit Alliance of the Us and other capitalist democracies and in response the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw pack was the same thing the military Alliance of the Soviets anything but the opposite side and other communists and uh NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization this was you know primarily a defensive um agreement and the idea was and this was the slogan an attack on one an attack on all and so the United States was committing itself to the defense of other nations which traditionally and historically the United States really hadn't done that you know the US had been part of wars and conflicts but they had always joined those conflicts more or less on their own terms but now the United States is committing itself to the defense of other capitalist democracies and kind of in the same way that World War I um you know the one of the contributing factors to that war was the alliance Network we have a little bit of a recreation of an alliance Network and so it means that potentially right potentially a smaller conflict might boil over into much bigger bigger conflict right and so U you know in some sense we might assess that the world is maybe uh maybe more dangerous now for the most part the United States was primarily concerned about communism in Europe right you know the episode over Berlin the example when it came to the Marshall Plan um you know the Soviet Union in a sense was in Europe or at least Soviet soldiers were in Europe but in 1949 the United States would realize uh that the cold war is actually much more Global than what they anticipated and their attention is going to be ripped away from Europe to the rest of the world specifically in Asia because in 1949 a very important development takes place and that is the founding of the People's Republic of China this is uh we'll say the communist regime in China and it came to Power by defeating uh Chen Kai Shack you remember from last section and and and the Chinese nationalists in the Chinese Civil War and this was a big blow to the United States you know if the United States policy is to contain Communism then allowing communism to take over the biggest country in the world world has got to be you know about as as big of a failure as one could uh as one could imagine and you know the United States really felt like it's uh you know it failed in this it wasn't paying enough attention to Asia it was too focused on Europe too focused on Berlin and while the Americans were too focused there Mao zong who is the leader the leader of the Chinese communists uh managed to take control of the country uh Chen Kai and the nationalists who were you know they were seen as uh you know the side that the United States had supported they were forced to evacuate to the island of Taiwan and when the peoples of Republic of China when you know when they came to power the US refused to recognize China as the uh as the legitimate government but it became clear now that with Chinese success or with MAO success and the Communist Party taking over in China that Joseph Stalin you know the major adversary of the Cold War now had a very important Ally in Mao Zong and um you know and communist China so what was the United States response to this well the response was that you know we here in the United States we dropped the ball we should have been more Vigilant in preventing communism around the world and we need to escalate our involvement and expand our involvement around the world now this was already you know we might say that this idea was already implicit in the Truman Doctrine when Truman said that there are free and subjugated people and wherever there are free people fighting subjugation we're going to help you but this was made even more clear with a uh a National Defense memo known as NSC 68 this is a national National Defense memo uh in response to communist China and essentially it said that the United States was going to be more aggressive in pursu um you know anti-communist efforts uh around the world we just say uh increased uh we'll say us say [Music] militarism and commitment uh increase us militarism and commitment to fighting [Music] communism globally so after um you know after that you find that the United States is much more involved in places like Asia and it's fact partially because of the success of Communists in China that we have essentially the first quote unquote Hot War of uh of the Cold War and that is the Korean War which started in 1950 ended in 1953 and is sometimes referred to as the forgotten War so you might say about the Korean War this is the first quote unquote Hot War meaning that um this is a war that would have actual fighting and bombing and killing and all the other things that we associate with war but it's a war that is like pretty much all other wars during the Cold War and it's not direct so it's not directly between the United States and the and the Soviets but we'll see that the Soviets and the Americans they're able to fight each other indirectly right this is a proxy war so there's a couple of things that are going on in uh in Korea So Korea as a country had been a Japanese colony and had been a colony in fact even prior to World War II but when the Japanese were defeated the question was well what's going to happen with Korea because Japan can't hold on to it anymore right they lost the war and so what ends up happening is that it ends up being divided by by the powers right the superpowers the Americans and uh and the Soviets the northern part of Korea is controlled by the Soviets and the southern part of Korea ends up being controlled by the Americans so somewhat of a similar circumstance that happened in Germany but now here happening on the other side of the world now in some sense both North and South sought a United Country and so there is uh you know when we look at these various proxy wars there's layers to it right there's there's a lot of different layers when it comes to motivations and reasons and the case of Korea is uh is the same so there were Korean nationalists that wanted um you know to unify the Korean Peninsula but then you had this you know Cold War layer on top of it between communism and uh and capitalism so calls for unified Korea calls for unified you know communist or capitalist Korea eventually resulted in North Korea invasion of