Students of history invariably
ponder questions of “what if.” What if Archduke Francis Ferdinand had not been
assassinated? Would World War I still have happened? What if the United States
had lacked aircraft carriers at the outset of World War II? Would Japan have
won the battle for the Pacific? Historian Jerry H. Bentley, editor of the Journal
of World History, ponders these and many other “what if” questions in a
series of historical inquiries ranging from ancient Mesopotamia to the end of
the Cold War.
World
War I, military conflict, from August 1914 to November 1918,
that involved many of the countries of Europe as well as the United States and
other nations throughout the world. World War I was one of the most violent and
destructive wars in European history. Of the 65 million men who were mobilized,
more than 10 million were killed and more than 20 million wounded. The term World
War I did not come into general use until a second worldwide conflict broke
out in 1939 (see World War II). Before that year, the war was known as
the Great War or the World War.
World War I was the first
total war. Once the war began, the countries involved mobilized their entire
populations and economic resources to achieve victory on the battlefield. The
term home front, which was widely employed for the first time during
World War I, perfectly symbolized this new concept of a war in which the
civilian population behind the lines was directly and critically involved in
the war effort.
The war began as a clash
between two coalitions of European countries. The first coalition, known as the
Allied Powers, included the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Serbia,
Montenegro, and the Russian Empire (see Russia). The Central Powers,
which opposed them, consisted of the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Japan joined the Allied Powers in 1914. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central
Powers in 1914, as did Bulgaria in 1915. The same year, Italy entered the war
on the Allied side. Although the United States initially remained neutral, it
joined the Allies in 1917. The conflict eventually involved 32 countries, 28 of
which supported the Allies. Some of these nations, however, did not participate
in the actual fighting.
The immediate cause of
the war was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the
throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Serbian nationalist. The fundamental causes of
the conflict, however, were rooted deeply in the European history of the
previous century, particularly in the political and economic policies that
prevailed in Europe after 1871, the year that Germany emerged as a major
European power.
By the end of 1914 the
war entered a stalemate. Both sides became mired in two main, stationary
fronts—the western front, primarily in northeastern France, and the eastern
front, mainly in western Russia. At the fronts, the troops fought each other
from numerous parallel lines of interconnected trenches. Each side laid siege
to the other’s system of trenches and endeavored to break through their lines.
When the war finally came
to an end on November 11, 1918, and the Central Powers were defeated, the
political order of Europe had been transformed beyond recognition. The German,
Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires had collapsed. New areas were
carved out of their former lands, and the boundaries of many other countries
were redrawn. The war also helped precipitate the Bolshevik Revolution in
Russia (see Russian Revolutions of 1917), which ushered in the ideology
of Communism there.
The war also had important
long-term consequences. The enormous cost of the war undermined the financial
stability of all of the countries involved, and they had to bear an onerous
burden of debt for many years to come. These financial losses, combined with
the battlefield deaths and physical destruction, severely weakened the European
powers.
Industrial and economic resources
played an important role in World War I. Military success was critically
dependent on a country’s ability to produce a continuous supply of goods for
their armies. German industrial resources were so great that Germany was able
to survive the British naval blockade and meet the demands of four years of
war, while giving some help to Austria-Hungary. British industry, although
capable and versatile, had begun to lag in output and in modernization. Britain
came to depend heavily on U.S. production. Throughout the war, Germany occupied
French territory that contained important industrial and mineral resources, so
France also depended on U.S. supplies. Russian industry was incapable of
dealing with the needs of the Russian armies. In addition, since the Ottoman
Empire controlled the Dardanelles Strait, Russia was cut off from Allied
supplies via the Mediterranean Sea and could not easily be supplied from its
Arctic or Pacific ports.
During the war, Britain
and France were able to harness the economic resources not only of their own
vast colonial empires, such as India and Indochina, but also of the United
States. This ability gave them a great advantage. The Central Powers were cut
off from their prewar markets and sources of food and raw materials. Although
Germany gained access to the vast economic resources of the western part of the
former Russian Empire in the spring of 1918, it was too late in the war to
affect the outcome.
