HIST123

SU 5: The Cold War

Lecture 10
Week of 16-20 October 2023
Slides by Dr Claudia Gouws
SU5 lecture outcomes
Lecture 10

**Gain insight on the development of international institutions such as

the United Nations, and their influence and limitations;

**Understand the Cold War and its impact on global politics;

**Be informed of the reasons for the end of the Cold War;

**Explain the meaning and consequences of globalisation for recent

world history [Technology and environmental concerns];
 Lecture 10 The Cold War
• Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks ed., A Concise History of the
World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp.
339-349 (Decolonization and the Cold War).

SU4
• Mark Philip Bradley, The Cambridge History of the Cold
War, ed. Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), pp. 474-485.

Reading
• Richard Bulliet et al., The Earth and its Peoples: A Global
History, 3rd edn (Boston: Cengage, 2004), Chapter 32, pp.
847-870.

material • Raymond F Bretts, “Decolonization A brief history of the

word,” in Beyond Empire and Nation: The Decolonization
of African and Asian societies, 1930s-1970s, eds. E
Bogaerts and R Raben (n.p. Brill, 2012) one chapter.
• Tomasz Kamusella, How China combined authoritarianism
with capitalism to create a new communism, The
Conversation 26 October 2021.
 8 May 1945: Nazi German surrender to the allies (USA, UK,
France, Soviet Union)

August 1945: President Truman USA orders two specific

Second bombs to be thrown onto two cities on the Japanese
mainland [Hiroshima & Nagasaki]
World War 2 September 1945 Emperor Hirohito (Japan) surrenders.

ends…Cold End of WWII: in Germany Austria and Japan, foreign

War begins
military occupation and governments controlled by the
victors
Two Superpowers
1945 United States and Soviet Union

Germany divided
1947-1948 Soviet’s Blockade of Berlin
Visual Literacy:
1. Describe what you are seeing?
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TbvwNpwkNw
The Cold War Chronology
1945 End of the WWII
1947-1948 Soviet blockade in Berlin
1949 NATO formed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaZQhrwSBcE
1950-1953 Korean War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2IcmLkuhG0
1952 US detonates 1st Hydrogen bomb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1HkyHHmrgY
1954 Jacob Arbenz overthrown in Guatemala, Supported by CIA
1955 Warsaw pact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1El1GVQVdc
1956 Soviet Union SU suppresses Hungarian revolt
1957 SU launches first artificial satellite into earth orbit
1961 East Germany builds Berlin Wall; Bay of Pigs (Cuba)
1962 Cuban crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwWW3sbk4EU
1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
1975 Helsinki Accords; end of Vietnam War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgK2dfWHADw
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall: On a global level, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the symbolic end of the Cold War
1991 Gorbachev resigned and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved
The Fall of the Berlin Wall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn4VDwaV-oo
The International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD)

The IMF financed temporary

About 40 representatives
trade deficits while IBRD
from different countries met
They formed the IMF and the provided funds for the
in July 1944 to draw up a new
IBRD (now the World Bank) reconstruction of Europe and
international monetary
development finance in other
system
needy countries

Projects funded in developing

The IBRD only moved to
The USA was more influential countries were mainly mega
provide finance for various
in the work and operations of dam projects, hydro-
developmental projects in
the IBRD electricity, road and rail
African countries after 1950
networks
 • An International organization founded in 1945 to
promote world peace and cooperation. Created
along similar lines to (and replaces) the League of
Nations
• 1944 Signed by representatives of the USA, Great
Britain, The Soviet Union and China
• Two main bodies: General Assembly (made up of
The United representatives from all member states) and
Security Council
Nations • There were also specialised agencies which dealt
with specialised international problems for example
UNESCO, FAO, UNICEF
• all member nations renounced war and territorial
conquest
• Concerned with poverty, racial discrimination and
the struggle against imperialism
 • There was need for financial resources to
rebuild war damaged Europe
• USA helped-Marshall Plan (20 billion
dollars worth of aid to help Britain and
Western Europe to back on their feet)
• 1963 Western Europe doubled their
Post-War industrial output and even surpassed the
USA
Finance • 1948 Organisation of European Economic
Community (OEEC) – which became the
European Economic Community (Common
Market) in 1957
• This changed to European Union in 1993
(Plans to have a single currency)
 • The Soviet experience was dramatically
different
• The rapid growth of the Soviet state after
1917 had challenged traditional Western
Soviet assumptions of economic development
Economic and social policy
• The government regulated and
Recovery / administered nearly every area of society
including housing, medical services, retail
model shops, factories and the land
• Despite many problems, the Soviet state
achieved a dramatic expansion in basic
industrial production
 • The breakup of Europe’s empires led to the division of
the world into 3 blocs
• There were two teams for developing and developed
countries to choose from; and Third World Countries
• either you were pro communist (even Socialist) and
a friend of Moscow, Soviet Premier Nikita
Khrushchev; or
• you were a pro capitalist and a friend of Washington
D.C; US Vice-President Richard M Nixon; or
The Cold War • you were neutral (but less likely to enter
negotiations with Moscow)
• Third World 29 World countries = nonaligned countries
• 1955 Conference in Bandung Indonesia to promote
solidarity among nonaligned developing nations
• Extract money and support from 1/both
superpowers
• SU supply weapons, training – US provided loans,
investment
 Superpowers