South Korea in 1950 right and this started the crean war so initially this is a war that involves North Korea versus South Korea I mean in some sense it's just Korea um you know this division between North and South didn't exist uh when it was a a Japanese Colony or not in the same way that it did after World War II now the United States is worried that by the north invading the South which they are having military success they are emboldened by the communist in China the the Communist in China were successful in their War so they think they can be successful in their War however the United States uses a new international tool to um further their own goals and that is the United Nations and this is maybe a you might say a clever use of the UN by the United States because recall that the United Nations as an organization this is a you know a a we'll say a international government to maintain peace you know this was created following World War II as the successor to the League of Nations because the League of Nations failed to prevent World War II the United Nations was created so that another War wouldn't break out well the United States goes to the United Nations and says look North Korea's invasion of South Korea uh how is this any different different than Hitler's invasion of Poland how is this different than Japan's invasion of China and so the United Nations successfully gets the United Nations to intervene again their goal is to maintain peace but they see um North Korea's Invasion as a threat to World Peace the United States sees this as a way to further their policy of containment right to prevent communism from spreading to uh you know to South uh South Korea so we might say that the UN forces led by US general Douglas MacArthur about Arthur down here oops uh Douglas MTH arur intervene on the [Music] side of South Korea so technically right technically the Korean war is not an American war right it's a un intervention the reality is is that again this un intervention was very much to the great benefit of the United States and um most of those who were fighting including the person in charge of it all were either American or Korean right to to put it frankly um Douglas MacArthur has a lot of success with the UN intervention and soon South Korea is now pushing back North Korea in fact so much so that not only do they contain the Communist threat right they reestablished the border between North and South but MacArthur and and uh UN forces end up pushing so far north that they begin encroaching on the Chinese border which provokes China to enter into the conflict so we might say uh MacArthur's advancement provokes Chinese entry into the war right into the war so uh you know once again we have North Korea and South Korea and that's how initially the war started but you know the US joins in on one side China join in on the another and you know by the time the war is unfolding it's much much bigger and of course in the background you know the Soviets are sending their port uh support to the other side so us and Chinese troops do fight directly in this conflict but again there's no direct conflict between the United States and the and the Soviet so again this is what we mean by proxy war fighting indirectly now during the course of the war there's a big disagreement on the American side exactly how to conduct this and this is between the sitting US president Harry Truman and the war hero uh Douglas MacArthur uh MacArthur was you know he was probably one of the most popular figures in the United States at the time uh war hero say because his um leadership in defeating Japan you know I don't think I don't know I don't know if the last chapter actually mentioned MacArthur by name but you know he was the General that led American forces over Japan the island hopping strategy and you know Americans you know seeing Japan as you know the the bigger threat or or you know the because of Pearl Harbor the main adversary in World War II uh there was probably nobody more popular than MacArthur in uh in the United States Truman was not a very popular president at this time in fact and so this um you know this rivalry between Truman and MacArthur ended up boiling over into the American public and turned out to be a pretty a pretty big controversy so what was the disagreement all about between Macarthur this you know beloved effective famous General and Truman who was you know former vice president not um you know not very popular at the time well MacArthur wanted essentially to expand the war and use nuclear weapons Truman refused Truman wanted a much uh limited War so for example MacArthur wanted to invade China uh Truman said no MacArthur wanted nuclear weapons Truman said no MacArthur then went public and criticized Truman and um you know that was you know one step too far so what eventually resulted from this conflict was that Truman fired MacArthur from his position and um you know by that point most of the fighting uh in the Korean War had uh had subsided you know the early years 1950 were was some of the um most intense fighting and the two sides eventually agreed to an Armistice this was in 1953 and the Armistice more or less uh left we'll just say an ENT fighting left Korea permanently provided uh to um what it remains today uh the north remains a communist state the South remains a capitalist State one of the reasons why the Armistice was signed or you know just a kind of important note here that Joseph Stalin died in 1953 and uh you know when Stalin died in 53 there was some sort of ambiguity or question about what the you know future of the Soviet Union would be at the time and his death allowed for an Armistice to um you know to be signed and so when we think about the long-term consequences of the Cold War Korea is probably the best example because that's a divide that was created from the cold war and continues to uh to exist today um but that conflict the Korean war that is again what we call the uh the Forgotten War uh we tend to overlook that but in the early 1950s 195 1953 um you know there was a war that waged on in Korea the conflict of The Cold War that is probably much more familiar or we might say the conflict that defines the Cold War in the United States is the conflict in Vietnam and in the 1950s we start to see the beginnings of the Vietnam War it's not underway yet but