The Allies also enjoyed
a critical advantage in being able to obtain loans from American investment
banks. The Allies used the loans to purchase oil, wheat, steel, and other
critical products. When the United States entered the war, the U.S. Treasury
Department took over the financing of loans to the Allied Powers to cover their
supply purchases in the United States. The combined economic resources of the
United States and the British Empire played a significant role in the Allied
victory.
Treaty of
Versailles, peace treaty signed
at the end of World War I between Germany and the Allies. It was negotiated
during the Paris Peace Conference held in Versailles beginning January 18,
1919. Represented were the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy; the
German Republic, which had replaced the imperial German government at the end
of the war, was excluded from the parley. Included in the first section of the
treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations, the world's first
peacekeeping body, which was given the responsibility for executing the terms
of the various treaties negotiated after World War I. The treaty was signed on
June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles near Paris.
(The U.S. did not ratify the agreement but signed a separate Treaty of Berlin
with Germany on July 2, 1921.) By the Treaty of Versailles,
Germany was required to abolish compulsory military service; to reduce its army
to 100,000; to demilitarize all the territory on the left bank of the Rhine
River and also that on the right bank to a depth of 50 km (31 mi); to stop all
importation, exportation, and nearly all production of war material; to limit
its navy to 24 ships, with no submarines, the naval personnel not to exceed
15,000; and to abandon all military and naval aviation by October 1, 1919.
Germany also agreed to permit the trial of former emperor William II by an
international court on the charge of “a supreme offense against international
morality.” (The trial never took place.)
For damage incurred by
the Allied powers during the war, Germany was required to make extensive
financial reparation. In addition to money, payment was made in the form of
ships, trains, livestock, and valuable natural resources. Difficulty arose in
collecting payment, and the situation was not finally settled until the
Lausanne Conference in 1932.
TERRITORIAL CHANGES
|
Germany recognized the
unconditional sovereignty of Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech
Republic and Slovakia), and Austria and denounced the treaties of Brest-Litovsk
and Bucharest. In addition, it lost some 71,000 sq km (about 27,500 sq mi), or
slightly more than 13 percent of its European domain. Alsace-Lorraine was
returned to France, and the Saar basin placed under a League of Nations
Commission for 15 years. Belgium received the small districts of
Eupen-et-Malmédy, and Moresnet. Under plebiscites held in 1920 to determine the
status of northern and central Schleswig, the former, comprising 3981 sq km
(1537 sq mi), was reunited with Denmark, but the latter remained with Germany.
To Poland were ceded large parts of the provinces of Posen and West Prussia.
Plebiscites in southeastern Prussia and the Marienwerder district of West
Prussia, held in 1920, produced substantial majorities for Germany. The
plebiscite in Upper Silesia in 1921 gave a majority for Germany, but the
Council of the League of Nations, having been invited to settle the
controversy, awarded the richest part of the region to Poland. A portion of
Upper Silesia (now in the Czech Republic) was ceded to Czechoslovakia in 1920.
The port of Memel with adjacent territory was ceded to the Allies for ultimate
transfer to Lithuania. The port of Danzig was ceded to the principal Allied and
associated powers, which recognized Danzig (now Gdańsk) as a free city administered
under the League of Nations but subject to Polish jurisdiction in regard to
customs and foreign relations. Germany also lost its entire colonial empire.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS
League of Nations Members
Twenty-eight countries were members of the League of Nations for
its entire existence. Another 35 countries joined or withdrew at various times.
The date when a country joined or withdrew is given in parentheses following
its name.
League of Nations, international alliance
for the preservation of peace. The league existed from 1920 to 1946. The first
meeting was held in Geneva, on November 15, 1920, with 42 nations represented.
The last meeting was held on April 8, 1946; at that time the league was superseded
by the United Nations (UN). During the league's 26 years, a total of 63 nations
belonged at one time or another; 28 were members for the entire period (see
accompanying table).
