essays about the cold war

The Cold War (1945-1989) essay

The Cold War is considered to be a significant event in Modern World History. The Cold War dominated a rather long time period: between 1945, or the end of the World War II, and 1990, the collapse of the USSR. This period involved the relationships between two superpowers: the United States and the USSR. The Cold War began in Eastern Europe and Germany, according to the researchers of the Institute of Contemporary British History (Warner 15).  Researchers state that “the USSR and the United States of America held the trump cards, nuclear bombs and missiles” (Daniel 489). In other words, during the Cold War, two nations took the fate of the world under their control. The progression of the Cold War influenced the development of society, which became aware of the threat of nuclear war. After the World War II, the world experienced technological progress, which provided “the Space Race, computer development, superhighway construction, jet airliner development, the creation of international phone system, the advent of television, enormous progress in medicine, and the creation of mass consumerism, and many other achievements” (Daniel 489). Although the larger part of the world lived in poverty and lacked technological progress, the United States and other countries of Western world succeeded in economic development. The Cold War, which began in 1945, reflected the increased role of technological progress in the establishment of economic relationships between two superpowers.   The Cold War involved internal and external conflicts between two superpowers, the United States and the USSR, leading to eventual breakdown of the USSR.

• The Cold War: background information

The Cold War consisted of several confrontations between the United States and the USSR, supported by their allies. According to researchers, the Cold War was marked by a number of events, including “the escalating arms race, a competition to conquer space, a dangerously belligerent for of diplomacy known as brinkmanship, and a series of small wars, sometimes called “police actions” by the United States and sometimes excused as defense measures by the Soviets” (Gottfried 9). The Cold War had different influences on the United States and the USSR. For the USSR, the Cold War provided massive opportunities for the spread of communism across the world, Moscow’s control over the development of other nations and the increased role of the Soviet Communist party.

In fact, the Cold War could split the wartime alliance formed to oppose the plans of Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the United States as two superpowers with considerable economic and political differences. The USSR was based on a single-party Marxist–Leninist system, while the United States was a capitalist state with democratic governance based on free elections.

The key figure in the Cold War was the Soviet leader Gorbachev, who was elected in 1985. He managed to change the direction of the USSR, making the economies of communist ruled states independent. The major reasons for changing in the course were poor technological development of the USSR (Gottfried 115). Gorbachev believed that radical changes in political power could improve the Communist system. At the same time, he wanted to stop the Cold War and tensions with the United States. The cost of nuclear arms race had negative impact on the economy of the USSR. The leaders of the United States accepted the proposed relationships, based on cooperation and mutual trust. The end of the Cold War was marked by signing the INF treaty in 1987 (Gottfried 115).

• The origins of the Cold War

Many American historians state that the Cold War began in 1945. However, according to Russian researchers, historians and analysts “the Cold War began with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, for this was when the capitalist world began its systematic opposition to and effort to undermine the world’s first socialist state and society” (Warner13). For Russians, the Cold War was hot in 1918-1922, when the Allied Intervention policy implemented in Russia during the Russian Civil War. According to John W. Long, “the U.S. intervention in North Russia was a policy formulated by President Wilson during the first half of 1918 at the urgent insistence of Britain, France and Italy, the chief World War I allies” (380).

Nevertheless, there are some other opinions regarding the origins of the Cold War. For example, Geoffrey Barraclough, an outstanding English historian, states that the events in the Far East at the end of the century contributed to the origins of the Cold War. He argues that “during the previous hundred years, Russia and the United States has tended to support each other against England; but now, as England’s power passed its zenith, they came face to face across the Pacific” (Warner 13). According to Barraclough, the Cold War is associated with the conflict of interests, which involved European countries, the Middle East and South East Asia. Finally, this conflict divided the world into two camps. Thus, the Cold War origins are connected with the spread of ideological conflict caused by the emergence of the new power in the early 20-th century (Warner 14). The Cold War outbreak was associated with the spread of propaganda on the United States by the USSR. The propagandistic attacks involved the criticism of the U.S. leaders and their policies. These attacked were harmful to the interests of American nation (Whitton 151).

• The major causes of the Cold War

The United States and the USSR were regarded as two superpowers during the Cold War, each having its own sphere of influence, its power and forces. The Cold War had been the continuing conflict, caused by tensions, misunderstandings and competitions that existed between the United States and the USSR, as well as their allies from 1945 to the early 1990s (Gottfried 10). Throughout this long period, there was the so-called rivalry between the United States and the USSR, which was expressed through various transformations, including military buildup, the spread of propaganda, the growth of espionage, weapons development, considerable industrial advances, and competitive technological developments in different spheres of human activity, such as medicine, education, space exploration, etc.

There four major causes of the Cold War, which include:

• Ideological differences (communism v. capitalism);
• Mutual distrust and misperception;
• The fear of the United State regarding the spread of communism;
• The nuclear arms race (Gottfried 10).

The major causes of the Cold War point out to the fact that the USSR was focused on the spread of communist ideas worldwide. The United States followed democratic ideas and opposed the spread of communism. At the same time, the acquisition of atomic weapons by the United States caused fear in the USSR. The use of atomic weapons could become the major reason of fear of both the United States and the USSR. In other words, both countries were anxious about possible attacks from each other; therefore, they were following the production of mass destruction weapons. In addition, the USSR was focused on taking control over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. According to researchers, the USSR used various strategies to gain control over Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the years 1945-1980. Some of these strategies included “encouraging the communist takeover of governments in Eastern Europe, the setting up of Comecon, the Warsaw Pact, the presence of the Red Army in Eastern Europe, and the Brezhnev Doctrine” (Phillips 118). These actions were the major factors for the suspicions and concerns of the United States. In addition, the U.S. President had a personal dislike of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his policies. In general, the United States was concerned by the Soviet Union’s actions regarding the occupied territory of Germany, while the USSR feared that the United States would use Western Europe as the major tool for attack.

• The consequences of the Cold War

The consequences of the Cold War include both positive and negative effects for both the United States and the USSR.

• Both the United States and the USSR managed to build up huge arsenals of atomic weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.
• The Cold War provided opportunities for the establishment of the military blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
• The Cold War led to the emergence of the destructive military conflicts, like the Vietnam War and the Korean War, which took the lives of millions of people (Gottfried13).
• The USSR collapsed because of considerable economic, political and social challenges.
• The Cold War led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the two German nations.
• The Cold War led to the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact (Gottfried 136).
• The Cold war provided the opportunities for achieving independence of the Baltic States and some former Soviet Republics.
• The Cold War made the United States the sole superpower of the world because of the collapse of the USSR in 1990.
• The Cold War led to the collapse of Communism and the rise of globalization worldwide (Phillips 119).

The impact of the Cold War on the development of many countries was enormous. The consequences of the Cold War were derived from numerous internal problems of the countries, which were connected with the USSR, especially developing countries (India, Africa, etc.). This fact means that foreign policies of many states were transformed (Gottfried 115).

The Cold War (1945-1989) essay part 2

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Cold War History

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 26, 2023 | Original: October 27, 2009

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension marked by competition and confrontation between communist nations led by the Soviet Union and Western democracies including the United States. During World War II , the United States and the Soviets fought together as allies against Nazi Germany . However, U.S./Soviet relations were never truly friendly: Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and Russian leader Joseph Stalin ’s tyrannical rule. The Soviets resented Americans’ refusal to give them a leading role in the international community, as well as America’s delayed entry into World War II, in which millions of Russians died.

These grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity that never developed into open warfare (thus the term “cold war”). Soviet expansionism into Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as U.S. officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and strident approach to international relations. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable.

Containment

By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called “containment.” In his famous “Long Telegram,” the diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005) explained the policy: The Soviet Union, he wrote, was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree].” As a result, America’s only choice was the “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

“It must be the policy of the United States,” he declared before Congress in 1947, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation…by outside pressures.” This way of thinking would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades.

Did you know? The term 'cold war' first appeared in a 1945 essay by the English writer George Orwell called 'You and the Atomic Bomb.'

The Cold War: The Atomic Age

The containment strategy also provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the United States. In 1950, a National Security Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed Truman’s recommendation that the country use military force to contain communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring. To that end, the report called for a four-fold increase in defense spending.

In particular, American officials encouraged the development of atomic weapons like the ones that had ended World War II. Thus began a deadly “ arms race .” In 1949, the Soviets tested an atom bomb of their own. In response, President Truman announced that the United States would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or “superbomb.” Stalin followed suit.

As a result, the stakes of the Cold War were perilously high. The first H-bomb test, in the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, showed just how fearsome the nuclear age could be. It created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean floor and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan. Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed radioactive waste into the atmosphere.

The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a great impact on American domestic life as well. People built bomb shelters in their backyards. They practiced attack drills in schools and other public places. The 1950s and 1960s saw an epidemic of popular films that horrified moviegoers with depictions of nuclear devastation and mutant creatures. In these and other ways, the Cold War was a constant presence in Americans’ everyday lives.

HISTORY Vault: Nuclear Terror

Now more than ever, terrorist groups are obtaining nuclear weapons. With increasing cases of theft and re-sale at dozens of Russian sites, it's becoming more and more likely for terrorists to succeed.

The Cold War and the Space Race

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveling companion”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans.

In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

In 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and what came to be known as the Space Race was underway. That same year, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration, as well as several programs seeking to exploit the military potential of space. Still, the Soviets were one step ahead, launching the first man into space in April 1961.

That May, after Alan Shepard become the first American man in space, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) made the bold public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. His prediction came true on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission , became the first man to set foot on the moon, effectively winning the Space Race for the Americans. 

U.S. astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

The Cold War and the Red Scare

Meanwhile, beginning in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC ) brought the Cold War home in another way. The committee began a series of hearings designed to show that communist subversion in the United States was alive and well.