we see the origins of it now Vietnam has somewhat of a similar story to Korea and the way in which um you know the the ending of World War II and the cold war ends up shaping the future of the country so initially Vietnam it's a a country in Asia if you're not familiar kind of by China um it had started off as a French colony so all the way back when we talked about imperialism um you know we said that the United States had created a colony in in places like the Philippines well uh the French had created a French colony in uh in Vietnam during World War II though in 1940 France was defeated by Germany and their defeat meant that they would lose their colonies and so Germany Ally Japan they took over the colony from 194 to 1945 so Vietnam went from a French Colony then to a Japanese Colony well Japan they lost the war and so the question was from 1945 onwards what was the future of uh of Vietnam going to be right and and again Japan has to to give it up well one of the leading nationalist figures hoi Min hoochi Min will call him a leading nationalists but also as we'll find communist leader and you know there is some question or debate about this you know was hoim Min a nationalist was he a communist was he both was he one at one time one at the other um because uh they they could be antithetical in uh in some situation but hoim mini is the leading nationalist uh leader in Vietnam he issued the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence uh wanting a free and independent Vietnam and what's interesting about his declaration right the one that he gave for Vietnam wishing to be free it was similar to the US declaration and in fact both us and hoien B Japan in World War II so this is one of the more interesting aspects or interesting features about the Vietnam war is that there was a time between 1940 and 1945 that the United States and hoi Min had a common enemy right hoi Min wanting Vietnam to be free from outside rule this time it's the the Japanese the United States also fighting against the Japanese so he had modeled a declaration of independence that was somewhat similar to um the American Declaration of Independence and I think hoochi Min really hoped that America would support the idea of an independent Vietnam well hoien and others in the Vietnam the Vietnam this is just the we'll call this the uh Vietnamese nationalist organization the hoi men is the Nationalist leader the Viet men are the Nationalist organization unfortunately for hoien and the Vietnamese this uh appeal for Independence and this idea of trying to maybe persuade the Americans to support Independence um this did not come to fruition because in fact the French who had controlled the colony prior to Japanese Occupation they wanted to reconquer Vietnam the France tempted to reconquer Vietnam and you know they had their regions um why after World War II so even though hoim Min might have been appealing to the United States France was a much much more important Ally in this conflict and so essentially a conflict emerged where on one side there was the vietman right again people like hoochi Min who wanted Vietnam to be independent and there was the French who were trying to reconquer well because France was such a good Ally and such a strong and important Ally in uh Europe the United States decided to give their support to France well knowing what we know about proxy wars in the Cold War if one side is getting support from France the other side's going to get support from the Soviet Union and that's exactly what happened and so this little component of this conflict the American assistance to French uh French reconquest of Vietnam this is the origins or the roots of the Vietnam War right so we might just say the origins of the Vietnam War not yet right Americans aren't directly involved yet but um in some sense we're you know dipping our toes in the water of what will be a a future conflict um now unfortunately for France so this lasts from 1946 to 1954 their reconquest is thwarted by the Vietnamese at dbn Fu this is a battle French lose forcing their withdrawal so effectively France is no longer in the conflict and so on the side supporting capitalism and democracy you know the United States uh kind of gets stuck with the bill in uh in some sense and so what this means is that you know once the French withdraw well what's going to be the future of uh of Vietnam section three the arms buildup Space Race and technological advancement as far as the cold war is concerned technology actually played quite a big role um most clearly uh on the military front know weapons technology would turn out to be very important but as we'll see there are other ways in which technology could be used to further the interests of both the Americans and the Soviets that weren't maybe necessarily related to like weapons or or military um because technology was important and because you know information was important both the Soviets and the Americans engaged in Espionage that is to say that US and Soviet Union use spies to obtain information and technology and very early on during the Cold War there was no technology perhaps more important than the atomic bomb that was held by the United States now unfortunately for the US and fortunately for the Soviet Union in 1949 the Soviets successfully tested and atomic bomb and you know this was something that the Americans had enjoyed ever since the ending of World War II you know the United States could rely that we had the atomic bomb nobody else did so in that sense we didn't have to rely on anyone else or we didn't really need cooperation when the Soviets tested their own weapon that was uh a serious wakeup call as far as the United States is concerned and if you combine this with what happened in China in 1949 when Ma Zong and the Communist successfully took over 1949 ends up not being a Very Good Year in fact uh you know up until 1949 the United States had a lot of success a lot of success with the Marshall Plan a lot of success with the uh Berlin blockade and Berlin airlift but um 1949 is when the Soviets in a lot of ways uh you know strike back and so as soon as the Soviets um you know successfully tested their own weapon then was really on the United States to develop an even bigger weapon and this is where weapon technology and you know the types of bombs created by both the