In 1918, as one of his
Fourteen Points summarizing Allied aims in World War I, United States president
Woodrow Wilson presented a plan for a general association of nations. The plan
formed the basis of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the 26 articles that
served as operating rules for the league. The covenant was formulated as part
of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, in 1919.
Although President Wilson
was a member of the committee that drafted the covenant, it was never ratified
by the U.S. Senate because of Article X, which contained the requirement that
all members preserve the territorial independence of all other members, even to
joint action against aggression. During the next two decades, American
diplomats encouraged the league's activities and attended its meetings
unofficially, but the United States never became a member. The efficacy of the
league was, therefore, considerably lessened
LEAGUE STRUCTURE
|
The machinery of the league
consisted of an assembly, a council, and a secretariat. Before World War II
(1939-1945), the assembly convened regularly at Geneva in September; it was
composed of three representatives for every member state, each state having one
vote. The council met at least three times each year to consider political
disputes and reduction of armaments; it was composed of several permanent
members—France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and later Germany and the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)—and several nonpermanent members elected by
the assembly. The decisions of the council had to be unanimous. The secretariat
was the administrative branch of the league and consisted of a secretary
general and a staff of 500 people. Several other bodies were allied with the
league, such as the Permanent Court of International Justice, called the World
Court, and the International Labor Organization.
WORLD INVOLVEMENT
|
The league was based on
a new concept: collective security against the “criminal” threat of war.
Unfortunately, the league rarely implemented its available resources, limited
though they were, to achieve this goal.
One important activity
of the league was the disposition of certain territories that had been colonies
of Germany and the Ottoman Empire before World War I. Supervision of these
territories was awarded to league members in the form of mandates. Mandated
territories were given different degrees of independence, in accordance with
their stage of development, their geographic situation, and their economic
status.
The league may be credited
with certain social achievements. These include curbing international traffic
in narcotics and prostitution, aiding refugees of World War I, and surveying
and improving health and labor conditions around the world.
In the area of preserving
peace, the league had some minor successes, including settlement of disputes
between Finland and Sweden over the Åland Islands in 1921 and between Greece
and Bulgaria over their mutual border in 1925. The Great Powers, however,
preferred to handle their own affairs; France occupied the Ruhr, and Italy
occupied Corfu (Kérkira), both in 1923, in spite of the league.
Although Germany joined
the league in 1926, the National Socialist (Nazi) government withdrew in 1933.
Japan also withdrew in 1933, after Japanese attacks on China were condemned by
the league. The league failed to end the war between Bolivia and Paraguay over
the Chaco Boreal between 1932 and 1935 and to stop the Italian conquest of
Ethiopia begun in 1935.
Finally, the league was
powerless to prevent the events in Europe that led to World War II. The USSR, a
member since 1934, was expelled following the Soviet attack on Finland in 1939.
In 1940 the secretariat in Geneva was reduced to a skeleton staff, and several
small service units were moved to Canada and the United States.
In 1946 the league voted
to effect its own dissolution, whereupon much of its property and organization
were transferred to the UN.
LEGACY
|
Never truly effective
as a peacekeeping organization, the lasting importance of the League of Nations
lies in the fact that it provided the groundwork for the UN. This international
alliance, formed after World War II, not only profited by the mistakes of the
League of Nations but borrowed much of the organizational machinery of the
league.
MEMBERSHIP
|
The accompanying table
lists the countries that were members of the international organization. Where
no date is given, the country was an original member of the league. The year in
parentheses is the year of admission to the league unless otherwise indicated.
World
War II, global military conflict that, in terms of lives lost
and material destruction, was the most devastating war in human history. It
began in 1939 as a European conflict between Germany and an Anglo-French
coalition but eventually widened to include most of the nations of the world.
It ended in 1945, leaving a new world order dominated by the United States and
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
WORLD WAR II
More than any previous
war, World War II involved the commitment of nations’ entire human and economic
resources, the blurring of the distinction between combatant and noncombatant,
and the expansion of the battlefield to include all of the enemy’s territory.
The most important determinants of its outcome were industrial capacity and
personnel. In the last stages of the war, two radically new weapons were
introduced: the long-range rocket and the atomic bomb. In the main, however,
the war was fought with the same or improved weapons of the types used in World
War I (1914-1918). The greatest advances were in aircraft and tanks.