In Hollywood , HUAC forced hundreds of people who worked in the movie industry to renounce left-wing political beliefs and testify against one another. More than 500 people lost their jobs. Many of these “blacklisted” writers, directors, actors and others were unable to work again for more than a decade. HUAC also accused State Department workers of engaging in subversive activities. Soon, other anticommunist politicians, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), expanded this probe to include anyone who worked in the federal government. 

Thousands of federal employees were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. As this anticommunist hysteria spread throughout the 1950s, liberal college professors lost their jobs, people were asked to testify against colleagues and “loyalty oaths” became commonplace.

The Cold War Abroad

The fight against subversion at home mirrored a growing concern with the Soviet threat abroad. In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option. Truman sent the American military into Korea, but the Korean War dragged to a stalemate and ended in 1953.

In 1955, the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made West Germany a member of NATO and permitted it to remilitarize. The Soviets responded with the Warsaw Pact , a mutual defense organization between the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria that set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union.

Other international disputes followed. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy faced a number of troubling situations in his own hemisphere. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year seemed to prove that the real communist threat now lay in the unstable, postcolonial “Third World.” 

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vietnam , where the collapse of the French colonial regime had led to a struggle between the American-backed nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem in the south and the communist nationalist Ho Chi Minh in the north. Since the 1950s, the United States had been committed to the survival of an anticommunist government in the region, and by the early 1960s it seemed clear to American leaders that if they were to successfully “contain” communist expansionism there, they would have to intervene more actively on Diem’s behalf. However, what was intended to be a brief military action spiraled into a 10-year conflict .

The End of the Cold War and Effects

Almost as soon as he took office, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) began to implement a new approach to international relations. Instead of viewing the world as a hostile, “bi-polar” place, he suggested, why not use diplomacy instead of military action to create more poles? To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and, after a trip there in 1972, began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing.

At the same time, he adopted a policy of “détente”—”relaxation”—toward the Soviet Union. In 1972, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.

Despite Nixon’s efforts, the Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Like many leaders of his generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, he worked to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world. This policy, particularly as it was applied in the developing world in places like Grenada and El Salvador, was known as the Reagan Doctrine .

Even as Reagan fought communism in Central America, however, the Soviet Union was disintegrating. In response to severe economic problems and growing political ferment in the USSR, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) took office in 1985 and introduced two policies that redefined Russia’s relationship to the rest of the world: “glasnost,” or political openness, and “ perestroika ,” or economic reform. 

Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned. In 1989, every other communist state in the region replaced its government with a noncommunist one. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall –the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War–was finally destroyed, just over two years after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold War was over.

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The Cold War

After World War II, the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its satellite states began a decades-long struggle for supremacy known as the Cold War. Soldiers of the Soviet Union and the United States did not do battle directly during the Cold War. But the two superpowers continually antagonized each other through political maneuvering, military coalitions, espionage, propaganda, arms buildups, economic aid, and proxy wars between other nations.

From Allies to Adversaries

The Soviet Union and the United States had fought as allies against Nazi Germany during World War II. But the alliance began to crumble as soon as the war in Europe ended in May 1945. Tensions were apparent in July during the Potsdam Conference, where the victorious Allies negotiated the joint occupation of Germany.

The Soviet Union was determined to have a buffer zone between its borders and Western Europe. It set up pro-communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, and eventually in East Germany.

As the Soviets tightened their grip on Eastern Europe, the United States embarked on a policy of containment to prevent the spread of Soviet and communist influence in Western European nations such as France, Italy, and Greece.

During the 1940s, the United States reversed its traditional reluctance to become involved in European affairs. The Truman Doctrine (1947) pledged aid to governments threatened by communist subversion. The Marshall Plan (1947) provided billions of dollars in economic assistance to eliminate the political instability that could open the way for communist takeovers of democratically elected governments.

France, England, and the United States administered sectors of the city of Berlin, deep inside communist East Germany. When the Soviets cut off all road and rail traffic to the city in 1948, the United States and Great Britain responded with a massive airlift that supplied the besieged city for 231 days until the blockade was lifted. In 1949, the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the first mutual security and military alliance in American history. The establishment of NATO also spurred the Soviet Union to create an alliance with the communist governments of Eastern Europe that was formalized in 1955 by the Warsaw Pact.

The Worldwide Cold War

In Europe, the dividing line between East and West remained essentially frozen during the next decades. But conflict spread to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The struggle to overthrow colonial regimes frequently became entangled in Cold War tensions, and the superpowers competed to influence anti-colonial movements.

In 1949, the communists triumphed in the Chinese civil war, and the world's most populous nation joined the Soviet Union as a Cold War adversary. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and the United Nations and the United States sent troops and military aid. Communist China intervened to support North Korea, and bloody campaigns stretched on for three years until a truce was signed in 1953.

In 1954, the colonial French regime fell in Vietnam.

The United States supported a military government in South Vietnam and worked to prevent free elections that might have unified the country under the control of communist North Vietnam. In response to the threat, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was formed in 1955 to prevent communist expansion, and President Eisenhower sent some 700 military personnel as well as military and economic aid to the government of South Vietnam. The effort was foundering when John F. Kennedy took office.

Closer to home, the Cuban resistance movement led by Fidel Castro deposed the pro-American military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. Castro's Cuba quickly became militarily and economically dependent on the Soviet Union. The United States' main rival in the Cold War had established a foothold just ninety miles off the coast of Florida.

Kennedy and the Cold War

Cold War rhetoric dominated the 1960 presidential campaign. Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon both pledged to strengthen American military forces and promised a tough stance against the Soviet Union and international communism. Kennedy warned of the Soviet's growing arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pledged to revitalize American nuclear forces. He also criticized the Eisenhower administration for permitting the establishment of a pro-Soviet government in Cuba.

John F. Kennedy was the first American president born in the 20th century. The Cold War and the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union were vital international issues throughout his political career. His inaugural address stressed the contest between the free world and the communist world, and he pledged that the American people would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."

The Bay of Pigs

Before his inauguration, JFK was briefed on a plan drafted during the Eisenhower administration to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their homeland. The plan anticipated that support from the Cuban people and perhaps even elements of the Cuban military would lead to the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States.

Kennedy approved the operation and some 1,400 exiles landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs on April 17. The entire force was either killed or captured, and Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure of the operation.

The Arms Race

In June 1961, Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Austria. (See a memorandum below outlining the main points of conversation between President Kennedy and Khrushchev at their first lunch meeting.) Kennedy was surprised by Khrushchev's combative tone during the summit. At one point, Khrushchev threatened to cut off Allied access to Berlin. The Soviet leader pointed out the Lenin Peace Medals he was wearing, and Kennedy answered, "I hope you keep them." Just two months later, Khrushchev ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall to stop the flood of East Germans into West Germany.

As a result of these threatening developments, Kennedy ordered substantial increases in American intercontinental ballistic missile forces. He also added five new army divisions and increased the nation's air power and military reserves. The Soviets meanwhile resumed nuclear testing and President Kennedy responded by reluctantly reactivating American tests in early 1962.

JFKPOF-126-009-p0024. Memorandum relaying the main points of the conversation between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during their first lunch meeting in Vienna, on June 3, 1961.

During this meeting, President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev discussed Soviet agriculture, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's space flight, the possibility of putting a man on the moon, and their hopes that their two nations would have good relations in the future.

More information

JFKPOF-126-009-p0025. Memorandum relaying the main points of the conversation between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during their first lunch meeting in Vienna, on June 3, 1961. 

JFKPOF-126-009-p0026. Memorandum relaying the main points of the conversation between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during their first lunch meeting in Vienna, on June 3, 1961. 

JFKPOF-126-009-p0027. Memorandum relaying the main points of the conversation between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev during their first lunch meeting in Vienna, on June 3, 1961. 

The Cuban Missile Crisis

In the summer of 1962, Khrushchev reached a secret agreement with the Cuban government to supply nuclear missiles capable of protecting the island against another US-sponsored invasion. In mid-October, American spy planes photographed the missile sites under construction. Kennedy responded by placing a naval blockade, which he referred to as a "quarantine," around Cuba. He also demanded the removal of the missiles and the destruction of the sites. Recognizing that the crisis could easily escalate into nuclear war, Khrushchev finally agreed to remove the missiles in return for an American pledge not to reinvade Cuba. But the end of Cuban Missile Crisis did little to ease the tensions of the Cold War. The Soviet leader decided to commit whatever resources were required for upgrading the Soviet nuclear strike force. His decision led to a major escalation of the nuclear arms race.

In June 1963, President Kennedy spoke at the American University commencement in Washington, DC. He urged Americans to critically reexamine Cold War stereotypes and myths and called for a strategy of peace that would make the world safe for diversity. In the final months of the Kennedy presidency Cold War tensions seemed to soften as the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was negotiated and signed. In addition, Washington and Moscow established a direct line of communication known as the "Hotline" to help reduce the possibility of war by miscalculation.

In May 1961, JFK had authorized sending 500 Special Forces troops and military advisers to assist the government of South Vietnam. They joined 700 Americans already sent by the Eisenhower administration. In February 1962, the president sent an additional 12,000 military advisers to support the South Vietnamese army. By early November 1963, the number of US military advisers had reached 16,000.

Even as the military commitment in Vietnam grew, JFK told an interviewer, "In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it—the people of Vietnam against the Communists. . . . But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. . . . [The United States] made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate—we may not like it—in the defense of Asia." In the final weeks of his life, JFK wrestled with the need to decide the future of the United States commitment in Vietnam—and very likely had not made a final decision before his death.

