The Berlin Wall During World War II, The success of West Berlin, “stuck like a bone in the soviet throat” as the soviet leader Nikita Khrushev put it. So the Russians knew that the allies in the west had to go, so they began their attempt to drive the United States, Great Britain, And France out of the western nation for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade on West Berlin tried to starve them out of the City. But instead of complying and retreating from there, the strong allies supplied there stations from the air, which became known as the Berlin Airlift. The Berlin Airlift lasted more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, and other goods to West Berlin.
In response to the Berlin Blockade, the U.S. carried out a massive effort to supply the two million Berlin citizens with food, fuel and other goods by air force over 6 months. The airlift forced Soviets to end blockade in 1949. China then plunged into a full scale Civil War that was beyond control of the U.S government. Mao and Stalin signed a Sino-Soviet treaty of mutual assistance that placed China in the Russian orbit. The American response to the communist triumph states that the department refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new regime in Beijing and the U.S focused on Japan as its main Ally in Asia.
During the war the Soviet Union and the USA formed a close alliance due to the shared aim of the defeat of Germany. The Soviet Union became a lot more powerful due to Stalin’s five year plans, and became a contender with the USA for the world’s largest superpower. This sparked conflict between the two nations and a race to see who would be the most powerful, the Cold War. One of the main factors that that caused the relationship between the Soviet Union and the USA was the arms race, which consisted of both nations building up their military and economic power to more than the other. A large army, navy, air force and weaponry were maintained and each party aspired to be more powerful with the bigger military force.
The Marshall Plan was one of the elements of European integration as it set up institutions for the economy on a continental level. On March 25, 1948, the Soviets made an order to restrict Western Military and passenger traffic between the American, British and French occupation zones and Berlin. This began with an announcement that no cargo could leave Berlin by rail without the permission of the Soviet commander and each train or truck was to be searched by the Soviet authorities. On April 2, General Clay ordered a halt to all military trains and required that supplies to the military garrison be flown in what resulted in the “Little
The departure of American and Soviet troops from Korea in 1949- The Russians left the communist government in the North with a strong, Soviet-equipped army. The Americans left the pro-Western government in the south with a fairly small military which was used to suppress internal opposition. The weakness of the south was a strong incentive to nationalists in the North Korean government who wanted to reunite the country again. North Korea attacks: June 24, 1950- The role of Soviet Union in North Korea's invasion plans remains unclear however there is reason to believe the North acted without Stalin's prior approval; this was stemmed from the vulnerability of the South and the fact that the American government implied that it did not consider
Even though that speech failed Roosevelt somehow managed to argue for neutrality but at the same time convince Congress to start building up the arms and increase the military and naval budget by nearly two-thirds in 1938. To keep their promise to Poland Britain and France declared war on Germany when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. In 1940 France fell after a week, leaving the only all that still remained free of German control was Great Britain. Americas started to become alarmed by the speed of the Nazi regimes conquering country after country. With Roosevelt believing that Great Britain was their key for America’s security the U.S. policy started to change.
This was called the domino theory. As a result of the policy of containment, in 1950 Truman needed a crisis to sell the NSC 68 program which said the US needed to increase its conventional armed forces significantly to put them in par with those of the SU. In addition one of the assumptions in the USA of the early Cold War was that the SU controlled all communist movements and parties throughout the world and that any manifestation of communist aggression must have been inspired and assisted by Moscow. So strong was the American belief in the existence of a monolithic communist block, that the NKs were assumed to have been acting on orders from Stalin. In consequence, the USA intervened in the Korean war, not only to defend the independence of SK but also to deny the SU a victory in the Cold War.
Therefore both Korea and Vietnam presented policy-making challenges not present in World War II. Containment of communism was the policy that governed U.S actions in both-Korea and Vietnam to many Americans communism in Asia did not pose a direct threat to the united states as did World war II or the cold war in Europe this led to less sustained support for the Vietnam war in a sense Vietnam was a replacement war in which the united states was fighting an enemy other than Vietnam. Although he had no official policy making position at the time Richard Nixon fully expressed the rationale for the war while addressing the common wealth on California on April 2, 1965 (this is a confrontation not between Vietcong and Vietnam or the united States but between U.S and the communist
1949 was probably the worst year. After the Soviet atomic test in August 1949 and Mao Zedong’s victory in China, communism became an even greater threat. The Truman administration orchestrated NSC 68′s famous call to arms. To move the public to spend more on the Cold War strategy, NSC 68 portrayed the Soviet challenge as a contest pitting good against evil. American strategy remained torn between simply containing Communism or rolling it back by actively supporting the Soviet Union’s opponents.
On 25th June 1950, ninety thousand North Korean soldiers invaded South Koreas border defences, The Korean war had begun. This small scale civil war would escalate into an international conflict. Historically, Korea had once been a united country, under Japanese rule for between 1905 and 1945 however, the Japanese were unruly and did not treat the Koreans well. At the end of the Second World War it was decided that the country would be divided along the 38th parallel and occupied by soviet troops in the North and American troops in the South. Syngman Rhee, who had spent some years exiled in America, became the president of South Korea in 1948, while Kim Il Sung, having fought for the Russian red army during the war became leader of the People’s Democratic Republic (Communist) in North Korea.