II.
|
THE WORLD AFTER WORLD WAR I
|
Three major powers had
been dissatisfied with the outcome of World War I. Germany, the principal
defeated nation, bitterly resented the territorial losses and reparations
payments imposed on it by the Treaty of Versailles. Italy, one of the victors,
found its territorial gains far from enough either to offset the cost of the
war or to satisfy its ambitions. Japan, also a victor, was unhappy about its
failure to gain control of China.
A.
|
Causes of the War
|
France, the United
Kingdom, and the United States had attained their wartime objectives. They had
reduced Germany to a military cipher and had reorganized Europe and the world
as they saw fit. The French and the British frequently disagreed on policy in
the postwar period, however, and were unsure of their ability to defend the
peace settlement. The United States, disillusioned by the Europeans’ failure to
repay their war debts, retreated into isolationism.
1.
|
The Failure of Peace Efforts
|
During the 1920s, attempts
were made to achieve a stable peace. The first was the establishment (1920) of
the League of Nations as a forum in which nations could settle their disputes.
The league’s powers were limited to persuasion and various levels of moral and
economic sanctions that the members were free to carry out as they saw fit. At
the Washington Conference of 1921-22, the principal naval powers agreed to
limit their navies according to a fixed ratio. The Locarno Conference (1925)
produced a treaty guarantee of the German-French boundary and an arbitration
agreement between Germany and Poland. In the Paris Peace Pact (1928), 63
countries, including all the great powers except the USSR, renounced war as an
instrument of national policy and pledged to resolve all disputes among them
“by pacific means.” The signatories had agreed beforehand to exempt wars of
“self-defense.”
2.
|
The Rise of Fascism
|
One of the victors’ stated
aims in World War I had been “to make the world safe for democracy,” and
postwar Germany adopted a democratic constitution, as did most of the other states
restored or created after the war. In the 1920s, however, the wave of the
future appeared to be a form of nationalistic, militaristic totalitarianism
known by its Italian name, fascism. It promised to minister to peoples’ wants
more effectively than democracy and presented itself as the one sure defense
against communism. Benito Mussolini established the first Fascist dictatorship
in Italy in 1922.
Adolf
Hitler, the Führer (“leader”) of the German National Socialist
(Nazi) Party, preached a racist brand of fascism. Hitler promised to overturn
the Versailles Treaty and secure additional Lebensraum (“living space”)
for the German people, who he contended deserved more as members of a superior
race. In the early 1930s, the depression hit Germany. The moderate parties
could not agree on what to do about it, and large numbers of voters turned to
the Nazis and Communists. In 1933 Hitler became the German chancellor, and in a
series of subsequent moves established himself as dictator.
Japan did not formally
adopt fascism, but the armed forces' powerful position in the government
enabled them to impose a similar type of totalitarianism. As dismantlers of the
world status quo, the Japanese military were well ahead of Hitler. They used a
minor clash with Chinese troops near Mukden in 1931 as a pretext for taking
over all of Manchuria, where they proclaimed the puppet state of Manchukuo in
1932. In 1937-1938 they occupied the main Chinese ports.
Having denounced the disarmament
clauses of the Versailles Treaty, created a new air force, and reintroduced
conscription, Hitler tried out his new weapons on the side of right-wing
military rebels in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The venture brought him
into collaboration with Mussolini, who was also supporting the Spanish revolt
after having seized (1935-1936) Ethiopia in a small war. Treaties between
Germany, Italy, and Japan in the period from 1936 to 1940 brought into being
the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. The Axis thereafter became the collective term for
those countries and their allies.
German
Agression
Hitler launched his own
expansionist drive with the annexation of Austria in March 1938. The way was
clear: Mussolini supported him; and the British and French, overawed by German rearmament,
accepted Hitler’s claim that the status of Austria was an internal German
affair. The United States had severely impaired its ability to act against
aggression by passing a neutrality law that prohibited material assistance to
all parties in foreign conflicts.