Home — Essay Samples — War — Cold War — Analysis of How Did The Cold War Shaped American Politics, Society, and Economy

Analysis of How Did The Cold War Shaped American Politics, Society, and Economy

• Categories: 20Th Century Cold War Cuban Missile Crisis

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Published: Sep 4, 2018

Words: 714 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

The essay explores the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, tracing its origins to the aftermath of World War II and the historical backdrop of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Cold War was a multifaceted conflict encompassing ideology, economics, politics, and military posturing, but it notably never escalated into a direct battlefield confrontation between the two superpowers. Instead, it was characterized by tensions and hostilities on a global scale, marked by a mutual understanding of the catastrophic consequences of direct conflict.

The essay delves into the impact of the Cold War on American society, highlighting the emergence of strong anti-communist sentiments that led to McCarthyism. During this period, the fear of communism and the obsession with identifying and removing communists from American society resulted in various actions, including the establishment of organizations like the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Laws such as the Communist Control Act and the McCarran Act were enacted, leading to questioning, job loss, and even fatalities, as exemplified by the Rosenberg case.

The essay also discusses the pervasive fear that gripped both American and Soviet societies during the Cold War, often driven by the arms race and events like the Cuban missile crisis. Despite the absence of direct military conflict, the constant threat of nuclear warfare loomed large, shaping the psychology of the era.

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By Robert J. Kodosky

The period of international political and military tension known as the Cold War (1947-91) had military, political, and cultural implications for Greater Philadelphia. The region served as a first line of defense for a conflict that depended more on missiles than forts, and it provided the nation with an arsenal, a shipyard, and a source of manpower. While a direct military confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Cold War’s principal adversaries, failed to materialize, the conflict made its mark on the region in other ways, including anti-communist suspicion, civil defense, and the 1967 summit between President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-73) and Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin (1904-80) in Glassboro, New Jersey.

The Cold War emerged after World War II when the United States and the Soviet Union—wartime allies against Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy—reverted to their prewar ideological rivalry between U.S. promotion of capitalism and Soviet support for Communist revolutions. As early as 1946, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) described the postwar divide in Europe as an Iron Curtain . In 1961 the East German government constructed the Berlin Wall, physically dividing the city and symbolic of Cold War tension. While the Soviet Union and the United States avoided direct military conflict, each became involved in proxy wars around the world, most notably in Korea (1950-53), Vietnam (1950-75), and Afghanistan (1979-89). Each nation worked to expand its international influence in a conflict carried out through propaganda, espionage, domestic surveillance, soft power (economic and cultural), the space race, and the threat of atomic weaponry. While Cold War tensions eased during the 1970s, a period characterized by détente (thawing), they resumed following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

Into the Postwar World

At the end of World War II, Philadelphia stood as America’s third largest city. Optimism ran high amid military demobilization and the lapsing of wartime rationing and restrictions. A building boom took place, and rows of small houses and garden apartments appeared in the city’s sections of East Germantown, West Oak Lane, and the Northeast. Philadelphia’s colleges and universities grew markedly in enrollment due to the educational opportunities made possible for veterans under the G.I. Bill .

At the same time, however, apprehension grew over the detrimental impact of the sudden peace on local defense operations and industry. These fears quickly became realized at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard , where fifty-eight ships were deactivated by the middle of 1946. The Navy Yard laid off thousands of civilian workers and cut naval personnel from 345 officers and 639 WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) in 1945 to 82 officers and 172 WAVES in 1949. To assist laid-off workers in finding employment, the Navy Yard established a Reduction-in-Force Unit in its Industrial Relations Division.

Postwar cuts generated constant fear of base and shipyard closure. In 1949, the Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) presidential administration laid off more than four thousand government employees at the Frankford Arsenal , Marine Corps Supply Depot, Naval Home, Quartermaster General Depot, and Signal Corps Stock Control Office, reducing the federal payroll in Philadelphia by $13 million. It further closed the Atlantic City Naval Air Station at Pomona, New Jersey, and announced plans to reduce the authorized number of personnel at the Navy Yard from nine thousand to seven thousand.

In addition to the military cutbacks, the spectre of communism provoked anxiety as political leaders, the media, and others warned of domestic threats. The Communist Party already had a strong presence in the region. Its membership of nearly one hundred thousand individuals by the late 1940s owed to both the economic toll of the Great Depression and the U.S.-Soviet alliance during World War II. During the postwar period, Communists built on existing racial tensions to recruit African Americans. The party’s newspaper, The Daily Worker , regularly reported instances of police brutality and frame-ups directed against African Americans in Philadelphia. Thomas Nabried (1900-65), the party’s city chair (1942-45) and then district chair for eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, worked to organize fellow African Americans in the city and throughout Bucks County. By the 1950s, African Americans came to constitute more than one-sixth of the party’s membership. The party’s strength, however, proved short lived, as it failed to withstand the anti-communist mood of the 1950s and ceased to operate as an effective political force.

Veterans organizations emerged early as forceful proponents of anticommunism. The Catholic War Veterans, for example, organized mass demonstrations in Philadelphia in December 1946 to protest the repression of the Catholic Church in communist Eastern Europe. The Pennsylvania American Legion expressed support for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the McCarran Act , a 1950 federal law that called for the registration of “subversives.” Veterans groups sponsored patriotic celebrations such as Loyalty Day, designated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) in 1958 and held annually on or near May 1.

Patriotic activities to celebrate the United States, including the role Philadelphia played in its founding, accompanied anticommunist initiatives throughout the Cold War. Religious leaders played an important role. Vito Mazzone (1903-85), pastor of St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi at 712 Montrose Street in South Philadelphia, encouraged active patriotism among his parishioners. “Christian patriotism” was the message of evangelist Billy Graham (b. 1918), who attracted a crowd of nearly seven hundred thousand to his Philadelphia crusade in 1961. Philadelphia served as the point of departure for the Freedom Train , which carried an exhibit of the nation’s founding documents around the country between 1947 and 1949. The era’s heightened patriotism also brought increasing numbers of tourists to see Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell , which became the centerpieces of Independence National Historical Park , authorized by Congress in 1948.

Military Revitalization and Nuclear Threats

The Cold War suddenly turned hot in June 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. This followed the Soviet Union’s first explosion of an atomic bomb and the creation of the Communist Peoples Republic of China . The Philadelphia region felt the impact as jobs returned to the Naval Yard. At the height of the American-led United Nations “police action” in Korea at the end of 1951, 14,750 went to work for the Navy in the shipyard. A new Radiological Decontamination Training Facility opened in Building 681 and distributed manuals for ship decontamination in the event of an air burst of atomic bombs.

The fear of nuclear attack remained paramount. In 1952, Pennsylvania’s Civil Air Patrol dropped leaflets in Bucks and Chester Counties that warned of potential bombs. By the 1950s, the Philadelphia District of the Corps of Engineers supervised construction of twelve NIKE/AJAX surface-to-air missile sites averaging twenty-five miles from Center City. Regular Army and Pennsylvania National Guard manned the batteries with command and control functions located at a facility in Pedricktown, Salem County, New Jersey. Missile sites in New Jersey protected the New York area in the north and the Philadelphia area in the south.

As nuclear espionage dominated national news, in May 1950 authorities arrested a South Philadelphia man, Harry Gold (1910-72) , on espionage charges. A South Philadelphia High School graduate, Gold had studied chemical engineering at Drexel Institute and by the 1930s had begun to provide the Soviets with documents about industrial solvents and manufacturing processes from the Pennsylvania Sugar Company, the Fishtown refinery where he worked. At that time one of the largest sugar refineries in the world, Pennsylvania Sugar had subsidiaries that produced everything from Quaker brand antifreeze to solvents, lacquers, and rum.

Following his arrest, Gold confessed to acting as a courier to pass information for the Soviets about the Manhattan Project , which produced the atomic bomb, to atomic spy Klaus Fuchs (1911-88). This led to the arrest of David Greenglass (1922-2014), a Manhattan Project machinist whose testimony resulted in the espionage arrest, trial and execution of Greenglass’s sister Ethel Rosenberg (1915-53) and her husband, Julius (1918-53). Gold served fifteen years of the thirty-year sentence he received before his parole from the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in May 1966.

Reflecting continuing anxiety about Communist activity within the United States, organizers of Pennsylvania Week activities in 1951 chose “Defense” as their theme. Philadelphia’s Civil Defense Council, citing a shipment of purported sabotage manuals allegedly unloaded from a ship at the Philadelphia docks, warned of the need to detect subversive threats. The region’s desire to expose potential communist subversives manifested in the adoption of statewide loyalty oaths in Pennsylvania (1951) and New Jersey (1949). Delaware remained one of only seven states to resist adopting such legislation. Locally, meanwhile, in 1955 the Philadelphia School District dismissed twenty-six teachers for refusing to answer questions about Communist affiliations on the basis of their rights under the Fifth Amendment. In the suburbs, the Bucks County Bar rejected an applicant based on his association with a Marxist fellow student at the Pennsylvania State University. An appeal eventually overturned the decision.

The Cold War elevated the importance of universities to national security. As centers of scientific production, the federal government provided campuses with unprecedented funding. Philadelphia’s campuses benefited from the Section 112 program, a 1959 revision to the Housing Act that responded to the Soviet Union’s launch of its satellite Sputnik two years before. This enabled urban universities in selected cities, including Philadelphia, to undertake massive expansion projects at little or no cost to the universities.

Because of their perceived importance and the federal dollars they received, universities came under the scrutiny of authorities early and often. Barrows Dunham (1905-95), professor of philosophy and department head at Temple University , attracted interest from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) because of his former membership in the Communist Party. Subpoenaed to appear before the U.S. House Un-American Affairs Committee in October 1952, Dunham ultimately sought protection under the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer questions. Cited for standing in contempt of Congress in May 1954, Dunham secured an acquittal a year later. Temple officials dismissed Dunham and continued to cooperate with the FBI. In July 1981 Temple’s trustees acknowledged Dunham’s dismissal as an error and reinstated him as professor emeritus entitled to a lifetime pension.

