Origins of the Cold War

Hi Dr. Kuts.

Hello David. How you doing?

I'm doing well. I am excited to learn about this thing we call the Cold War.

What is a Cold War, and what makes it different than a hot war?

So a Cold War, and in this case, is it's really, um, it might be a term that we could debate. It is a war where the two major combatants never actually fire bullets at each other or drop bombs on each other.

So never in the course of the Cold War did the US ever meet ground troops with the USSR, but people still died in combat, right?

Okay, so the Cold Wars are kind of fought through proxy wars, and these are wars that are taking place in other nations, developing nations of the world, where the US is supporting one side, generally the pro-capitalist side, and the Soviet Union is supporting the other side, a communist side.

So this is the case in the Korean War in the 1950s and then definitely the case in the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

So the US and the USSR aren't fighting directly, but they're kind of betting on boxing matches, betting on different fighters in the same boxing match.

Yeah, but they're not just betting; they're also putting money and arms where their mouth is. So, you know, if they're two different fighters in the ring, you know, the US is giving the capitalist fighter... he's feeding him. So you've got the capitalist fighter in one corner, and you know, he's sweaty and he's beaten, but the US is behind him with, like, a towel and one of those, like, a water bucket splashing water in his face like, "Get in there, Sparky! Get in there!"

Right, and if necessary, you know, uh, you know, tying up his boxing glove, maybe giving him a new pair of shoes, um, and you know, doing whatever they can, paying his rent, right? Doing everything that they can, buying him meals, probably.

Right, that's the Marshall Plan.

Exactly.

Okay, so tell me, tell me about these two combatants in this.

In this corner, wearing a suit, is Harry Truman. He is the president of the United States, starting in 1945. He was vice president to Franklin Roosevelt, who had been the US's president since 1932 and who tragically died in 1945.

So Truman is really in charge of ending World War II for the United States and also kind of setting a post-war plan. So he prosecutes the end of the war; he makes the decision to drop the atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and he ends the war in both theaters.

Right, okay, and in the other corner, wearing a very fine mustache, is Joseph Stalin, and he's the Soviet Premier. He's been in charge since the 1920s, and for him, I would say the most important thing that Stalin wanted after World War II was security, shall we say.

Um, so if you remember your history, in World War I, Germany invaded Russia. In World War II, Germany invaded Russia.

Oh, I'm seeing a pattern.

And if there's anything that Stalin wants in the post-1945 era, it is not to be invaded by Germany anymore.

Sure.

So, he is very anxious to make sure that the world is safe for communism. Um, he thinks that the best way to make sure that Russians can continue the, um, the experiment and the revolution of Communism is to have a buffer zone, shall we say, between Russia and the rest of Europe.

Okay, and he does that by kind of shoring up some puppet governments in what we now call the Eastern Bloc. These, uh, these nations that had been taken over by Hitler and then, when the Soviet Union joined the war on the side of the Allies, then were retaken over by Russia as they fought Hitler back.

So a lot of those Central European countries like Hungary and Lithuania, the former Czechoslovakia, former Yugoslavia, and he has the advantage of having boots on the ground there, right, because he'd beaten back Hitler's invasion eventually.

Right, Russian troops were fighting against Hitler, and American troops who are fighting against Hitler, uh, you know, they meet in Berlin at the fall of Hitler and kind of shake hands in Berlin, but the advantage that Russia has is they've got a lot more people here. They got, uh, you know, most of Europe, now at least, uh, east of Berlin has Soviet troops on the ground.

Sure.

So, can you, had been telling me that the Soviet Union did Yen's work in containing and basically prosecuting the entire Eastern Front during World War II?

Yeah, and you know, the Soviet Union actually lost 20 million people.

My God!

During World War II. That's, I mean, just a ludicrous number. Um, they lost more than anyone except for China and Germany, so I feel like they have... they feel like they have a real stake in the outcome of World War II.

So at the end of this, what is, what is the situation in the USSR like? They've conquered all of this territory, but are they strong enough economically to hold all of it and feed everyone?