In September 1938 Hitler
threatened war to annex the western border area of Czechoslovakia, the
Sudetenland and its 3.5 million ethnic Germans. The British prime minister
Neville Chamberlain initiated talks that culminated at the end of the month in
the Munich Pact, by which the Czechs, on British and French urging,
relinquished the Sudetenland in return for Hitler’s promise not to take any
more Czech territory. Chamberlain believed he had achieved “peace for our
time,” but the word Munich soon implied abject and futile appeasement.
Less than six months later,
in March 1939, Hitler seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Alarmed by this
new aggression and by Hitler’s threats against Poland, the British government
pledged to aid that country if Germany threatened its independence. France
already had a mutual defense treaty with Poland.
The turn away from appeasement
brought the Soviet Union to the fore. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, had
offered military help to Czechoslovakia during the 1938 crisis, but had been
ignored by all the parties to the Munich Pact. Now that war threatened, he was
courted by both sides, but Hitler made the more attractive offer. Allied with
Britain and France, the Soviet Union might well have had to fight, but all
Germany asked for was its neutrality. In Moscow, on the night of August 23,
1939, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed. In the part published the next day,
Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to go to war against each other. A
secret protocol gave Stalin a free hand in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, eastern
Poland, and eastern Romania. See also German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.
Cold War, term used to describe the post-World
War II struggle between the United States and its allies and the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies. During the Cold War period,
which lasted from the mid-1940s until the end of the 1980s, international
politics were heavily shaped by the intense rivalry between these two great
blocs of power and the political ideologies they represented: democracy and
capitalism in the case of the United States and its allies, and Communism in
the case of the Soviet bloc. The principal allies of the United States during
the Cold War included Britain, France, West Germany, Japan, and Canada. On the
Soviet side were many of the countries of Eastern Europe—including Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, and Romania—and, during parts of
the Cold War, Cuba and China. Countries that had no formal commitment to either
bloc were known as neutrals or, within the Third World, as nonaligned nations
American journalist Walter
Lippmann first popularized the term cold war in a 1947 book by that
name. By using the term, Lippmann meant to suggest that relations between the
USSR and its World War II allies (primarily the United States, Britain, and
France) had deteriorated to the point of war without the occurrence of actual
warfare. Over the next few years, the emerging rivalry between these two camps
hardened into a mutual and permanent preoccupation. It dominated the foreign
policy agendas of both sides and led to the formation of two vast military
alliances: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created by the
Western powers in 1949; and the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, established in
1955. Although centered originally in Europe, the Cold War enmity eventually
drew the United States and the USSR into local conflicts in almost every
quarter of the globe. It also produced what became known as the Cold War arms
race, an intense competition between the two superpowers to accumulate advanced
military weapons.
Hostility between the
United States and the USSR had its roots in the waning moments of World War I.
Soon after the Bolsheviks (later Communists) overthrew the existing Russian
government in October 1917, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin resolved to
withdraw Russia from the war. In 1918 the United States, along with Britain,
France, and Japan, intervened militarily in Russia. They did so to restore the
collapsed Eastern Front in their war effort against Germany; however, to Lenin
and his colleagues, the intervention represented an assault on Russia’s feeble
new revolutionary regime. In fact, the European powers and the United States
did resent Russia’s new leadership, with its appeals against capitalism and its
efforts to weld local Communist parties into an international revolutionary
movement. In December 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was
formed as a federal union of Russia and neighboring areas under Communist
control. The United States refused to recognize the Soviet state until 1933.
The deep ideological differences between the USSR and the United States were
exacerbated by the leadership of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the USSR from 1929 to
1953.
In August 1939, on the
eve of World War II, Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with German dictator
Adolf Hitler. The two leaders pledged not to attack one another and agreed to
divide the territory that lay between them into German and Soviet spheres of
influence. Hitler betrayed the agreement, however, and in June 1941 he launched
his armies against the USSR. Britain and the United States rallied to the
USSR’s defense, which produced the coalition that would defeat Germany over the
next four years. This American-British-Soviet coalition—which came to be known
as the Grand Alliance—was an uneasy affair, marked by mistrust and, on the
Soviet side, by charges that the USSR bore a heavier price than the other
nations in prosecuting the war. By 1944, with victory approaching, the
conflicting visions within the alliance of a postwar world were becoming ever
more obvious.