The Cold War further revitalized the Philadelphia Naval Yard during the Vietnam War, when the facility entered its most active period of operations and highest level of employment since World War II. Its annual payroll reached nearly $90 million. Activity diminished after Vietnam, but the Naval Base remained vital to national defense throughout the Cold War. Most notably, the Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) presidential administration awarded Philadelphia $500 million to fulfill the first Carrier Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) contract for the 60,000-ton attack carrier Saratoga. Continued SLEP contracts employed thousands of Delaware Valley residents and brought hundreds of millions of dollars to the region over the next twenty years.

The Cold War’s costs included the men and women overseas to serve in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Draftees and volunteers from across the northeastern United States reported to Fort Dix in New Jersey for basic training. Many did not return. The Korean War exacted a human toll of over six hundred dead from Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. Forty-three from Delaware died in Korea while nearly eight hundred from New Jersey lost their lives. The war in Vietnam proved even more costly, as 646 Philadelphians, 122 service people from Delaware, and 1,500 from New Jersey never returned from Vietnam.

These costs rendered the Vietnam War increasingly divisive at home. The conflict shattered the Cold War consensus as supporters and protestors demonstrated on college campuses and sought claim to Philadelphia’s symbols of America’s democracy, including the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Following two years of acrimony on its campus, the University of Pennsylvania terminated its chemical and biological warfare contracts with the Pentagon.

Crossing the Divide

The accelerated globalization that accompanied the Cold War brought issues of national security to doorsteps across the nation. For those in the Philadelphia region, as for others across the United States, this rendered a renewed focus on home and family life that increasingly transpired in the suburbs. At the same time, Philadelphia became more connected to the world. In 1945, the United States Air Force returned Philadelphia Municipal Airport to civil control after using it as an airfield during World War II. It became Philadelphia International Airport later that year when American Overseas Airlines began direct flights to Europe. This coincided with the city proposing that Philadelphia become the permanent home for the newly established United Nations , offering a ten-square-mile site on Belmont Plateau but losing the bid to New York.

While often engulfed in Cold War tensions, Philadelphians also sought ways to alleviate them. In 1958, the Philadelphia Orchestra departed for its first tour of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In 1973, the orchestra embarked on another first, a trip to the Peoples Republic of China that preceded the existence of an American embassy in Beijing. This type of exchange also extended to sport. In July 1959, Philadelphia hosted the first in a series of track meets between American and Soviet athletes at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field. While Soviet athletes largely prevailed over their American counterparts, almost twenty years later the defending Stanley Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers scored a convincing 4-1 victory over Moscow’s Central Hockey Club at the Spectrum on January 11, 1976.

The region also offered the site for the 1967 summit meeting between President Johnson and Soviet Premier Kosygin. The two met June 23-24 at Hollybush Mansion , the residence of Glassboro State College (Rowan University) President Thomas E. Robinson (1905-92). The choice of site, with only two day’s notice, derived from a disagreement about whether the meeting should take place in Washington or in New York, where Kosygin was attending an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the recently concluded Six Day War .

Both sides agreed on Glassboro , located exactly at the midpoint between New York and Washington. Johnson considered the site ideal for its relatively rural location, removed from the growing protests on Philadelphia’s campuses against the Vietnam War. The summit failed to produce any agreements, notably on the limitation of anti-ballistic missile systems. Limited headway made by the two leaders on the terms of a nonproliferation treaty failed to result in the issuing of any communique, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 delayed further serious discussion between American and Soviet officials until 1972. However, the Glassboro meeting’s spontaneity and its spirit of cooperation resonated widely at the time. This helped pave the way for a period of thawed relations between the Cold War adversaries referred to as détente.

Philadelphia continued to serve as an important site for the nation’s expression of patriotism. As the Cold War varied in intensity, the city hosted America’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976 and the bicentennial anniversary of the Constitution in 1987. It also rewarded the pursuit of freedom globally, awarding the inaugural Liberty Medal in 1989 to Lech Walesa (b. 1943) of Poland, the leader of Solidarity, the Soviet bloc’s first independent trade union.

The Cold War concluded in 1991 with the internal collapse of the Soviet Union. The tensions of the era served to revitalize the military establishment in Greater Philadelphia, injecting the economy with money and jobs. The cost, however, included an anticommunist hysteria that occurred throughout the nation. Thousands of area residents lost their lives in Cold War-era military conflicts. While the region contributed markedly to the nation’s defense, through its missile defense initiative and operations at the Philadelphia Naval Yard, its sacrifices proved more substantial.

Robert J. Kodosky is an Associate Professor of History at West Chester University. He is the author of Psychological Operations American Style: The Joint United States Public Affairs Office, Vietnam and Beyond.

Copyright 2017, Rutgers University

Postwar Cutbacks

Women of World War II

Reductions in forces following World War II included members of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) Program, which had been established by the U.S. Navy in July 1942 in response to the need for additional military personnel. Members of the all-female division of the U.S. Navy were not permitted to serve aboard combat ships or on aircraft. Their service was strictly limited to the U.S. mainland. More than twenty-seven thousand women joined the WAVES within the first year it was established, and the program boasted close to eighty thousand enlisted women by the end of World War II. Despite their involvement in World War II and post-war, the organization was disbanded in 1948 when the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act was passed. This new law permitted women permanent status within the armed forces.

In this photo, Ensign May Herrmann talks to two women about enlistment in the Navy Women's Reserve at the officer procurement office in Philadelphia on October 30, 1942, about eleven months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the country into World War II.

Smith Act Hits Philadelphia

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Fighting back against what they perceived to be government overreach, scare tactics, and transgressions against the First Amendment, the Pennsylvania Civil Rights Congress (PCRC) began publishing a newsletter in November 1953 titled Let Freedom Ring, which prominently displayed the Liberty Bell and pushed back against a culture that associated dissent with Communism. The group’s inaugural issue challenged the Smith Act.

Proposed by U.S. Representative Howard Smith of Virginia and passed formally as the Alien and Registration Act of 1940, the Smith Act made it a criminal offense to advocate the violent overthrow of the government or to organize or be a member of any group or society devoted to such advocacy. Though it was intended to stop the spread of Communist activity in the U.S., the law in practice could be used to outlaw political associations, rallies, and even the circulation of books and pamphlets that promoted Communist ideology.

Between July 29 and August 14, 1953, the FBI arrested nine Philadelphia residents at their homes or on summer vacations in the Northeast. In the indictment they were accused of “unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly, advocating and teaching the duty and necessity of over-throwing … the government of the U.S. by force and violence.” They were among a group of 132 “second-tier” leaders in the Communist Party USA to be indicted. All nine Philadelphia leaders indicted were convicted and sentenced to two to three years in prison each.

Program for Thomas Nabried Center for Marxist-Leninist Education, Spring 1975

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Thomas Nabried joined the Communist Party in 1928. After attending school in Moscow, he worked as an organizer in Philadelphia and Bucks County and eventually rose through the ranks to become the party’s district chairman for Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware. He served in this role from 1942 until he died in 1965. In the 1950s, Nabried was arrested and tried under the Smith Act, a federal law that targeted Communists and their sympathizers.

Made up largely of left-leaning Jews and African Americans, the Communist Party in Philadelphia demonstrated the possibility of cross-racial alliances. Though the party’s strength was short-lived, some of its anti-racist, pro-worker goals continued to be taught through programming at the Thomas Nabried Center for Marxist-Leninist Education. Founded in 1973, the center sponsored education and training in organizing, worker’s rights, civil rights, and Marxist-Leninist philosophy, as well as black arts and cultural activities.

Duck and Cover

Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries

During the Cold War, Philadelphia’s schoolchildren learned to protect themselves in the event of a nuclear strike. They were taught to crouch low to the ground and cover their heads in an attempt to protect them from the aftereffects of a nuclear blast.

A nationally released 1951 short film entitled Duck and Cover was shown to illustrate the technique, instructing pupils to assume this position “when you see the flash.” Civil Defense efforts like Duck and Cover were deemed necessary when the Soviet Union began testing its own nuclear weapons in 1949. Additionally, many area schools were designated as fallout shelters, where the public could seek shelter in the event of a nuclear attack.

Even into the twenty-first century, some of the ubiquitous black and yellow fallout shelter signs remained at area schools. “Duck and Cover” training was officially ended in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union brought the demise of the Cold War.

The Rosenbergs

Library of Congress

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, seen here in a 1951 news photograph after their conviction for spying against the United States, were linked to Philadelphia native Harry Gold, who confessed to acting as a courier to pass information about the Manhattan Project to Soviet atomic spy Klaus Fuchs. Gold’s confession led to the arrest of Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, a Manhattan Project machinist whose testimony resulted in the espionage arrest, trial, and execution of the Rosenbergs.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Famous Cases & Criminals

Harry Gold, a South Philadelphia High School graduate, studied chemical engineering at the Drexel Institute and by the 1930s began to provide the Soviets with documents about industrial solvents and manufacturing processes from the Pennsylvania Sugar Company, the Fishtown refinery where he worked. His activities with the Soviets continued until he was arrested and confessed in May 1950. Gold served fifteen years of the thirty-year sentence he received before his parole from the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in May 1966.