Soviets and the Americans just become bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger um we refer to this as the arms race or the nuclear arms race and you know this is we might say the competition between US and Soviet Union to develop more weapons and bigger weapons and those technological advancements came um scientists figured out how to make a bigger bomb uh called a hyd ydrogen weapon or hydrogen bomb a hydrogen and the United States developed one in 1952 and the Soviet Union developed one in 1953 so as far as Weapons technology was concerned seemed as if the Soviet Union was uh catching up very quickly and this arms race was not just in terms of the size of the weapon or how big the bomb was it was also in terms of which side had more weapons so you know for example uh you know it was the case that if the United States possessed 10 Atomic weapons then the goal for the Soviet Union would be to build 20 and then because the Soviets had 20 well now the United States needed more so they needed 40 well you end up having this arms race where each side continues to build up more and more and more weapons and you essentially get to a point where both SIDS have the capacity to do incredible damage uh you know if a war were to uh were to break out now the arms race or you know the the buildup of the military that really characterizes the Cold War a lot of it happened under the presidency of Dwight D Eisenhower he serves from 1952 to 1960 and we'll say president uh during the arms race um Dwight D Eisenhower had been uh you know commander of Allied Forces during D-Day he was a war hero he was responsible for for Allied victory over the the Nazis in in Europe so uh Eisenhower ends up being a pretty well-liked uh president overall U one thing about Eisenhower was that he is committed to much of the same policies that preceded him with with Truman so we might just say committed to earlier policies like containment and the Truman Doctrine um he does put his own uh signature we might say on Cold War policy it's typically Eisenhower that we associate the most with massive retaliation this is we'll call it Eisenhower's policy and it certainly reflects uh the you know the buildup going on between the US in terms of their weapons and this policy more or less dided that a Soviet attack on the US would be met with quote unquote massive retal this was a a warning to the Soviets um that the United States was prepared to unleash in its its entire Arsenal if it came to uh you know if it came to a conflict um this pattern of continuously building up more and more and more and more weapons between you know both sides um we eventually reached the point between the Americans and the Soviets where mutually assured destruction or mad was reached we might say about mutually assured destruction that the arms race created there so [Music] many weapons that any War between US and Soviet Union would result in mutual destruction and uh that became became a very scary reality for a lot of the Cold War that both the Americans and the Soviets had built up such an Arsenal in terms of weapons that if a war were to break out neither side would be able to uh to survive interestingly enough mutually assured destruction did in some way serve somewhat as a deterrent right you could probably make an argument about whether mutually assured destruction made the world a safer or more dangerous place because uh now when when both sides had the capacity to to um you know assure the destruction of the other it might make them think twice about starting a war or would uh would make war such a uh such a a costly uh uh Enterprise that it might deter either side from from that and might make them forc to like see more peaceful uh options um this was only made even uh more real by newer Technologies to deliver weapons now back at the ending of World War II um the atomic bombs that were used in Japan those were delivered by airplanes uh things like hydrogen bombs are way bigger than what was used uh in Japan so the technology really has has uh taken off but what also changed was the way to deliver these weapons and both the Soviets and the Americans de developed what were known as ICBM as this stood for inter Continental ballistic missiles and these could deliver say nuclear weapons over long distances um so you wouldn't need to have a command airplane to drop a bomb like they did in Japan you could just shoot a missile that missile could be armed or or you know could be armed with a nuclear weapon and it could go more or less across the world um some of this technology was we'll say h technology was aided by Nazi scientists um the Nazis had been developing rocket technology during the end of World War II they had um shot some over to Great Britain and so some of the information that was used by Nazi scientists was uh eventually Incorporated in in the United States uh to further develop this uh this technology but outside of advancements to military technology maybe one of the more distinctive features of the Cold War is the space race and the Space Race becomes in some ways kind of it own mini little Battleground as far as the cold war is uh is concerned so recall in terms of the overall objective we use this quote before the hearts and Minds because at the end of the day the cold war is about ideology and that is who can do a better job of convincing the world that their system is superior and one thing that the Space Race could do was that um it was in some sense a uh technological competition uh to see which ideology was Superior you know if the Soviets could make tremendous advancements in space technology you know if they were the ones who could build a world that looked like the Jetson then people around the world would say yeah you know the Soviets have the right model and if the Americans could do it then people would be convinced that yeah maybe capitalism and democracy that that is the right model so this competition over space uh was used in a way to try and convince the rest of the world that one system had a better uh uh one side or one country had a better system than the than the other um T typically we point to the launching of sputnic one as the beginning of the Space Race this is the first satellite launched into space into space and this was launched by the Soviet Union uh at the time when Sputnik was launched