Even before the defeat
of Nazi Germany in May 1945, the United States and the USSR had become divided
over the political future of Poland. Stalin, whose forces had driven the
Germans out of Poland in 1944 and 1945 and established a pro-Communist
provisional government there, believed that Soviet control of Poland was
necessary for his country’s security. This met with opposition from the Allies,
and it was not long before the quarrel had extended to the political future of
other Eastern European nations. The struggle over the fate of Eastern Europe
thus constituted the first crucial phase of the Cold War. Yet during this
period, which lasted from 1944 to 1946, both sides clung to the hope that their
growing differences could be surmounted and something of the spirit of their
earlier wartime cooperation could be preserved.
While the United States
accused the USSR of seeking to expand Communism in Europe and Asia, the USSR
viewed itself as the leader of history’s progressive forces and charged the
United States with attempting to stamp out revolutionary activity wherever it
arose. In 1946 and 1947 the USSR helped bring Communist governments to power in
Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland (Communists had gained control of
Albania and Yugoslavia in 1944 and 1945). In 1947 United States president Harry
S. Truman issued the Truman Doctrine, which authorized U.S. aid to
anti-Communist forces in Greece and Turkey. Later, this policy was expanded to
justify support for any nation that the U.S. government considered to be
threatened by Soviet expansionism. Known as the containment doctrine,
this policy, aimed at containing the spread of Communism around the world, was
outlined in a famous 1947 Foreign Affairs article by American diplomat
George F. Kennan. Containment soon became the official U.S. policy with
regard to the USSR.
By 1948 neither side believed
any longer in the possibility of preserving some level of partnership amidst
the growing tension and competition. During this new and more intense phase of
the Cold War, developments in and around postwar Germany emerged as the core of
the conflict. Following its defeat in World War II, Germany had been divided
into separate British, French, American, and Soviet occupation zones. The city
of Berlin, located in the Soviet zone, was also divided into four
administrative sectors. The occupying governments could not reach agreement on
what the political and economic structure of postwar Germany should be, and in mid-1947
the United States and Britain decided to merge their separate administrative
zones. The two Western governments worried that to keep Germany fragmented
indefinitely, particularly when the Soviet and Western occupation regimes were
growing so far apart ideologically, could have negative economic consequences
for the Western sphere of responsibility. This concern echoed a larger fear
that the economic problems of Western Europe—a result of the war's
devastation—had left the region vulnerable to Soviet penetration through
European Communist parties under Moscow's control. To head off this danger, in
the summer of 1947 the United States committed itself to a massive economic aid
program designed to rebuild Western European economies. The program was called
the Marshall Plan, after U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall
In June 1948 France merged
its administrative zone with the joint British-American zone, thus laying the
foundation for a West German republic. Stalin and his lieutenants opposed the
establishment of a West German state, fearing that it would be rearmed and
welcomed into an American-led military alliance. In the summer of 1948 the
Soviets responded to the Western governments’ plans for West Germany by
attempting to cut those governments off from their sectors in Berlin through a
land blockade. In the first direct military confrontation between the USSR and
the Western powers, the Western governments organized a massive airlift of
supplies to West Berlin, circumventing the Soviet blockade. After 11 months and
thousands of flights, the Western powers succeeded in breaking the blockade.
Meanwhile, in February
1948 Soviet-backed Communists in Czechoslovakia provoked a crisis that led to
the formation of a new, Communist-dominated government. With this, all the
countries of Eastern Europe were under Communist control, and the creation of
the Soviet bloc was complete. The events of 1948 contributed to a growing
conviction among political leaders in both the United States and the USSR that
the opposing power posed a broad and fundamental threat to their nation’s
interests.