Kosygin and Johnson at Glassboro Summit, June 23, 1967

Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library

Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin (left) and President Lyndon B. Johnson continued talks at Hollybush Mansion in Glassboro, New Jersey, for three days in 1967. The summit failed to produce any agreements, but it did help thaw relationships between Cold War adversaries. (Photograph for the Johnson Presidential Library by Yoichi Okamoto)

Glassboro Summit Luncheon

Wanting to meet at a neutral site between New York and Washington, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin met at Hollybush Mansion on the campus of Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in Glassboro, New Jersey. The talks June 23-25, 1967, were the first meeting between the two leaders and the first between U.S. and Soviet leaders since President John F. Kennedy met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1961. Seated at a luncheon for diplomats inside Hollybush are (from left) Kosygin's interpreter, Premier Kosygin, interpreter William Krimer, and President Johnson. (Photograph for the Johnson Presidential Library by Yoichi Okamoto)

Crowd at Glassboro Summit

Wanting to meet at a site between New York and Washington and away from anti-Vietnam War protests, President Lyndon B. Johnson and Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin met at Hollybush Mansion on the campus of Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in Glassboro, New Jersey. The campus’s relatively rural location made it ideal. On June 23, 1967, a large crowd gathered outside Hollybush Mansion, the home of the university president. Rowan University trustee Thomas Gallia remembers an “optimistic” crowd “cheered and held signs like 'Welcome Kosygin' and 'Welcome Lyndon Johnson' and 'Welcome New Grandfather,' which referred to the fact that the president's daughter had just given birth.”

Then a small college of about 3,500 students, Rowan University in 2017 had become a research university with seven colleges, two medical schools, and a student body of 17,300. Hollybush Mansion, a source of pride on the campus, was designated a historic site in 1972. (Photograph for the Johnson Presidential Library by Yoichi Okamoto)

Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Drydock No. 3, League Island, c. 1968

This drydock at League Island was proposed in 1912 when it became obvious that Philadelphia's existing facilities could not accommodate the upcoming generation of battleships. Philadelphia’s Naval Shipyard had been in existence since 1801 and saw periods of boom and bust with each civil and international conflict in which the U.S. used naval forces. Sold to the United States government in 1868, League Island operated as a Naval Shipyard until 1996. At its peak in World War II, the shipyard employed more than fifty thousand workers.

During the Vietnam War, the Navy Yard entered its most active period of operations and highest level of employment since World War II. Nevertheless, postwar cuts were a constant fear and persistent reality. During the Cold War the Soviet Union and the United States avoided direct military conflict but battled against each other in a nuclear arms race for which Philadelphia’s military shipbuilding industry was not prepared. Without the ability to either build or modernize a nuclear navy, the Navy Yard gradually became an outdated and closed to military shipbuilding in 1996-97.

Related Topics

• Cradle of Liberty
• Greater Philadelphia
• Philadelphia and the World
• Philadelphia and the Nation

Time Periods

• Twentieth Century after 1945
• Center City Philadelphia
• Aeronautics and Aerospace Industry
• Civil Defense
• Civil Rights (African American)
• Freedom Train
• Helicopters
• Independence National Historical Park
• Koreans and Korea
• Liberty Bell
• Military Bases
• Nuclear Power
• Philadelphia Navy Yard
• Shipbuilding and Shipyards
• Vietnam War
• World War II
• Liberty Bell Classic

Related Reading

Dorwart, Jeffery M. The Philadelphia Navy Yard: From the Birth of the U.S. Navy to the Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Hornblum, Allen M. The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Jenkins, Philip. The Cold War at Home: The Red Scare in Pennsylvania, 1945-1960. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Lyons, Paul. Philadelphia Communists, 1936-1956. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.

Weigley, Russell F., editor. Philadelphia: A 300-Year History. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1982.

Related Collections

• Philadelphia Naval Shipyard Collection J. Welles Henderson Research Center, Independence Seaport Museum 211 S. Columbus Boulevard, Philadelphia.
• Collections Guide: Wars and Military Service Historical Society of Pennsylvania 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia.
• Pepper Hamilton LLP: Harry Gold File Records Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries 1900 N. Thirteenth Street, Philadelphia.

Related Places

Battleship New Jersey , 62 Battleship Place, Camden, N.J.

Hollybush, the Whitney Mansion at Rowan University , 501 Whitney Avenue, Glassboro, N.J.

Pennsylvania Veterans Museum , Media Armory, 12 E. State Street, Media, Pa.

Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Memorial , Spruce and Columbus Boulevard at Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia.

New Jersey Korean War Veterans Memorial , Boardwalk and Park Place, Atlantic City, N.J.

Backgrounders

Connecting Headlines with History

• 25 years after Berlin Wall's end, remembering a rough re-unification (WHYY, Nov. 24, 2014)
• Exhibition of Cold War art is relevant in today’s political climate (WHYY March 31, 2016)
• South Jersey college recalls being host to Cold War summit (WHYY, June 24, 2017)
• Sinews of Peace, 1946 (Winston Churchill Museum)
• The Berlin Wall: A Secret History (History Today)
• The Cold War (History.com)
• The Sixties: The House Un-American Activities Committee (PBS)
• About the Smith Act Trials
• Revisitng the 'Summit at Glassboro' (Cherry Hill Courier-Post)

National History Day Resources

• Thomas Nabried Center for Marxist-Leninist Education (Yale University Libraries)
• FBI Arrests Six Pennsylvania Red Leaders (Chicago Tribune Archives)
• The Atomic Archive
• Barrows Dunham Manuscripts (Princeton University Library)
• he Chance for Peace, speech by Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16th 1953 (Explore PA History)
• Let Freedom Ring, November 1953 - Smith Acts Hit Philadelphia (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)
• United States of America v. Joseph Kuzma, Joseph Roberts, Benjamin Weiss, David Davis, Thomas Nabried, Irvin Katz, Walter Lowenfels, Sherman Marion Labovitz, Robert Klonsky, Appellants, 249 F.2d 619 (3d Cir. 1957)

Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy

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World History Project - Origins to the Present

Course: world history project - origins to the present   >   unit 7.

• READ: Devastation of Old Markets
• READ: Connecting Decolonization and the Cold War
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War
• WATCH: USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War

READ: Cold War — An Overview

• READ: The Cold War Around the World
• READ: And Then Gandhi Came — Nationalism, Revolution, and Sovereignty
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant
• WATCH: Decolonization and Nationalism Triumphant
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Chinese Communist Revolution
• WATCH: Chinese Communist Revolution
• BEFORE YOU WATCH: Conflict in Israel and Palestine
• WATCH: Conflict in Israel and Palestine
• READ: Decolonizing Women
• End of Empires and Cold War

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Second read: key ideas and understanding content.

• According to the author, what was the basic difference at the heart of the Cold War conflict?
• What does this author identify as the three main features of the Cold War?
• Why did Stalin want to expand Soviet influence in Eastern Europe?
• What was the policy of containment and what conflicts does the author use as an example of this policy?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

• The Cold War was a conflict that was all about methods of production and distribution that divided communities across the world along communist and capitalist lines. How would you describe the Cold War through each course frame?

Cold War: An Overview

What was the cold war, a divided europe, the cold war heats up around the world, the end of the cold war, want to join the conversation.

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Essay on the Cold War: it’s Origin, Causes and Phases

After the Second World War, the USA and USSR became two Super Powers. One nation tried to reduce the power of other. Indirectly the competition between the Super Powers led to the Cold War.

Then America took the leadership of all the Capitalist Countries.

Soviet Russia took the leadership of all the Communist Countries. As a result of which both stood as rivals to each other.

Definition of the Cold War:

ADVERTISEMENTS:

In the graphic language of Hartman, “Cold War is a state of tension between countries in which each side adopts policies designed to strengthen it and weaken the other by falling short by actual war”.

Image Source: i.ytimg.com/vi/y9HjvHZfCUI/maxresdefault.jpg

Infact, Cold War is a kind of verbal war which is fought through newspapers, magazines, radio and other propaganda methods. It is a propaganda to which a great power resorts against the other power. It is a sort of diplomatic war.

Origin of Cold War:

There is no unanimity amongst scholars regarding the origin of the Cold War In 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia, Roosevelt the President of USA sent armaments to Russia. It is only because the relationship between Roosevelt and Stalin was very good. But after the defeat of Germany, when Stalin wanted to implement Communist ideology in Poland, Hungery, Bulgaria and Rumania, at that time England and America suspected Stalin.

Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England in his ‘Fulton Speech’ on 5 March 1946 said that Soviet Russia was covered by an Iron Curtain. It led Stalin to think deeply. As a result of which suspicion became wider between Soviet Russia and western countries and thus the Cold War took birth.

Causes of the Cold War:

Various causes are responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War. At first, the difference between Soviet Russia and USA led to the Cold War. The United States of America could not tolerate the Communist ideology of Soviet Russia. On the other hand, Russia could not accept the dominance of United States of America upon the other European Countries.

Secondly, the Race of Armament between the two super powers served another cause for the Cold War. After the Second World War, Soviet Russia had increased its military strength which was a threat to the Western Countries. So America started to manufacture the Atom bomb, Hydrogen bomb and other deadly weapons. The other European Countries also participated in this race. So, the whole world was divided into two power blocs and paved the way for the Cold War.

Thirdly, the Ideological Difference was another cause for the Cold War. When Soviet Russia spread Communism, at that time America propagated Capitalism. This propaganda ultimately accelerated the Cold War.

Fourthly, Russian Declaration made another cause for the Cold War. Soviet Russia highlighted Communism in mass-media and encouraged the labour revolution. On the other hand, America helped the Capitalists against the Communism. So it helped to the growth of Cold War.

Fifthly, the Nuclear Programme of America was responsible for another cause for the Cold War. After the bombardment of America on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Soviet Russia got afraid for her existence. So, it also followed the same path to combat America. This led to the growth of Cold War.

Lastly, the Enforcement of Veto by Soviet Russia against the western countries made them to hate Russia. When the western countries put forth any view in the Security Council of the UNO, Soviet Russia immediately opposed it through veto. So western countries became annoyed in Soviet Russia which gave birth to the Cold War.

Various Phases of the Cold War:

The Cold War did not occur in a day. It passed through several phases.

First Phase (1946-1949 ):

In this phase America and Soviet Russia disbelieved each other. America always tried to control the Red Regime in Russia. Without any hesitation Soviet Russia established Communism by destroying democracy in the Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungery, Yugoslavia and other Eastern European Countries.