it really scared Americans because there was a feeling that we here in the United States were getting left behind and the Soviets were advancing so much in terms of their technology they had launched this satellite into space a lot of people were even afraid that that might might be something like a weapon even uh but in response the United States began to pour a lot of resources and a lot of time into their own space technology to show the world that essentially we could beat the Soviets as far as space exploration was concerned um in response the United States founded NASA the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and you know the goal was to beat Soviet technology specifically in space right in space so with that both you know the Americans they eventually lost launched their own satellite into uh into space but you know the Soviets uh you know they were you know really some of the early Victors uh in in the face R uh in the Space Race uh the Soviets hit the moon first right so they got the first satellite uh they hit the moon they launched the first dog in space first person in space and so that provoked the US which you know had lost couple of these things but was very quickly on the heels of the Soviets as far as technology goes so uh Yuri gagaran he was the he was a what they called a cosmonaut Soviet astronaut uh this was the first man in space and he was from the Soviet Union three weeks later Alan Shepard came the first American in space um this prompted at the time in 1960 president kenned promised the first man on the moon so for you know the 1950s typically we would say that the Space Race Was Won by the Soviets in the 50s right they had had all these achievements but uh President Kennedy when he was elected in 1960 he made it a goal that uh we the United States we would eventually win the Space Race by promising to land a man on the Moon by the time the decade was over section four the Cold War Red Scare mcarthism and liberal anti-communism so this section focuses a little bit more on what the impact of the Cold War was at home and what we find is that Americans were very concerned uh afraid even of the threat that the Soviet Union posed and often times we might even say that the Cold War sent Americans into a panic we we use this term Red Scare to describe we'll call this American fears of communism uh during the 1950s and the 1950s even though the Cold War lasts all the way until 1989 typically the 1950s are the the height of the Red Scare now sometimes you might also see this appear as the second Red Scare because there was actually a an earlier Red Scare and if you're curious red that is the color of the Soviet flag so sometimes you might even just use the term red as a Fillin for Communists um but there's actually an earlier uh Red Scare the first one and this one was in the 1920s after World War I and that was when the Soviet Union first came to power so sometimes you do see this Red Scare differentiated between this one I think your textbook tries to differentiate the two by calling this the Cold War Red Scare uh so that way we know we're talking about the one taking place in the 1950s and there is no single person that best represents the Red Scare than Joseph McCarthy Joseph McCarthy is the personification of the Red Scare and we'll say about Joseph McCarthy who is a senator from Wisconsin and he took advantage of the fears of Communism he very famously claimed to have a list of oops list of 2005 communist spies Communists in the US government and when he came out with this accusation saying look I have a list of 205 Communists that are actively sabotaging the country um he was never able to to substantiate those claims he never actually provided the evidence but Americans were so afraid that they essentially went along with it and Joseph McCarthy managed to build a career off of this um other ways in which the United States sought to root out any sort of communist influence at home was through organizations such as hak Hua uh HUAC this sounds for the house an American activities activities or activity Activities Committee and what's interesting is that the H Act was actually established during World War II where unamerican activities in World War II would have been associated with Japan and Germany but it lasted into the Cold War era and became a major mechanism for investigating communist ISM at home we'll just say about it held hearings about communism at home and there were several other laws that were passed in order to deal with potentially the threat of Communism at home one good example is the McCaron act which required uh communist organizations to register with the government you know there were a lot more things like you know loyalty Oaths um you know there were you know Americans were clearly shaken uh and affected by the uh by the Cold War um sometimes the Cold War and the Red Scare get compared to something like a Witch Hunt the idea is that sort of a frenzy is whipped up that the potential Boogeyman out there is not really there but one you know yes it's true American did get definitely a little bit out of hand with uh you know the accusations of people being communists and whatnot certainly but one thing to keep in mind is that you know with the Soviet Union and the United States um they were dealing with potentially very destructive Weaponry in something like Atomic we um that the Soviets and the Americans did actually spy on one another so in in some ways yes it was like a Witch Hunt looking for something that's not there but not quite exactly because Espionage did EX and nuclear weapons did exist and in hindsight we can look backwards and say yeah well none of those weapons were used so what was everyone so panicked about but at that time uh you know they didn't entirely know that um an example where the Red Scare really had a uh a significant out outcome was in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg this was a couple used of spying oops for the Soviet Union and they were eventually found guilty of it now the husband Julius Rosenberg he did have access to information top secret information by working with the military it's less clear exactly how involved his wife was um at the time though the evidence wasn't all that strong but because the the fear was there and the Panic was there it led to them being found guilty