In 1949 I was a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I was supported in my college education by the GI Bill, having served two years in the U.S. Navy after high school. Antioch was then a small liberal arts college with a strong liberal bent and a broad but comprehensive curriculum. Some of my classmates, who later became famous, were Coretta Scott (later-to-be Coretta Scott King), Rod Serling (TV writer/producer of the popular “Twilight Zone” in the 50s and 60s), Leon Higginbotham (civil rights lawyer and U.S. District Court judge in Washington, DC) and Cliff Geertz (philosophy major at Antioch who later became a world-famous anthropologist).
Antioch was a marvel to me in those days. It was the first time in my life that I found ideas could be interesting. For the first time I began to read serious books, think, and discuss big ideas. We had books and radio but no television, cell phones, computers. video games or Internet searches. Like most liberal college students in those post-war days I was a firm believer in democracy but I was not so sure of capitalism. I did know there was a communist challenge from the Soviet Union, but the challenge seemed remote. They were, after all, our allies in WW2 and whatever their shortcomings, the challenge they presented seemed tame compared to our recent war with Hitler and Hirohito. Like most of my classmates at Antioch I knew that U.S. democracy needed some progressive fixes, especially in its treatment of people we called “negroes.” I also knew that women were still being treated too often as second-class citizens and that we should do something about this. However, I have to admit that I was not much of an activist, being more interested in poetry, philosophy and girls than in money, protests or politics.
In 1949 the Berlin air-lift crises had just past, Stalin was still alive and the U.S. President was Harry Truman. One year later the Cold War became a hot war in Korea and then the communist challenge did become more relevant. All this and more in Part 3 of my new program WHAT’S TO BE DONE?
Part 3: The Cold War: Truman, Stalin, Berlin and Korea
In the Second World War from 1939 to 1945 the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and democratic countries of Western Europe were allied with the totalitarian Soviet Union in a desperate war of survival against aggressive fascist totalitarian empires of Germany, Italy and Japan. The allies were uncomfortable bedfellows—democracies allied with a totalitarian power—and almost immediately after the war ended, another war began between the former allies. It was called the Cold War.
Great as the sacrifices and hardships of the western democracies were in this Second World War, the Soviet Union (due at least partly to its scorched-earth and human-wave battle policies) suffered far more homeland destruction and far more civilian and soldier casualties. The Soviets, for instance, lost eight times as many soldiers and civilians as the Germans did. Whatever the cost, they deserve a major portion of the credit for destroying Hitler’s armies.
Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator, had been in power since a few years after the death of Lenin in 1923. He was a small man, only 5’6” tall. Many people, including Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as well as British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, thought “Uncle Joe” had considerable personal charm. He wrote poetry, loved music and literature. When it came to raw power and cold-blooded cruelty, however, he had no match in all of world history.
Stalin met with President Roosevelt in conferences before the war in Europe ended and later with President Truman after the war ended. At both Yalta and Potsdam conferences he demanded a free hand in territories occupied by the Red Army in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Korean peninsula. And he got it. Countries like Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and North Korea were soon dominated by communist governments either put in place by the occupying Soviet army, or by local communist parties allied to the Soviet Union in ideology and practice.
Germany was in almost total ruin, its major cities and most of its industrial might destroyed. Germany’s former capital city, Berlin, was divided into a free sector occupied by the western democracies and an eastern sector occupied by the Soviet army.
The United States, except for Pearl Harbor, had not had any war destruction at home and at the end of the war was by default the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world.
Just two years after the war ended in March 1947 the first major cold war action happened. Greece and Turkey were on the fringes of the free democratic world of Western Europe and Eastern Asia. Both were threatened with communist takeovers by local communist insurgents being helped by the Soviet Union. President Truman asked Congress for $400 million in aid for the two countries. “It must be the policy of the United States,” he argued in what became known as the Truman Doctrine, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” In this case the U.S. aid did effectively help stop communists from taking control in Greece and Turkey. (Both of these countries remain free-market democracies today in the 21st century.)
Remembering the bitterness and disastrous mistakes the victorious allies made following the First World War, under the leadership of President Harry Truman and his visionary Secretary of State, General George Marshall, a “Marshall Plan” was proposed and enacted in Congress in 1948. It was put into effect with amazing speed to help Western Europe rebuild their war-devastated cities and economies and in the case of Germany and Italy to rapidly form new democratic governments. Never before had a conquering power been so magnanimous, so effective and so wise.
Japan was occupied by U.S. troops. The Japanese were allowed to keep the Emperor as a figure-head but General Douglas MacArthur was given power to run the country, to rebuild its cities and factories and to install a new democratic constitution that included a provision for total permanent disarmament.
The U.S. offered to extend the Marshall Plan to Eastern Europe and to the Soviet Union itself. Stalin, however, firmly rejected this aid and instead adopted a policy of revenge and reparation. He proceeded to strip much of eastern Germany and other allies of Germany of their factories and stored wealth. He then installed communist dictatorships to govern the defeated populations.
The cold war heated up in divided Berlin in the summer of 1948. Berlin was an island in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany so that the western free part of the city was completely surrounded and at the mercy of communist military forces. The Soviets considered this free zone of Berlin a thorn in their side and decided to apply pressure to force the westerners out. They blocked off all roads, canals and rail links to the free zones of Berlin, gambling that the French, British and American occupying forces would be forced to leave when West Berlin citizens could not get food, coal and other vital supplies to survive coming winter months.
President Truman was faced with a hard choice. Should he challenge the blockade at the risk of war or should he order his troops out? Very soon he found a way to avoid direct military action and to keep freedom alive in Berlin. He ordered the U.S. Air Force to conduct 24-hour a day air lifts to supply needed food, supplies and coal to West Berlin. After many tense weeks and difficult technical problems, his strategy worked. The Soviets lifted the blockade in the late spring of 1949 and West Berlin survived as an island of freedom in a sea of coercion.