In order to reduce Russia’s hegemony, America helped Greece and Turkey by following Truman Doctrine which came into force on 12 March 1947. According to Marshall Plan which was declared on 5 June, 1947 America gave financial assistance to Western European Countries.

In this phase, non withdrawal of army from Iran by Soviet Russia, Berlin blaockade etc. made the cold was more furious. After the formation of NATO in 1949, the Cold War took a halt.

Second Phase (1949-1953 ):

In this phase a treaty was signed between Australia, New Zeland and America in September, 1957 which was known as ANZUS. America also signed a treaty with Japan on 8 September, 1951. At that time by taking armaments from Russia and army from China, North Korea declared war against South Korea.

Then with the help of UNO, America sent military aid to South Korea. However, both North Korea and South Korea signed peace treaty in 1953 and ended the war. In order to reduce the impact of Soviet Communism, America spent a huge amount of dollar in propaganda against Communism. On the other hand, Soviet Russia tried to be equal with America by testing atom bomb.

Third Phase (1953-1957):

Now United States of America formed SEATO in 1954 in order to reduce Soviet Russia’s influence. In 1955 America formed MEDO in Middle East. Within a short span of time, America gave military assistance to 43 countries and formed 3300 military bases around Soviet Russia. At that time, the Vietnamese War started on 1955.

To reduce the American Power, Russia signed WARSAW PACT in 1955. Russia also signed a defence pact with 12 Countries. Germany was divided into Federal Republic of Germany which was under the American control where as German Democratic Republic was under Soviet Russia. In 1957 Soviet Russia included Sphutnick in her defence programme.

In 1953 Stalin died and Khrushchev became the President of Russia. In 1956 an agreement was signed between America and Russia regarding the Suez Crisis. America agreed not to help her allies like England and France. In fact West Asia was saved from a great danger.

Fourth Phase (1957-1962):

In 1959 the Russian President Khrushchev went on a historical tour to America. Both the countries were annoyed for U-2 accident and for Berlin Crisis. In 13 August 1961, Soviet Russia made a Berlin Wall of 25 Kilometres in order to check the immigration from eastern Berlin to Western Berlin. In 1962, Cuba’s Missile Crisis contributed a lot to the cold war.

This incident created an atmosphere of conversation between American President Kenedy and Russian President Khrushchev. America assured Russia that she would not attack Cuba and Russia also withdrew missile station from Cuba.

Fifth Phase (1962-1969 ):

The Fifth Phase which began from 1962 also marked a mutual suspicion between USA and USSR. There was a worldwide concern demanding ban on nuclear weapons. In this period Hot Line was established between the White House and Kremlin. This compelled both the parties to refrain from nuclear war. Inspite of that the Vietnam problem and the Problem in Germany kept Cold War between USA and USSR in fact.

Sixth Phase (1969-1978 ):

This phase commencing from 1969 was marked by DETENTE between USA and USSR- the American President Nixon and Russian President Brezhnev played a vital role for putting an end to the Cold War. The SALT of 1972, the summit Conference on Security’ of 1975 in Helsinki and Belgrade Conference of 1978 brought America and Russia closer.

In 1971, American Foreign Secretary Henry Kissinger paid a secret visit to China to explore the possibilities of reapproachment with China. The American move to convert Diego Garcia into a military base was primarily designed to check the Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean. During the Bangladesh crisis of 1971 and the Egypt-Israel War of 1973 the two super powers extended support to the opposite sides.

Last Phase (1979-1987 ):

In this phase certain changes were noticed in the Cold War. That is why historians call this phase as New Cold War. In 1979, the American President Carter and Russian President Brezhnev signed SALT II. But in 1979 the prospects of mitigating Cold War were marred by sudden development in Afghanistan.

Vietnam (1975), Angola (1976), Ethiopia (1972) and Afghanistan (1979) issues brought success to Russia which was unbearable for America. American President Carter’s Human Rights and Open Diplomacy were criticised by Russia. The SALT II was not ratified by the US Senate. In 1980 America boycotted the Olympic held at Moscow.

In 1983, Russia withdrew from a talk on missile with America. In 1984 Russia boycotted the Olympic game held at Los-Angeles. The Star War of the American President Ronald Regan annoyed Russia. In this way the ‘New Cold War’ between America and Russia continued till 1987.

Result of the Cold War:

The Cold War had far-reaching implications in the international affairs. At first, it gave rise to a fear psychosis which resulted in a mad race for the manufacture of more sophisticated armaments. Various alliances like NATO, SEATO, WARSAW PACT, CENTO, ANZUS etc. were formed only to increase world tension.

Secondly, Cold War rendered the UNO ineffective because both super powers tried to oppose the actions proposed by the opponent. The Korean Crisis, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War etc. were the bright examples in this direction.

Thirdly, due to the Cold War, a Third World was created. A large number of nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America decided to keep away from the military alliances of the two super powers. They liked to remain neutral. So, Non-Alignments Movement became the direct outcome of the Cold War.

Fourthly, Cold War was designed against mankind. The unnecessary expenditure in the armament production created a barrier against the progress of the world and adversely affected a country and prevented improvement in the living standards of the people.

Fifthly, the principle ‘Whole World as a Family’, was shattered on the rock of frustration due to the Cold War. It divided the world into two groups which was not a healthy sign for mankind.

Sixthly, The Cold War created an atmosphere of disbelief among the countries. They questioned among themselves how unsafe were they under Russia or America.

Finally, The Cold War disturbed the World Peace. The alliances and counter-alliances created a disturbing atmosphere. It was a curse for the world. Though Russia and America, being super powers, came forward to solve the international crisis, yet they could not be able to establish a perpetual peace in the world.

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The Cold War: US Foreign Policy Essay

Introduction, works cited.

One critical question that bogs the minds of most people when talking about the Cold War is the concern of securing the national interests of the United States. A substantial number of people argue that the Cold War, which lasted for four decades, was a contest of ideologies whereby the United States sought to spread its national interests across the globe. The development of the war had implications on the political and cultural standing of the United States.

The Cold War was an ideological war in which the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a war whereby each country sought to propagate its policies through the pursuance of different courses in different parts of the world. In this paper, it is argued that the nature of policy goals that were pursued in the Cold War period had implications on the political and cultural setup of the United States.

This paper discusses the Cold War. The paper seeks to explore issues surrounding the US foreign policy in the course of the war, as well as the implications of the war on the United States’ society and culture.

The Cold War marked a period in the world history after the Second World War. The two main countries that battled in the war are the United States and the Soviet Union. This war was not an actual physical battle between the two countries, but it entailed the utilization of foreign policy by both countries to advance national ideologies.

However, proxy wars were fought as the two countries applied their containment strategies in proxy nations in different regions of the world. The United States embraced the ideology of capitalism, while the Soviet Union embraced communism. At the end of the Second World War, the United States insisted on the pursuance of a course that was meant to see the world pursue self-determination and the continuity of free trade.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union focused on molding its influence on Eastern Europe and the restructuring of its economy to gain power and influence in the region and the world at large. The most critical question that rings in the mind of most people concerns the possibilities of avoiding the Cold War at that time, given the political status of the world during the post-World War II.

Most of the commentators argue that the war could not have been easily avoided, given that a political vacuum prevailed in the world after the Second World War. The United States and the Soviet Union, which were the two main powers in the bipolar world order, engaged in a battle that resulted in a unipolar state, with the United States becoming the key dominant power in the world.

According to Kennan (para. 4), one main thing in the Cold War was the application of containment strategies that were embedded in the foreign policy activities. The foreign policy of the United States, just after the end of the Second World War, was shifted to containing the Soviet Union. What ought to be asked is whether the containment strategy of the US was welcome by the citizens of the country.

The other question concerns the impact of the pursuance of the containment strategy by the United States during the Cold War on the American society. Several documents have been authored on the historical developments in the post-World War II period, which marked the period of the Cold War. Most of the documents point to the political discourse in the Cold War period. The Cold War was a political development, thus it is quite difficult to eliminate the question of political discourse when talking about the Cold War.

Arguing from the perspective of the world wars, the distribution of power was one of the main issues that shaped the developments at the international stage during the world wars. The cold war was, therefore, an extension of power politics in the international arena; only that this point in time, the power struggle shifted to two states in the world (Truman para. 1).

According to “NSC 68 and the Ideological Cold War” (591), both the United States and the Soviet Union, which were the main powers that presented a hegemonic state in the international arena, were involved in the pursuance of different policies that were aimed at consolidating power. The United States under its leaders presented issues in the foreign countries in the manner that presented the attention of its citizens and the search for support in implementing the foreign policies of the country.

An example that can be given here is the presentation of the situation in Greek by Harry Truman, the then US President. Truman argued that the situation that prevailed in Greece had implications on the national security of the United States as he addressed the US Congress. The address pointed out that the Greek government was being negatively affected by the communistic advancements, a situation that warranted the support of the United States (Truman para. 1-5).

According to Lippmann (para. 1), the policy of containment used during the Cold War period called for the use of different tactics by the players in the war. The United States was, therefore, forced to be strategic in terms of crafting and implementing its foreign policy to match the strategies of the Soviet Union.

There was an expansive pressure on the United States, which resulted from the policies of the Soviet Union. The main way through which the United States would respond to the pressure was, therefore, through the deployment of diplomatic tactics in containing the Soviet Union’s influence in the world. Foreign policies were vital in the planning and implementation of containment strategies since it authorized the actions of the US government.

This has shaped the culture of the United States in such a way that policies are often subjected to the public. The United States is highly organized based on the principles of participation and democracy. The question of policy support in the United States also came out during the Cold War in which the US was quite active in terms of the search for policy support locally.

The other aspect of culture and society in the United States as was depicted by the Cold War revolves around the question of freedom in terms of policy making and participation. Capitalism, which is an ideology that was fully backed by the United States, entails the embrace of diversities of people in diverse sectors.