uh and they were both executed in 1953 one of the more high-profile cases of Espionage involved that of aler his this was the highest US government official the accused of being a Soviet spy um essentially you had a another uh person who was spying who had defected excuse me a Soviet spy who had defected to the United States and he named aler his as someone who had sold the uh the Soviet Union Secrets um but by the time that aler hit was brought to to court to uh to face his charges the statute of limitations had expired so he couldn't be charged with certain crimes and eventually the only charge that he was uh hit with was perjury which is like I think just lying or something along those lines but um you know he was a very high ranking official and the accusations against him did seem credible so in the cases of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the cases of aler his Americans had specific people to point to to say look yes Espionage is taking place and maybe just maybe we should believe McCarthy when uh you know when he makes those various accusations now there were other members of Congress and other politicians who did take advantage of this one was Richard Nixon and Richard Nixon before he became vice president before he became president he really built a political career say going after people like his but more or less suspected Communists at home when he started to rise through the ranks as a politician Richard Nixon uh did not quite to the level of uh McCarthy in terms of maybe his accusations but certainly in terms of uh popularity so all of this right you know everything from the who act to the Loyalty o to registering Communists with the government the cases of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg his etc etc this all gave McCarthy much more leverage in his accusations and it made it more and more difficult for others to challenge him in fact McCarthy's accusations and McCarthy's actions were so Infamous that he gets his own term McCarthyism which in some sense McCarthyism we have a a definition here but it's in some sense it could be you know accusations based on little to no evidence right it's it's you know the practice of just making wild accusations about stuff with actually without any any evidence to prove it and it gets a lot of momentum because people are just too afraid to speak out I mean if you were to be one to challenge McCarthy McCarthy might turn towards you and turn the mob towards you and say look maybe you're a communist and then that would put you on the outside looking in uh we have a definition of McCarthyism here in 1950 um in terms of of uh what it meant quote the means by which a handful of men disguise this Hunters of subversion cynically subvert the instruments of Justice in order to help their own political Fortune so um in was this Freda kirwe um I think she would say that you know McCarthy knew what he was doing right he knew he was lying and was doing that politically to advance his own political uh political career now what was the status of Communism in the United States was there a threat um was there a lot of support was there a lot of sympathy well you could go all the way back to you know World War I and maybe even before to find some of the earlier uh organizations communist organizations in the United States the cpusa was the Communist Party USA and it was founded during the first redcare in 1921 and so uh communist organizations had existed in the United States even before the Cold War was officially underway but cpusa was and this was true more or less I would say of of communist organizations very limited in terms of popularity right limited popularity so uh it existed prior to the Cold War but only around 80,000 members the textbook say uh States in terms of who actually belong to it um during the Great Depression though communism became a little bit more popular you know because the perceived failure of capitalism uh it made people in the United States you know think and and and think more favorably of Communism and so during the 1930s the popular front was formed and this was an effort to in some ways you know maybe blend is not the right word but we'll use blend effort to blend communism and American values um maybe to make communism mainstream you know to have it be much less of a radical cringe idea and bring it a little bit more into the mainstream and again from the 1930s the popular front did become uh somewhat successful but it did collapse in 1939 we might just say I'll just put popular during Great Depression so communism as an ideology never really you know projected itself into mainstream American politics and in fact even during the Cold War all sides of the political aisle were hostile to Communism including those on the liberal side and the textbook gives a good example here of an organization that was what we might describe as a anti-communist liberal organization and that is Americans for Democratic action or Ada this was we'll call a liberal maybe even and Progressive anti-communism anti-communist organization so uh one of the things that this section uh wants to do or wants to uh you know communicate is to say that or to make the point that anti-communism was bipartisan and bipartisan or partisanship means political party so both the Republicans and Democrats were against uh go ahead and rewrite that Republicans and Democrats um and so what that meant was that if you were accused of being a communist there was there really wasn't a lot of people out there who were willing to sacrifice their reputation to uh you know speak on on on your behalf um the pursuit of Communists in the United States was from the Republicans it was from the Democrats it was from liberals it was from conservatives it was from you know the apparatus that was established to fight the Cold War like the CIA but it was also internal Jay Edgar Hoover who was the director of the FBI and the FBI is generally concerned with crime in the United States he directed a lot of his effort towards battling communist and so we might say director of the FBI uh sought to battle communism all right so to use the FBI to root out any potential uh any potential influences now of the people who were accused or of the institutions that were accused of Communism probably the big three I would say one was the government and of