• The Cold war emerges between the two superpowers: the USA (First
World) and Soviet Union (Second World)
• The major threads to world peace during the Cold War: the ideological
struggle between communism (Soviet Union) and capitalism and
democracy (the USA) for world influence,
• 1949 North Atlantic treaty Organisation (NATO) – Protection of Capitalist
countries against communist states versus (1955) Warsaw Pact –
protection of communist countries against capitalist states
• Iron Curtain, Sir Winston Churchill’s term
http://jstandring.weebly.com/uploads/3/8/4/6/38467349/map-28-2-cold-war-confrontation1_1_orig.jpg
 • Communist North and South Vietnamese
communist guerillas against noncommunist
South Vietnamese government aided by the
US
• Post WWII communist movement arose in
French Indochina in Southeast Asia

The Vietnam • Vietn. leader Ho Chi Minh cooperated with US

• Japan controlled Vietnam
war • 1954 end of French colonial enterprise
• US in Vietnam (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson)
• Protests in US more than 1 Million Vietnamese
& 58 000 US soldiers died
• Result: Social reforms & Civil rights initiatives
US
Young people
Anti Vietnam war protests
Global youth protests: combined with other
demonstrations:
• Young people in the late 1960s • for women's rights,
renounced the militaristic and • For rights of racial minorities in
conformist values of their parents the USA,
• Whore clothing and hair styles • against right wing governments in
that signified their Argentina, Brazil and Mexico,
countercultural values • for students and workers rights in
• Listened to new types of music, France,
rock ‘n roll and folk music rather • against nuclear proliferation in
than jazz Australia and western Europe
Quest for Foreigner control
of: Chile’s copper;
Cuba’s sugar;
Guatemala, United
Fruit Company
US Central
Intelligence
Agency (CIA) Cuban exiles & CIA
Economic Colombia’s coffee;
Guatemala’s
bananas
largest land-
owner, friendly to
communism
takeover the
military in
Guatemala
landed in the Bay
of Pigs to
overthrow Castro

Freedom in
Latin 1938 1952 1950s

America 1930s & 1940s 1950 1954 1961

Mexico, foreign oil America dominated

US detonates 1st Cuban economy (sugar
interests,
Hydrogen bomb production, banking,
rich/poor
transportation,
tourism, and public
utilities - Cuban
revolution led by Fidel
Castro
The Race for Nuclear Supremacy

SU deployed nuclear-armed
Missiles in Cuba, US react, Helsinki Accords to relax tension and
Hiroshima & Nagasaki atomic affords to overthrow Cuban Gov. cooperation in humanitarian fields
bombs ended the WW ll = Cuban Missile Crisis between the 2 alliances

Aug. 1945 1957 1962 1969 1972–1975

Space race: the SU placed a US Neil Armstrong 1st human on

Sputnik satellite into orbit the moon demonstrated US
around the earth. UN 3 months Technological superiority
later
Why are nuclear bombs so
dangerous?
Step 1: Go to: https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/interactive/bomb-blast

Step 2: Type in your location.

Step 3: Choose the type of bomb

Step 4: Type in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban to see what the human
cost would be if a nuclear bomb lands on a city of 12 million, 5 million, and 3
million people.