The free trade of ideas is, therefore, one of the most critical components of a free market of ideas. While this ought to be the nature of the American society, there are still a lot of pointers to the embrace of absolutism in the country. A free society ought to give each individual a chance to exercise and pursue his or her goals, which is contrary to what the United States policy entailed during the Cold War (“NSC 68 and the Ideological Cold War” para 2-5).

The civil rights movement that was experienced in the United States in the course of the Cold War can be taken as one of the indicators of the lack of embrace of free ideas and the value of every individual course, which are core features of capitalism. The differences in terms of race came out strongly during the Cold War. While the United States struggled a lot to contain the actions of the Russians through policy, it did less in pursuing a domestic policy to contain racial segregation within the country.

The United States government concentrated a lot on the pursuance of foreign policy, rather than addressing the issue of civil rights in the country. The American society can be depicted as an expansionist society due to a lot of focus on foreign policy at the expense of addressing the domestic issues (President’s Commission on Civil Rights para. 1-4).

According to McCarthy (para. 2), the pacification of the world seemed to be the main Agenda of the United States. This was depicted by its efforts to see the establishment of the United Nations during the Second World War. However, the actions of hatred and the support of proxy battles was an order of the Cold War, which made it impossible to attain the goals of peaceful existence of people in the world.

This paper has explored the Cold War and how the domestic and foreign policy of the United States was shaped during the war. From the discussion, it has come out that the foreign policy goals of the United States during the early periods of the war were largely centered on containing Russia. This barred the US from pursuing domestic policies that were critical in addressing domestic issues.

Kennan, George, F. The Sources of Soviet Conduct , 1947. Web.

McCarthy, Joseph. Enemies from Within , 1950. Web. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456/

NSC 68 and the Ideological Cold War , 1950.

President’s Commission on Civil Rights. To Secure These Rights , 1947.

Truman, Harry S. Excerpts from the Truman Doctrine , 1947.

Walter Lippmann. A Critique of Containment , 1947.

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How East Germany lost the battle for technology

• May 9, 2024

Katja Hoyer

• Themes: Cold War, History, Technology

East Germany’s quest to catch up with the technological innovations of the West prompted some remarkable successes, but also expanded the oppression of its mass surveillance apparatus.

In July 1958, Walter Ulbricht, the first secretary of East Germany’s ruling party, was feeling optimistic. The 65-year-old dictator had survived two world wars, the Nazi regime, Stalin’s murderous purges and a mass uprising against his regime in East Germany in 1953. Things now appeared to be settling. Granted, well over 100,000 of his people had left the German Democratic Republic (GDR) every year since the state was founded; in the crisis year of 1953 the figures had risen above 300,000. The easing of restrictions and improvements in living conditions had led to a record low in 1958.

The leader of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) took the opportunity of its Fifth Congress to share his optimism with his comrades. Inspired by the motto of the event, ‘Socialism Will Win!’, he declared that he intended to develop the economy ‘within just a few years so that it proves once and for all the superiority of the socialist system of the GDR as compared to the imperialist forces of the Bonn state [West Germany]’.

In hindsight, that sounds at best a bold claim and, at worst, delusional. By the GDR authorities’ own admission, the small state’s economy lagged around 30 per cent behind that of its much bigger and more prosperous Western counterpart. It had paid the lion’s share of war reparations as the Soviet Union continued to take what it needed to nurse its own ravaged economy back to life while the Western allies held back, allowing Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to rebuild and rearm, supporting him in the process with $1.5 billion from the Marshall Plan.

In addition, the East German economy was strangled by a lack of trading opportunities caused by Bonn’s policy of isolation. West Germany’s Hallstein Doctrine , introduced in 1955, postulated that it would not establish diplomatic and economic relations with any country which chose to recognise the GDR as a sovereign state. Given the size of the West German economy compared to the East, few countries dared to pay the economic price for snubbing Bonn’s express wish. A trade embargo in anything but name, it forced the GDR into economic and diplomatic isolation and complete reliance on Soviet goodwill for imports and exports. The Hallstein Doctrine would not be lifted until 1970. The result was that products such as coffee, soap or chocolate, and anything else that needed to be imported, were hard to come by.

Such troubles notwithstanding, Ulbricht was by no means the only one to feel optimistic in 1958. The last ration coupons were on their way out and would completely disappear the following year. The hard work many people had invested in removing the rubble from cities such as Dresden, Magdeburg and Rostock was beginning to clear the way for a slow but visible rebuilding process. And it was the Soviets who had shot the first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1) into space in 1957, causing shock in the West and astonishment in the East.

If the economically weaker Soviet Union could push ahead of the prosperous United States in the space age, then perhaps East Germany could overtake West Germany, too? This thought process was quickly turned into a propaganda slogan and one of the GDR’s early mantras: ‘Overtaking Without Catching Up’.

So how could the GDR’s isolated economy work? For all his faults, Walter Ulbricht understood that the answer wasn’t to create a bigger economy but a better one. In other words: technology would be key. Or, as Ulbricht put it: ‘We have little plaster, so we’ll have to think faster.’

And so, the socialist state invested enormous resources in innovation, data processing and microelectronics. In some areas there were remarkable, if punctuated, successes. Take the Trabant , perhaps East Germany’s most emblematic product. In the West, the drab, outdated car symbolised the technological underachievement of the GDR as a whole. Its undersized engine produced only 23 bhp, while the smell and sound of its output were distinctly reminiscent of decades gone by, when models that were practically unchanged since 1963 rolled across the open inner-German border in 1989.

By the 1980s, the Trabant had indeed become the dated and underpowered relic that the West so ridiculed. In the early 1960s, however, it helped to support Ulbricht’s rebranding of the GDR economy and get the public on board. A special new edition had been developed for the Sixth Congress of the SED in 1963: the ‘Sachsenring Trabant 601’. Built in Zwickau, Saxony, it bore resemblance to the British Triumph Herald, following the same design techniques, which were indeed modern and considered fashionable at the time.

The zeitgeist spoke of technological progress. Many films, including those produced in East Germany, featured futuristic themes of technology and space exploration, which fascinated young people especially. With Yuri Gagarin, the Soviets had sent the first man into space in 1961, and, in 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman, orbiting the earth 48 times in her three-day solo tour. When the pair visited the GDR in October 1963, many people were genuinely excited to see the newly-famous cosmonauts.

Ulbricht’s economic reforms were designed to match and encourage this spirit of technological optimism. The ‘New Economic System’ (NES) was introduced in 1963, which introduced some market-like conditions back into the socialist economy. Even the West German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung speculated that the GDR might be ‘returning to a form of capitalism’. The politburo decided that the ‘theory of the prevalence of politics over economics’ must come to an end – ‘economic tasks will have priority’.

For a time, state intervention and investment focused on technological progress, not just political control. More responsibility and freedom over development and production methods were handed back to the country’s highly specialised companies with their long and proud traditions of research. They should get a comparatively free hand to do what they do best: develop world-class technology.

For example, Carl Zeiss Jena, a company which to this day produces lenses and other high-precision engineering in the field of optics, complained in January 1962 that the demands placed on it by centralised economic planning were stopping it from ‘concentrating on the development of the data processing technology needed for the completion of Zeiss’s own measuring devices’. That began to change. Ulbricht’s NES enlisted experts such as Erich Apel, one of the rocket engineers who had worked on Nazi military projects in Peenemünde during the Second World War. Accordingly, East Germany’s GDP and productivity rose. Even the West German Cologne Centre of Historical Social Science reckoned that the GDR was beginning to catch up.

In a planned economy, however, innovative zeal is dependent on political whim. Ulbricht was getting old in the late 1960s, his dream of a technology-based economy was interpreted by many of his comrades as the fantasies of an old man in search of a legacy to build. There was to be no more such supposedly futuristic nonsense for the 1971-75 plan.

Ulbricht’s successor, Erich Honecker, wanted initially to tighten relations with Moscow; this also meant not pressing ahead with the single-handed development of new technology in the GDR. Much later, one of the GDR’s key economic policy-makers, Günter Mittag, commented bitterly that, when it came to a push in technological development, ‘we still laboured under the illusion that it was possible for the GDR to do this in close cooperation with the Soviet Union’.

With the Soviet Union jealously guarding its own research and development while denying the GDR many of the resources it needed to continue with its own, Honecker eventually began to look to non-socialist countries for partnership and inspiration in the technological sector. There was one natural candidate: Japan. Throughout the 1970s, the two countries began to collaborate and trade chemicals, metals and electrical engineering. The last had been of particular interest, given that the GDR needed desirable new electronic devices of the kind that were becoming increasingly affordable and widespread in the West, such as radios, TVs and stereos.

In May 1981, Erich Honecker travelled to Japan on a full state visit, during which the two countries concluded trade deals totalling $440 million. The general secretary was also deeply impressed by Japanese work culture and marvelled at the automation processes that used robots to make high-end products.

The more the GDR managed to fulfil the desires of the population, however, the more they demanded. By 1980, there were 105 television sets per 100 households, which also meant that more and more people were exposed to Western culture, including advertising.

Karl Nendel, state secretary of the Ministry for Electrical Engineering and Electronics, found it impossible to keep up the pace. He asked VEB Electronic Components in the city of Gera to produce an affordable cassette recorder, a task that the company found challenging. Nendel, frustrated with the lack of results, summoned the director of the state-owned works and snapped: ‘You must understand that it is politically necessary to finally have our own recorders!’ It was too much for the director, who now clutched his chest. He had suffered a heart attack.

In the end, the decision was made to import entire production lines. A deal was struck with Toshiba, for instance. The Japanese industrial giant already had a footing in the GDR, where it was helping to establish factories for the production of colour TV sets in Berlin and Ilmenau, with imports to the tune of 850 million West German marks. On 13 May 1982 it added a factory for audio technology, with the capacity to produce 750,000 cassette recorders and 30,000 hi-fi cassette decks. VEB Stern Radio Berlin, the state-owned radio production company, used Japanese systems and parts imported from the US.

