5 Steps to a 5TM AP European History

(^198) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
known as the Berlin Airlift, supplying West Berlin and keeping it out of Soviet control. In
1949, the Western-controlled zones of Germany were formally merged to create the inde-
pendent German Federal Republic. One month later, the Soviets established the German
Democratic Republic in the eastern zone.
In 1947, the United States established the Truman Doctrine, offering military and
economic aid to countries threatened by communist takeover. That same year, Truman’s
secretary of state, George Marshall, launched what has come to be known as the Marshall
Plan, contributing billions of dollars of aid to help the Western European powers to rebuild
their infrastructures and economies. The Soviet Union soon countered with the Council
for Mutual Economic Assistance, an economic aid package for Eastern European countries.
In 1949, the United States established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
uniting the Western powers in a military alliance against the Soviet Union. The Soviet
Union countered with the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance of the communist countries of
Eastern Europe. The one great military imbalance of the postwar period, the United States’
possession of the atomic bomb, was countered by the development of a Soviet atomic bomb
in 1949. From then on, the two superpowers engaged in a nuclear arms race that saw each
develop an arsenal of hydrogen bombs by 1953, followed by huge caches of nuclear war-
heads mounted on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The overarching strategy of
amassing nuclear weapons became appropriately known by its acronym MAD, which stood
for “mutual assured destruction.” This strategy “reasoned” that neither side would use its
nuclear weapons if its own destruction by a retaliatory blast was assured.
The Global Cold War
Once the two superpowers had done what they could to shore up their positions in Europe,
their competition spread across the globe. Major events in world history that are directly
connected to the Cold War include the following:
• The civil war in China, in which the Soviet-backed communist forces of Mao Zedong
defeated, in 1949, the Nationalist forces of Jiang Jieshi, supported by the United States
• The Korean War (1950–1953) between Soviet- and Chinese-supported North Korean
communists and U.N.- and U.S.-backed South Koreans, which produced a stalemate at
the 38th parallel (the original post–World War II dividing line between North and South
Korea) at the cost of some 1.5 million lives
• The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1963, in which Soviet attempts to install nuclear
missiles in Cuba were met with a U.S. blockade of the island, bringing the world to the
brink of nuclear war until the Soviets backed down and removed the missiles
• The Vietnam War, in which communist forces, led by Ho Chi Minh, battled an authori-
tarian, anti-communist government, increasingly reliant on U.S. military aid for its exist-
ence (throughout the 1960s until U.S. withdrawal in 1973)
Although it was less in the headlines of world news, the Cold War also had devastating
effects in Latin America and Africa, where, for the better part of three decades, local and
regional disputes were shaped by the intervention of Soviet and U.S. money, arms, and
covert operations. Many of the difficulties faced by these regions today can be traced back
to the Cold War.
Détente with the West, Crackdown in the East
Beginning in the late 1960s and lasting into the 1980s, U.S.–Soviet relations entered
into a new era that has come to be known as the era of détente. In this period, both sides
backed away from the notion of a struggle only one side could win. The era of détente was
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