The Berlin blockade and
the spread of Communism in Europe led to negotiations between Western Europe,
Canada, and the United States that resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty, which
was signed in April 1949, thereby establishing the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). The Berlin crisis also accelerated the emergence of a
state of West Germany, which was formally established in May 1949. (The
Communist republic of East Germany, comprising the remainder of German
territory, was formally proclaimed in October of that year.) And finally, the
Berlin confrontation prompted the Western powers to begin thinking seriously
about rearming their half of Germany, despite the divisiveness of this issue
among West Europeans.
The death of Joseph Stalin
in 1953 had a significant impact on the course of the Cold War. His successors,
including Nikita Khrushchev, who ultimately replaced Stalin as Soviet leader,
sought to ease some of the rigidities of Soviet policy toward the West, but
without resolving the core issue: a divided Germany at the heart of a divided
Europe. The Western powers responded cautiously but sympathetically to the
softening of Soviet policy, and in the mid-1950s the USSR and the Western
powers convened the first of several summit conferences in Geneva, Switzerland,
to address the key issues of the Cold War. These issues now included not only the
problem of German reunification, but also the danger of surprise nuclear attack
and, in the background, the momentarily quieted but still unresolved conflicts
in Korea and Indochina (for more information, see The Cold War Outside
Europe below). The 1955 Geneva Conference achieved little progress on the
central issues of Germany, Eastern Europe, and arms control. However, on the
eve of the conference the two sides resolved the issue of Austria, which had
been united with Germany during the war and divided into American, British,
French, and Soviet occupation zones in its aftermath. The signing of the State
Treaty between Austria and the Allies established Austria’s neutrality, freed
it of occupation forces, and reestablished the Austrian republic. This period
also saw fundamental change in one critical realm: Both the United States and
the USSR came to recognize that nuclear weapons had produced a revolution in
military affairs—making war among the great powers, while still a possibility,
no longer a sane policy recourse.
Meanwhile, the struggle
over Europe continued. West Germany was recognized as an independent nation in
1955 and was allowed to rearm and join NATO. In response to this development, a
group of Eastern European Communist nations led by the USSR formed the Warsaw
Pact . In the late 1950s Khrushchev launched a new series of crises over
Berlin, and in 1961 the Soviet government built the Berlin Wall to prevent East
Germans from fleeing to West Germany.
END OF COLD WAR
The early 1980s witnessed
a final period of friction between the United States and the USSR, resulting
mainly from the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a Communist
regime and from the firm line adopted by U.S. president Ronald Reagan after his
1980 election. Reagan saw the USSR as an “evil empire.” He also believed that
his rivals in Moscow respected strength first and foremost, and thus he set
about to add greatly to American military capabilities. The Soviets initially
viewed Reagan as an implacable foe, committed to subverting the Soviet system
and possibly willing to risk nuclear war in the process.
Then in the mid-1980s
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR. Gorbachev was determined to halt
the increasing decay of the Soviet system and to shed some of his country’s
foreign policy burdens. Between 1986 and 1989 he brought a revolution to Soviet
foreign policy, abandoning long-held Soviet assumptions and seeking new and
far-reaching agreements with the West. Gorbachev’s efforts fundamentally
altered the dynamic of East-West relations. Gorbachev and Reagan held a series
of summit talks beginning in 1985, and in 1987 the two leaders agreed to
eliminate a whole class of their countries’ nuclear missiles—those capable of
striking Europe and Asia from the USSR and vice versa. The Soviet government
began to reduce its forces in Eastern Europe, and in 1989 it pulled its troops
out of Afghanistan. That year Communist regimes began to topple in the
countries of Eastern Europe and the wall that had divided East and West Germany
since 1961 was torn down. In 1990 Germany became once again a unified country.
In 1991 the USSR dissolved, and Russia and the other Soviet republics emerged
as independent states. Even before these dramatic final events, much of the
ideological basis for the Cold War competition had disappeared. However, the
collapse of Soviet power in Eastern Europe, and then of the USSR itself, lent a
crushing finality to the end of the Cold War period.
How to cite this article:
Legvold, Robert. "Cold
War." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation,
2008.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. ©
1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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