Herbert Roloff, general director of International Trade for the Import of Industrial Technology from 1980, remembered that the success of this huge undertaking was limited: ‘Yes, we managed to put new types of entertainment electronics and household appliances on the market. Instead of one model, there were two or three. But on the shelves in the West – and that includes our Intershops [which sold Western goods for Western currency] – there were 20 models.’ Focusing on microelectronics and rationalisation wasn’t enough to heal the GDR’s festering economic wounds, even if some in the politburo never stopped believing it would.

By 1989, Honecker was severely ill and frail, but the illusory belief that technology could fix everything remained. The dictator made a rare public appearance, visiting the VEB Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt, where he was shown the prototype of a 32-bit processor. He seemed entirely detached from the protests that were now underway and would soon help bring down his regime. Enamoured with the technology he had just been shown, he proclaimed: ‘Neither ox nor ass can stop socialism in its path.’

The unshakable belief that technology would make socialism victorious had been the problem all along. Yes, the GDR did manage to make remarkable technological advances given its size and the difficulties it faced, but such successes were all state-driven and, therefore, dependent on ideology.

For almost all of its existence, between 1949 and 1990, the GDR saw the technological battle as ‘a question of survival’ and ‘an intrinsic component of the entire system of economic warfare’. Money for technology was therefore not always spent on useful or economically viable projects. Indeed, a lot of it was funnelled into the coffers of the Ministry of State Security, better known as the Stasi .

Controlling and pedantic, its boss, Erich Mielke, demanded to ‘know everything’. He established a firm grip over the members of the politburo themselves in order to get vast amounts of public funds for projects that stemmed from his own paranoia. A thoroughly ruthless man, this Moscow-trained terrorist was allocated huge amounts of money to follow his pathological instincts to monitor and control.

The Stasi concentrated much of its efforts on what it called the OTS, its Operative-Technological Sector. This oversaw the development of highly specialised surveillance technology, such as separate camera systems for people, buildings and documents. Some of its equipment consisted of ordinary civilian technology imported from the West, such as Polaroid cameras, which were used during covert house searches to ensure items were placed back exactly where they had been.

Other areas of development produced elaborate technology that wouldn’t be out of place in a James Bond film. There were tiny cameras disguised as lipsticks that activated when they were opened, so that a planted secretary might film documents on her desk. Hidden infra-red cameras could photograph through special leather briefcases.

Mass surveillance and data processing were also very important to the most effective state surveillance system that ever existed. The so-called Central Control System. or Ceko, became operational in 1973 at the cost of 150 million marks – the equivalent to the annual pay of around 10,000 engineers. This allowed the Stasi to tune in to 4,000 telephone conversations at the same time – in addition to local and mobile stations, for example in important factories. The Stasi even eavesdropped on its own employees, such as in the Cottbus branch where 20 control units had been installed.

The recording and processing of these conversations were labour-intensive and happened at district level. The conversations were recorded on cassettes and stored for around two weeks, depending on how important they were deemed to be. The cassettes were then blanked and reused. If what was on them was of long-term interest, they were transcribed by typists.

Given the limitations of the East German economy, the elaborate expenditure on technology that was used to suppress opposition and monitor the everyday lives of citizens highlights the fundamental issue: overall state control stifled innovation, made bad use of the significant human resources available, and sought to repurpose much of what it gained for political ends.

The successes of the GDR compared with other states within the communist bloc show that it achieved a lot within the limitations it had. There was a lot of potential. With its focus on hard sciences, and the possibility for targeted investment of vast sums of state money into specific areas for specific purposes, it might have worked miracles.

It is exactly that ‘purposeful’ investment, however, that stands in the way of fruitful tangents. The same ideological zeal that leads individuals or states to invest eye-watering sums in specific sectors of development, often those that seem remote, futuristic and utopian, also inevitably tempts them into misusing technological development for political purposes.

East Germany’s impossible struggle to catch up with the West and eventually overtake it in the technological field was motivated by more than sheer economic necessity or vanity. The technological battle was no less than a question of survival, prompting targeted investment and strategic planning, which often led to remarkable successes. At the same time, it also surrendered much of the control over it to a security apparatus unique in world history for its compulsive mass surveillance.

There are clear parallels to countries such as China and Russia today, where technology is highly political and entire sectors are controlled, supported, dropped or invested in according to the aims of the regime. East Germany’s obsession with technology poses even broader questions about the implications of state intervention globally in the sector – with outcomes that span from the good to the bad and the ugly.

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[Guest essay] Preventing Korean Peninsula from becoming front line of new cold war

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By Lee Sok-bae, former South Korean ambassador to Russia

After nearly half a year of waiting, a budget plan for US$61 billion in military aid to Ukraine was passed by the US Congress. The assistance appears likely to be forthcoming shortly.

While this may help the Ukrainian military in holding out longer as it finds itself having to defend against a series of attacks by Russian forces, the prevailing analysis is that this solution alone is not going to turn the tide of the conflict.

Despite Russia’s recent advances, neither side in the war has been able to achieve a breakthrough victory. It’s a situation where no potential for negotiation has yet been visible.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears certain to choose a continuation of the conflict over negotiation as long as the West keeps providing military assistance to throw cold water on Russia’s optimism about its prospects in a long-term war.

Another element complicating the negotiations is the inability of the US and NATO to be proactive about guaranteeing the security of Ukraine, which faces constant border concerns due to its discord with Russia. The position of the two sides’ leaders, who cannot afford to make any concessions on territorial matters without risking political suicide, is another factor suggesting the war will continue to drag out.

It appears likely that South Korea-Russia relations will remain rocky as long as the war in Ukraine goes on. Trying to manage ties with Moscow while also coordinating with the US and NATO has about the same degree of difficulty as trying to thread a needle in a car driving on a cobblestone road.

In addition to its diplomatic achievements in terms of beefing up the extended deterrence-centered alliance with the US and trilateral coordination with the US and Japan, the Yoon Suk-yeol administration has clearly established South Korea as a prominent, responsible member of the forces of liberal democracy, as seen with his active participation in the NATO Asia-Pacific partners framework, alongside Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

But the reality of South Korean diplomacy is such that one cannot help recalling the observation of onetime US Secretary of State James Baker, who said that all diplomatic achievements carry with them the seeds of future problems.

It appears undeniable that the current military closeness between Russia and North Korea has been motivated by Moscow’s difficult situation and its urgent need for weapons support from Pyongyang.

Yet there is another aspect to this military cooperation. With its leading roles in frameworks like AUKUS (a military alliance of the US, the UK and Australia), the Quad (the US, Japan, India and Australia), and NATO and its partners in the Pacific, the US is perceived by Russia to be working to establish a new security bloc in the Asia-Pacific region. Russia sees cooperation with North Korea as a way of countering the US’ strategy of expansion.

Meanwhile, the US-Japan summit in April clearly showed the evolution that is taking place with US alliance structures in the Indo-Pacific region. South Korea will inevitably find itself part of that process, which is likely to carry greater US expectations and demands for it to play a role.

With Seoul having to contend with the reality of Pyongyang remaining our No. 1 security threat, as well as concerns about coordination between North Korea, China and Russia, it will become increasingly difficult to follow the demands that emerge from the alliance with the US.

Amid the ongoing heated antagonisms between South and North Korea, the US’ efforts to reorganize its alliance structures and Russia’s harsh response to them have raised concerns over the possibility of a new Indo-Pacific cold war boundary being drawn on the peninsula.

Following NATO’s eastward expansion with Germany’s reunification in 1990, Europe’s boundary shifted from the German border to those of Poland and Ukraine. It’s no coincidence that Ukraine — which is located on the boundary between NATO and Russia — is experiencing such a grim situation.

This is also the reason that South Korea needs to be judicious about handling its relationship with Russia even as it strengthens its alliance with the US and its coordination with the US and Japan.

Within South Korea, there has been a growing hard-line attitude toward Russia amid its closeness with North Korea, and particularly in the wake of its move last March to veto a resolution that would have extended the term of a panel of experts under the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea. Some have even argued that Seoul no longer has any cause for hesitating to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons.

This inflammatory stance on Russia could be seen as a natural outcome of the perception that in spite of the considerable commitment that South Korea has shown to managing relations with Russia — for example, by adhering to its position of not providing Ukraine with lethal weapons even under pressure from the US, NATO and other Western powers — Russia has not responded favorably and is instead continuing to test South Korea’s patience.

Seoul’s reasons for providing lethal weapons to Ukraine, or for hinting to Russia that it intends to, would be to induce a change in Russia’s behavior. But the expectation that a hard line would lead Moscow to alter its approach is not just unrealistic — it is downright dangerous.

If South Korea does adopt a harder line, Russia’s response will not be to change, but to defy it in very aggressive ways. We should not rush to play the “hard line” card when our diplomatic options have not yet been exhausted.

In the absence of effective measures for managing ties with Russia, a solution may be found in Washington rather than Moscow. There may be a textural difference between how the US views its global strategy and the density of tensions we experience on the Korean Peninsula.

We need to get the US to understand more clearly our urgent security situation, where we could easily end up lost amid its global strategy, and we need to clarify exactly what we can and cannot do. Whatever latitude we gain in the process will be our diplomatic room for maneuvering when it comes to managing our relationship with Russia.

South Korea is in a tough situation where it has to factorize a very complex diplomatic equation. Leo von Caprivi, the chancellor of the German Empire, admitted to lacking Otto von Bismarck’s ability to “juggle five balls at once.” He ended up leading Germany into the calamity of the First World War.

I look forward to seeing South Korea’s foreign affairs officials show some advanced diplomatic acumen.

Please direct questions or comments to [ [email protected] ]

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