No, not really. Um, in fact, most of Europe is in pretty dire straits. If you think about it, all of World War II was really kind of fought right in the European breadbasket, and so there is serious economic trouble, uh, in the aftermath of World War II.

Um, you know, people don't have enough to eat; they certainly don't have any cash, and they don't have any fuel, which is very worrisome in 1946 because that's a terrible winter.

So people are cold and they are hungry, and, uh, when people are cold and hungry, there is a lot of fuel for a possible revolution, sure, right?

Uh, you even in the 1930s, right, in the United States, there's a lot of different political ideas that come up during the Great Depression because when your political system isn't working well, you consider other kinds of political systems.

So the United States is worried that because of the cold winter of 1946 and scarcity across Western Europe, this blue part of the map is going to turn much redder, right?

So for the United States, they're worried that communism, uh, is kind of the child of hunger and poverty.

Okay, and they're afraid that because Stalin has so much territory in Europe, that he is really well poised to become Hitler part two.

Okay, that is a sequel the United States does not want to see.

No, absolutely not.

And if they really learned anything from World War II, it's that appeasement doesn't work.

Okay, right. Um, during the 1930s, uh, many people in the west, uh, the Prime Minister of, uh, of England, Neville Chamberlain, kind of felt like they didn't want to go back to war, right?

Because World War I was still very much on people's minds in the 1930s. And so they figured, you know, let's not confront Hitler head-on because, you know, we're not up for that right now. We're also in the middle of a worldwide depression.

Um, and that helped nothing because it just meant that Hitler could gain a whole lot of territory, and World War II was much worse than it might have been, um, if they hadn't gone after Hitler earlier and stopped the onslaught.

Yes, if you stop the onslaught, you stop the onslaught.

Exactly. So, um, they're really trying to say, "All right, Stalin, if he wants to, could probably just run his way through the rest of Europe," right, uh, with very little resistance.

Okay, because the only nation in the world that has the military and economic power to stop the Soviet Union is the United States because their factories and fields were not bombed to cinders during the European theater.

Right, so if they want to stop Hitler part two, uh, Stalin, right, then they're going to have to really stand up for capitalism and also for the kind of, um, material comforts and democratic, what we call self-determination, right?

Uh, this is one of the most important ideas to come out of, uh, the alliance between the United States and Britain, which is that the citizens of a region should have the right to decide their own form of government.

Okay, and they think of the Soviets as being totalitarians, and that's not a wrong assessment because there is a very strong totalitarian control coming out of Moscow and the Soviet Union.

So they say if we're going to keep Europe from turning all red, all communist, then we're going to need to kind of shore up Europe.

Okay, you know, they think of communism as kind of being a little bit like a flood, shall we say, that you got to put sandbags around the edges of communism; otherwise, it's going to leak out.

Um, so is the United States and their allies also interested in creating their own kind of light blue buffer zone also next to the Eastern Bloc, or are they interested in... is this when we get into the creation of NATO?

NATO really comes out of an understanding that World War II has not created peace.

Okay, and so the US is going to have to forego their, you know, more than a century-long commitment to being isolationist, mhm, and take a stronger role in the world.

So, okay, so for the folks at home, what does NATO stand for?

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and this is a, uh, it's a defensive alliance between, um, at first, 12 nations, okay, uh, which say that an attack on one will be treated as an attack on all.

Gotcha. Well, that sounds like they're maneuvering their boxers into position and, like, rubbing the shoulders and getting them ready.

Yes, very much so.

And I think one of the tragedies of the postwar era is that maybe things didn't have to be like this, right?

Uh, after, uh, the US and the USSR had worked together to defeat Hitler, uh, it might have been possible for them to coexist peacefully.

But I think they both had the idea that the other economic system, and we're talking about communism and capitalism, was just kind of riddled with internal inconsistencies and that eventually the world would be all capitalist or all communist, and they were going to have to really marshal all of their resources behind their chosen boxer or they were going to lose.

Sounds like a fight that's going to take a long time.

And it did end... round one.