course Joseph McCarthy was very vocal about um you know exposing communist spies in the government uh another one was universities in fact a lot of University professors were accused of spreading communist rhetoric and often times universities came under the purview of cold Warriors looking to root out Communists or even the FBI and interestingly enough we might not imagine this but also Hollywood the film industry because if this is a war for the hearts and minds of people around the world Hollywood might be the most powerful institution because of their ability to make movies and TV shows that could send messages around the world and so of some of the institutions that were investigated by organizations like the hak the house on American Activities Committee um they would bring uh forward members of Hollywood including people like Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan who at the time was an actor but later on would become president of the United States now when 10 of these individuals refuse us to answer the questions that were put forward by the hak the most famous of them being quote are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party which was typical for a hak investigation when 10 of these individuals said I'm not going to tell you because I have the right to uh uh I have the right against self-incrimination I don't have to say it it's my uh my right as American citizen they were blacklisted these 10 people became known as the Hollywood 10 so these were 10 people we'll say who invoked their American rights when questioned about being communist and these hearings of Hollywood actors um they were very popular I mean just think about any celebrity trial right people wanted to see celebrities being questioned and so became almost an entire spectacle within within itself but when these 10 people said look that's none of your business essentially um they were what we call blacklisted and whether or not you were somebody in the government or somebody in a university or somebody in Hollywood if you got accused of Communism that could ruin your career and black it just means that nobody was willing to hire you because they didn't want to uh they didn't potentially want to run the risk of being labeled uh communist or or anti-American now the anti-communist frenzy did reach a pinnacle um but not before um you know altering I would say American culture in in a pretty significant way um and one way that the Red Scare had its influence was the way in which it tied in with religion uh very much the way in which Americans viewed uh communism capitalism and religion was that you know the Soviets they were considered atheists right or you know as it says Godless that communism was Godless and in some sense in order for the United States to contrast itself with the Soviet Union um that meant that the you know to be American was to be a theist or to be for god um and you know there's some basis in this you know Carl Marx very famously said religion is the opiate of the people um that uh the Soviets or communism seeks to unite all workers together regardless of religion and so in that way religion is just like an obstacle to be getting you know gotten rid of before we reach the egalitarian uh you know Utopia um so Americans implemented this right in their culture and um you know one uh uh one way that we can uh point to her or an evidence that we can point to is that in was it 1954 under God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and that was originally not on there and in 1956 In God We Trust uh became the US motto and this was an effort by the United States to portray itself as you know if you're on the side of capitalism if you're on the side of democracy you're on the side of God and the Soviets are uh essentially the uh you know essentially the Godless now eventually though Joseph McCarthy would um the the public become privy to uh to McCarthy's action so all of this allowed for McCarthy to make more outlandish accusations right each time that people believed him he just accused the next hireup of being communist that was until McCarthy took on the US Army which ended up being his uh being his downfall um we'll say McCarthy used the US Army of being infiltrated by Communists and when he did that the United States Congress opened up hearings and gave McCarthy a chance to prove it on live TV we'll say hearings were held for McCarthy to prove his accusations and when he was put you know in front of Congress and when he was put in front of the entire public McCarthy was exposed as a fraud completely discredited him as a politician completely discredit his ideas in some ways you might say that Americans after exposing McCarthy not entirely but you know snapped out of uh you know the Red Scare in in some sense section five decolonization and the global reach of the American Century so the Cold War coincides with another very important Global event and that is decolonization which in short is the end of imperialism um we talked uh a little bit uh in an earlier chapter about imperialism how the industrial nations of the world conquered the entire Globe um that comes to an end after World War II right World War II is the ending of the imperialistic world order the British give up their empire the French lose their empire and what we have is after 1945 80 Nations or 80 countries gain independence and if we want to use use an American example um I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere but in 1946 the Philippines became an independent country so there's even an American example of uh giving up or losing their colonies in this case the Philippines so with 80 new countries around the world this created in some sense kind of like a battle ground for American and Soviet influence because the question was what way uh what ideology communism or capitalism would these nations Embrace we sometimes use this term the third world to describe these countries so these are mostly newly independent nations and for the time being they are neither we's say communist or capitalist and these nations essentially become a Battleground for US and Soviet influence so you know what's interesting about the cold war is that this is a chapter or period in American history where you really have to know a lot more about world history right we get introduced you know covering