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NATO
German unity was now impossible. The Soviet zone became East Germany, under
Communist rule. The three Allied zones became West Germany, which included
West Berlin. In 1949, the western European countries formed the North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation (NATO). This alliance was based on the USA, which always
provided its Supreme Commander. By the terms of NATO, the USA took on the
lion’s share of defending Western Europe against attack.
Cuba
Khrushchev’s greatest threat to peace came in 1952, in Cuba. One of the worst
sides of the US Cold War policy was that they supported some corrupt right-wing
governments as long as they were anti-Communist. One of these was the brutal
dictatorship of Batista in Cuba. In 1959 it was overthrown by Fidel Castro. Castro
only wanted to be free from US control, but for the USA, his only choice was to
become an ally or an enemy. When pressure was put on Castro by the USA, he
turned to the USSR for help. In 1961, the USA backed an attempted invasion of
Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Then, in 1962, US spy planes took photographs of
Russian missile bases in Cuba. This was a threat to the USA.
Earlier that year, the USSR had tested even bigger nuclear bombs. Soviet missiles
in Cuba would tip the balance of power in their favour. The new President, John
Kennedy, dared not appear weak in the face of this threat. He told his armed
forces to prepare for a nuclear attack on the USSR, and sent the US navy to stop
any more missiles getting through to Cuba. As Soviet ships with missiles on
board steamed towards Cuba, the world waited for a nuclear holocaust.
“If assurances were given that the President of the United States would not
participate in an attack on Cuba and the blockade was lifted, the question of the
missile sites in Cuba would be an entirely different question. [...]” –Letter from
Khrushchev to Kennedy.
Kennedy agreed to Khrushchev’s offer. The blockade was lifted, the missiles
crated up and sent back to the USSR. It was the closest to nuclear war that the
world had ever come until that time. Out of the crisis came a closer relationship
between USSR and the USA. The ‘Hot Line’ was set up: a direct telephone link
from the White House to the Kremlin in Moscow, in 1963. In the same year, the
USSR and the USA signed a Test Ban Treaty to stop further testing of nuclear
weapons. Soon, however, the USA was involved in another war in Asia.
Vietnam
In 1954 the French were driven from their former colony of Indo-China. The
rebels who had driven them out were mainly Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh.
Indo-China was divided into four states, Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam and
South Vietnam. It was hoped that the two Vietnams could later be united.
Meanwhile North Vietnam became a Communist country under Ho Chi Minh.
South Vietnam power was in hands of a small group, usually from the Roman
Catholic landlord class and often corrupt.
By the late 1950s rebellion had broken out. The rebels called themselves the
Vietcong and received help from North Vietnam. The USA began to help the South
Vietnamese government. During Kennedy’s presidency, American
advisers in Vietnam were increased from 500 to 10.000. By 1968, there were
500.000 Americans in Vietnam, with 300 dying per week at a cost of 30 billion
dollars a year.
The Vietcong used guerrilla tactics, they had become experts in these methods in
years of war against the French. By day they mingled with peasants in the rice-
fields of South Vietnam. By night mined roads and passed on information. The
jungle gave cover to their soldiers. They knew every track and ambush. Supplies
were carried from the north on bicycles down jungle trucks. From 1965, there
were massive bombing raid on North Vietnam to try to stop supplies to the south.
Helicopter gunships, gas and napalm were all used. The jungle was even sprayed
with defoliant to destroy the vegetation which gave cover. By 1968, the cost of the
war in deaths and money was becoming too great for the American people.
Putting into practice the policies of Truman and Dulles now proved too expensive.
An anti-war movement gained strength and President Nixon proposed
‘Vietnamisation’ handing over the war to the South Vietnamese. A peace was
negotiated in Paris in 1973. By 1975, South Vietnam had fallen to the
Communists and its capital, Saigon, renamed Ho Chi Ming City. Communists
also took over in Laos and Cambodia. This was mainly as a result of Nixon’s
decision to bomb these countries, which had turned the people there against the
USA and towards the Communists.
McCarthyism
The growing Cold War began to have an effect on events inside the USA. By 1950,
American Cold War policy had suffered setbacks: China had become Communist,
the Korean War had broken out, and the USSR had learned how to make atom
bombs. How could this happened? A clue for some people was given was given by
spy scares. A British scientist admitted giving atomic secrets to the Russians,
then an American was accused of spying for USSR, so Senator Joseph McCarthy
claimed that the USA was riddled with spies, Communists and their friends. And
very few people dared to oppose Senator McCarthy, to do so made one look like a
friend of America’s main enemy. Not one of the hundreds of people accused by
McCarthy was ever actually convicted of spying, but again, no one dared speak
out against his bullying and his lies. Politicians were careful: young Richard
Nixon supported him, John Kennedy was neutral, and President Eisenhower
‘refused to get in the gutter with the guy’. Eventually, McCarthyism burned itself
out. By 1955 the Korean War was over. When the proceedings of the Un-
American Activities Committee were televised, people were shocked at McCarthy’s
rudeness and bullying, so he lost the public’s support. However, McCarthyism
was a nasty episode in American history.
Blacks In America
After the abolition of slavery in 1856, most blacks stayed in the South, where
they made up nearly half the population. The whites ruled the South, passing
laws to make separate white and black facilities legal, as separate schools and
even public bathrooms. On average, the southern states spent 45 dollars on each
white child’s education and 13 dollars on each black child per year.
Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower had all tried to use Federal power to break
this inequality; however, the local, state governments under white control had
been largely successful in resisting this pressure.
During and after the Second World War, many blacks moved north to the cities
and to California. There was no segregation in the North, but they still often met
prejudice. They were discriminated against in jobs and forced to take cheap, bad
housing in the black ghettos, which they couldn’t leave because of their bad jobs.
Bad housing and family stress turned many to drugs and to crime, and by 1960,
the crime rate in American cities had reached enormous proportions. Add to
these difficulties the problems of pollution in the cities became obvious. Yet the
cities do not have the money to deal with these problems, as their more
prosperous citizens move out to suburbs, leaving the poor behind.