Truman’s response to the Berlin blockade as well as most other US actions in the cold war were based on a strategy called “containment.” In 1946 George Kennan, a top advisor to our ambassador in Moscow, sent a famous long cable that outlined this strategy.
According to Kennan the Soviets perceived themselves to be in a state of perpetual war with capitalism. The brutal war with Hitler had severely weakened their military and economic power, however. As a result in the immediate post-war period they were not likely to be as militarily aggressive as Hitler and Hirohito had been. The Soviets, however, would use “controllable Marxists” in the capitalist world as allies wherever and whenever they could. To survive this perpetual war, Kennan advised, the U.S. should be prepared to confront the Soviets with threatened force that would “contain” Soviet ambitions but would avoid all-out war or aggressive roll-back of Communist gains.
To implement this strategy in Europe the western democracies in 1948 formed NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization). The first head of NATO admitted that the purpose was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The success of the Marshall Plan soon made the third goal unnecessary. By 1955 West Germany had recovered enough to establish its own stable democratic government and was admitted into NATO. The communist countries countered NATO in 1955 with a Warsaw Pact.
Early along the cold war became a hot war on the eastern frontier, though not one directly involving the Soviet army. Japan had occupied and made Korea a part of the Japanese Empire in 1911. After Japan surrendered to end the 2nd World War in 1945, the Korean peninsula was occupied by Soviet armies in the north and U.S. armies in the south. The occupying armies set the 38th Parallel as an arbitrary dividing line between Soviet-dominated North Korea and U.S.-dominated South Korea.
Both newly-established Korean states wanted to unify Korea and both states asked the superpowers for help in invading their neighbor. The U.S. under newly re-elected President Truman refused South Korea’s request for help. Instead the US withdrew its troops. Sensing an opening, Stalin, the Soviet dictator (along with Mao Zedong, dictator of Communist China) gave the green light to the North Korean communist dictator, Kim Il-sung, to launch a military invasion in 1950 with the goal of uniting North and South Korea under one rule, a communist one.
Caught by surprise, Truman petitioned the new United Nations Security Council to condemn the invasion and to authorize military force to repel it. (The Soviet Union had a veto power on the Council but could not vote due to a self-imposed embargo of the Council at that time). Truman’s petition was adopted and soon United Nations troops (mostly American) under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur came back to South Korea to help the South Korean army defend their country.
“Communism was acting in Korea,” said Truman, “just as Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. … If the Communists were permitted to force their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition from the free world, no small nation would have the courage to resist threat and aggression by stronger Communist neighbors.”
Initially North Korea with a much larger and more heavily equipped army was dominant and would have easily defeated South Korea’s smaller ill-equipped army. Once MacArthur’s troops got to Korea they slowed the communist advance and then surprised the enemy with a daring behind-the-lines landing at Incheon. After a series of bloody battles the United Nation troops advanced almost to the Yalu River border with China.
Alarmed by the US advance, Mao Zedong ordered a tsunami wave of Chinese Communist troops (the number of troops is still in dispute–some authorities claim it was as many as 3 million men) to intervene and drive the US forces back The UN forces controlled the air but the Chinese troops with their overwhelming manpower advantage drove the UN forces back, at one point capturing Seoul, the South Korean capitol city. China suffered huge casualties in this offensive. Some experts put the figure as high as a million men killed-in-action.
MacArthur requested permission to recruit soldiers from Chiang-Kai-Shek’s army in Taiwan and to bomb targets over the border in China, even at one point threatening an atomic bomb attack. Truman, worried about a possible global war with China and/or the Soviet Union, refused. When MacArthur made public statements threatening to extend the war to China, Truman in a courageous but unpopular decision relieved the general of his command.
Eventually the war ended in a stalemate with an armistice that divided Korea again at the 38th parallel, just where it was before the war began (and where it still is today.). This sometimes “forgotten” war (Truman called it a “police action,” not a war) cost the US over 50,000 lives and set a pattern that was repeated 20 years later in Southeast Asia when a communist North Vietnam attacked U.S. supported South Vietnam.
Stay alert for Part 4: Controllable Marxists
In the meantime consider previewing the program reviewed below.
The Industrial Revolution, Capitalism and the United States of America. (Democracy in World History Series). video or DVD. color. 32 min. (closed captioned). with tchr’s. guide. Hawkhill Assocs. 2006. video, ISBN 1-559-79-173-X: $89; DVD, ISBN 1-55979-174-8: $109.
Gr 7 Up–The third title in this six-part series covers the time period from America’s struggle for independence through the start of the 20th century, emphasizing economic transformations throughout the world. It utilizes photos, live-action video, and crisp graphics. The first portion of this well-paced and richly narrated program focuses on the uniqueness of the philosophical, political, social, and economic bases of the United States in that time period. In another testament to “it’s all about timing,” the simultaneous emergence of free-market capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in Britain and Northern England supported the struggle of our budding nation. Our Civil War is seen from an economic perspective and is shown to be emblematic of other struggles around the world as capitalism and industrialism clashed with the historic forces of authoritarianism and an agriculture-based economy of unshared wealth. These conflicts were, as we know now, just the first of many more to follow as the 20th century unfolded. The DVD version includes an interactive component of guided post-viewing questions (incorrect responses result in references to particular portions of the program where the correct answer may be found). A mastery quiz is included on the DVD as well as in printed format in the supplemental materials accompanying this potentially valuable title.–Dwain Thomas, Lake Park High School, Roselle, IL
Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill
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