Past and Present

The Divisions of the Cold War

The Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union (captured in the image of the Berlin Wall, left) was largely seen as a split between the East and the West, though global competition between the two powers also had profound effects on other regions of the world. The movement of the "Non-Aligned Nations" (represented here by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, President Sukarno of Indonesia, and President Tito of Yugoslavia) was an attempt to provide an alternative to this division.

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The Cuban missile crisis provided one inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s classic Dr. Strangelove (1964), a devastating and dark comedy with many Cold War themes. The story concerns an “accidental” nuclear attack and the demented characters responsible for it. It also concerns the repression of memory and the sudden reversals of alliances brought about by the Cold War. The wildly eccentric German scientist Dr. Strangelove shuttles between his present life working for the Americans and his barely repressed past as an enthusiastic follower of Hitler. The screenplay was based on the British writer Peter Bryant’s Two Hours to Doom (1958), one of many 1950s novels with an apocalyptic scenario. The Cuban missile crisis brought the plot so close to home that when the film came out Columbia Pictures felt compelled to issue a disclaimer: “It is the stated position of the United States Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film.” Black humor seemed to be a common cultural mechanism for dealing with the terrible possibility of world annihilation. The protagonist of Bob Dylan’s 1963 “Talkin’ World War III Blues” playfully narrates an apocalyptic dream in which he drives an abandoned Cadillac (“a good car to drive after a war”), approaches the inhabitants of a bunker for a TV dinner, and lights a cigarette on a radioactive parking meter.

CONCLUSION

The Cold War reached deep into postwar culture and it dominated postwar politics. It decisively shaped the development of both the Soviet and American states. Fearful of losing control of territory they had conquered at such cost in the Second World War, the Soviets intervened repeatedly in the politics of their Eastern European allies in the 1940s and 1950s, ensuring the creation of hard-line governments in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere in the Eastern bloc. In the United States, anti-communism became a powerful political force, shaping foreign policy and preparations for military confrontation with the Soviet Union to such an extent that President Eisenhower warned in his farewell address that a “military-industrial complex” had taken shape in the United States and that its “total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government.”

In Western Europe, rebuilding the economy and creating a new political order in the aftermath of the Second World War meant accepting the new power and influence of the United States, but Europeans also searched for ways to create and express a European identity that would retain some independence and freedom of action. Led by the efforts of France and Germany, Western Europeans eventually found elements of this freedom in increasing integration and economic cooperation. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, the political leadership found fewer opportunities for independent action and the threat of military intervention by the Soviet

REVIEWING THE OBJECTIVES

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¦  The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union began as the Second World War ended. How did these two nations seek to influence the postwar political order in Europe?

¦  Postwar economic growth was accompanied by greater economic integration among Western European nations.

What were the goals of those who sought to create the unified European market and which nations played key roles in its development?

¦  Between the late 1940s and the mid-1960s, almost all the European colonies in Asia and Africa demanded and received their independence, either peacefully or through armed conflict. What combination of events made Europeans less able to defend their colonial empires against the claims of nationalists who sought independence from Europe?

¦  Decolonization and the Cold War reinforced a sense that Europe's place in the world needed to be rethought. How did intellectuals, writers, and artists react to the loss of European influence in the world?

Union made any innovations or experimentation difficult or impossible.

The sense that Europeans were no longer in a position to act independently or exert their influence in other parts of the world was compounded by the loss of colonies abroad. Former European colonies in Africa and Asia became independent nations, and this loss of influence may have further encouraged the former European imperial powers in their attempts to lay the groundwork for a more integrated Europe. The consensus in the West about the new role that the state should take in economic planning, education, and ensuring social welfare helped lay the groundwork for a Europe that was dedicated to ensuring equal opportunities to its citizens. These commitments were driven by the search for stable forms of democratic government—the memories of the violent ideological conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s were still fresh, and the achievement of an integrated Western Europe (under U. S. sponsorship) on the hinge of Franco-German cooperation must be seen as one of the major victories of the postwar decades. The hard-won stability of this period was to be temporary, however, and beginning in the 1960s a new series of political conflicts and economic crises would test the limits of consensus in Cold War Europe.

PEOPLE, IDEAS, AND EVENTS IN CONTEXT

THINKING ABOUT CONNECTIONS

¦  When Allied leaders met to discuss the postwar order at YALTA and POTSDAM in 1945, what were the major issues they discussed?

¦  What were the goals of the U. S. MARSHALL PLAN? How did JOSEPH STALIN react to its implementation?

¦  What was the TRUMAN DOCTRINE and how was it related to the creation of NATO?

¦  How did the Soviet Union's successful explosion of an ATOMIC BOMB in 1949 change the dynamic of the COLD WAR?

¦  How did the political climate in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe change under NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV during the Thaw that followed Stalin's death?

¦  What nations were key to the plans for the EUROPEAN UNION?

¦  Why was the decolonization of settler colonies in Africa such as Algeria, Kenya, and Rhodesia more violent than in other colonies on the continent?

¦  What was apartheid, and why was it adopted by the settler government in South Africa?

¦  Insofar as one can determine them from today's perspective, what were the long-term consequences of the Cold War for people in both Western and Eastern Europe?

¦  What challenges did the process of decolonization pose to those who believed that European traditions of democratic rule and individual rights-ideas associated with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution-were universal?

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¦  The postwar economy in Western Europe saw record growth that lasted until the 1970s. Labor shortages led many nations to recruit workers from abroad, causing tensions when unemployment rates went up as the boom came to an end.

¦  Radio, television, and film combined to create a new kind of global mass culture that contributed to a spirit of novelty and rebellion among young people. More open discussion of sexual matters and an end to restrictions on contraception led some to speak of a "sexual revolution."

¦  Movements for national independence in the colonial world found an echo in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and in student protests in Europe and the Americas in the 1960s. These protest movements peaked in 1968, provoking a conservative backlash in the 1970s and 1980s.

¦  Support for the Soviet Union waned in the 1980s as its economy stagnated and its political system failed to adapt. The Eastern bloc collapsed suddenly in 1989, ending the Cold War.

CHRONOLOGY