American history up until this point we're going to introduce a lot of new parts of the world and a lot of new countries here and that is reflective of the fact that the Cold War really is uh really is global and the fact that imperialism ended it left a vacuum right for American uh expansion to uh reach in those areas um so we already know um some of the defining uh principles of American diplomacy like containment like the Truman Doctrine but we'll add one more thing here that your textbook mentions uh this gen uh kind of just gives us a little bit more understanding why the United States was so aggressive we might say in uh in the world um that is domino theory so domino theory is the theory that if one nation Falls to Communism all surrounding Nations will fall to Communism like a uh series of dominoes so you know this belief that the Americans had just made it so that American intervention was more important right that we can't simply sit back and allow one country to fall because when one country Falls that's one problem but then all the countries around them are now susceptible and that could be three problems and three problems turn into nine problems so it just gives us a little bit more of a of an understanding why there's such um a reaction to intervene as soon as possible now as the United States is projecting its influence further and further across the world as the arms race is underway the Soviets and the Americans are building bigger and bigger and bigger militaries bigger and bigger and Bigg bigger arsenals some Americans are becoming concerned about this um militarization and in fact the American that is most closely associated with the uh critique of this arms buildup is in fact Dwight D Eisenhower himself who in 1961 gives a speech warning Americans about what's called the military-industrial complex and we can go ahead and just Define the military-industrial complex as the US military um pretty much and it's supporting Industries right so we don't just mean when we say military-industrial complex it's not just you know the Air Force and the Army and the Navy it's but it's all of the all the corporations and businesses that produce stuff for the military it's all the research and Science and Technology the scientists the funding um the space programs right in some ways so um because the United States had dedicated so many resources to the Cold War and to its own military there were some Americans Eisenhower included that feared the growth could threaten us Liberties right that the military could become so influential that it could have a detrimental effect on American citizens and Eisenhower when he left office in 1961 gave a speech called the military-industrial complex speech um there's a little quote from here it says the military-industrial complex's influence is quote economic political and even spiritual felt in every city state house and every Office of the federal government and Eisenhower being a war hero from World War II americaas Americans were much more likely to take his uh you know his advice now with that being said uh as we'll discover in the next couple of chapters here the uh military buildup continues to move forward it's something that doesn't uh slow down into the 1970s but at least people like Eisenhower were aware of maybe some of the consequences that such a military buildup would have so the United States would continue to fight the Cold War in uh again in these third world Nations or in the third world via proxy wars we identified proxy wars before but these are uh conflicts where Americans and Soviets fight each other indirectly right indirectly and that is the uh key point the Soviets and the Americans are never fighting each other directly in these conflicts but they're going through other nations and we already learned about two of them one was in Korea and the other one was in in Vietnam and there are plenty of other examples to include in fact so so many examples that you can't really include uh you know all of them in this uh in this section so proxy wars definitely are a a feature um once again this term hearts in Minds uh you know I've mentioned it several times so far but it uh it goes to show you just the scope of the war so for example in this competition over hearts and Minds one of the ways in which the Americans sought to promote the American way of Life by was advertising things like consumer goods we might just say about hearts and Minds that the Cold War uh maybe was also f with culture you know in fact one of the uh one of the most effective tools that the United States had in the Cold War was promoting the American way of life American consumption you know it's I think we get into this next chapter but you know it was buying a car buying a TV blue jeans rock and roll music Coca-Cola that you know promoting this American lifestyle of heavy heavy heavy consumption there are a lot of people that wanted that material standard of living and you could have something like an advertisement Exposition be held in another country and that was in some roundabout way you know advertising and selling Coca-Cola was in some way fighting the Cold War right in sort of this uh this cultural sense but there was also one feature when it came to the cold war that Americans had to overcome and we're going to talk more about this in relation to civil rights and that was the hypocrisy that was the hypocrisy between freedom and liberty versus things like racial discrimination and Jim Crow you know on the one hand how could the United States be promoting Liberty you know Truman talked about free peoples around the world yet have a system of Jim Crow in the South that systematically disenfranchises African-Americans and so Americans would have to resolve this hypocrisy maybe you know maybe finally right maybe once and for all um and in fact the Soviet Union was keenly aware of this in fact some of the most effective anti-American propaganda that the Soviet used or Soviet Union used was to point out the type of discriminatory and racial policies that the United States played back are used back at home so it's uh it's no accident I would say that the Civil Rights Movement happens at a time when Americans are also actively promoting this image of freedom and liberty at home and to solve one of those problems thus becomes a means to solve the other