Why is the shockwave of a nuclear blast as dangerous as the heatwave? Look at

this footage from the Beirut explosion in 2021.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkIYjNGiaoA

(This was not a nuclear explosion, but it acts as a good example of the possible
damage of such an explosion.)
 • Britain grants Syria and Lebanon independence after
WWII
• British policy on Palestine, Balfour declaration
• After WWII UN divided Palestine in 2 states Jewish &
Arab
USA and • US helped the Jews and SU gave arms to the
SU in the Palestinians, The Pristine liberation org. (PLO)
headed by Yasir Arafat
Middle East • Suez Crisis
• Oil prod states formed the Org of Petroleum
Exporting Countries OPEC to promote higher
revenues. 1973 OPEG embargo on oil shipments to
nations that support Israel (steep price increase)
USA and the Netherlands
 • On a global level, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
marked the symbolic end of the Cold War, the
political scientist Francis Fukuyama to declare it the
“end of history”
• 1991 Gorbachev resigned and the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics dissolved, and the Cold War
came to an end when the Soviet Union dissolved in
End of the 1991
• The wars fought in the Third World during the Cold
Cold War War were destructive and destabilised local
societies
• When the Cold War ended, poverty, famine,
HIV/AIDS, genocide and predatory regimes crush
people’s hopes
• Today social equality and justice prevail as naturally
as inequality, poverty, and war
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/socialist-fraternal-kiss-leonid-brezhnev-erich-honecker-1979/
 • The Green Revolution/the global diffusion of food, occurred
without major technological innovations e.g. mechanical
harvesting or the use of commercial fertilisers
• By 1950 the population doubled in Europe and Russia, caused
by the impact of food crops (corn and potatoes) from
Americas
• Agricultural and population growth increased with the impact
The Green of fossil energy for machinery, fuel, fertilizer and pesticide
production
Revolution • Hunger remained a global problem because of
• an unequal distribution of food
• The rise of mono-cropping
• The disappearance of family farms, food for local
consumption
• Global warming and climate change
The emergence of environmental
concerns
• The introduction of gas-powered machinery changed farming practices
• The replacement of organic fertilizers (manure and crop residues) with synthetic fertilizers lead to
• Massive global production
• Reduction in agricultural land use, renewal of grassland and forests
• Increased consumption of non-renewable resources e.g. coal and oil
• Disrupted the earth’s ecological balance and places increased burdens on the land, water and
air
After the Cold War, post War economic recovery, include hydroelectric dams and nuclear power
stations
 Untested technologies & industrial expansion degrade the environment
 Pesticide & herbicide use, automobile exhaust, industrial waste disposal and radiation
 • UN: created to manage international disputes and
facilitate decolonization and development;
• UN: developed the Marshall Plan to aid European
recovery from the devastation of WWII;
• The Cold War: a confrontation between 2 military
alliances (NATO & Warsaw Pact) and 2 distinct
economic systems (capitalism & communism);
Review • The US and SU avoid direct conflict, but the Cold
War led to wars in Korea and Vietnam, support in
the Middle-East and Latin America;
• The development of nuclear weapons made the
Cold War a threat to the survival of the human race
and led to nonproliferation treaties.
• 1970 young people lead worldwide movement to
conserve natural resources and protect the
environment
 Week of 17−21 July Introduction lecture and Practical SU1
Week of 24−28 July Lecture 1; Practical 1 SU1
Week of 31 July−4 August Lecture 2; Practical 2 SU1
Week of 7−11 August Lecture 3; Practical 3 SU2
Week of 14−18 August Lecture 4; Practical 4 SU2
Week of 21−25 August Lecture 5; Practical 5 SU3
Assignment 1 due 25 August Release marks 11 Sep
Short Calendar 2023
Week of 28 Aug−1 Sep Lecture 6; Practical 6 SU3
Week of 4−8 September Lecture 7; Practical 7 SU4
Assignment 2 due 8 September Release marks 26 Sep

Week of 11−15 September Lecture 8; Practical 8 SU4

Week of 18−23 September Assessment no class ………. sit-down tests
Week of 25−29 September Assessment no class ………. sit-down tests
Week of 2−6 October Recess no class
Week of 9−13 October Lecture 9; Practical 9 SU5
Assignment 3 due 13 October Release marks 23 Oct

Week of 16−20 October Lecture 10; Practical 10 SU5

Week of 23−26 October Revision lecture
27 October Recess Release module marks 27 October

30 Oct−22 November 1 Opportunity Exam 17 November 9h00 3h Release 1 Opp marks 24 Nov

23−24 November Recess

27 Nov−8 December 2 Opportunity Exam 30 November 14h00 3h Release 2 Opp marks 15 Dec

11−29 December Recess

2 February 2024 Deans Concession exam / 3rd Opp see A-rules 1.13.6
Next week
Revision