HEALING
THE WOUNDS OF WAR
Occupation
of Japan and Germany
After
WWII Japan and Germany lay in ruins and their governments were shattered. People
were homeless, living among the rubble, and desperate for food.
The occupation of Germany was planned at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945 where Churchill, Truman, and Stalin met and agreed to divide Germany into four occupation zones. The four powers pledged to crush the Nazi party, set up local governments, and rebuild German industry.
The Soviet occupation of much of Eastern Europe created tensions, which led to the Cold War, the subject of the second half of these notes.
The U.S. Occupied Japan from 1945 to 1952. Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur and a new Japanese congress ran the country. The U.S. set out to end Japanese militarism, rebuild the economy, and create a democratic government. A new democratic constitution written under the supervision of the US authorities in Japan was adopted in 1947, voting rights were extended to women, and the separation of church and state was established. Japan was demilitarized and Emperor Hirohito became a figurehead. Economic reforms included land reforms, labor unions, and the break up of zaibatsu (huge family run monopoly corporations).
War
Crimes Trials
German war criminals were to be punished for the Holocaust and for starting the war. Japanese war criminals were to be punished for mistreatment of prisoners and war and for atrocities committed in Bataan and China.
Nuremberg trials: The German war crimes trials began in November, 1945. The verdict in September 1946 announced that of the 21 Nazi leaders tried for planning the war, committing war crimes, committing other crimes against humanity, and conspiring to commit these crimes, eleven were sentenced to death, seven were sent to jail, and three were acquitted. Other trials were held in the U.S. occupation zone and thousands of former Nazi officials were tried and jailed. However many escaped to South America, including Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Jewish extermination program. He was later captured by the Israelis, brought to Israel, and tried for crimes against the Jewish people and humanity.
In Tokyo more then 20 war leaders were tried and seven were sentenced to death, including Kideki Tojo, the wartime premier.
War crimes trials established the principle that nations and individuals can be held accountable for their actions during war, and war crimes cannot be excused on the grounds that those responsible were just following orders.
The
United Nations
Delegates from the U.S., Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. in 1944 to continue their alliance through the UN, a postwar international organization. In April 1945 delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco to draw up the UN charter. It took eight weeks to write the document.
The UN Charter established six bodies:
General Assembly - where all countries shape policy.
Security Council – addresses military and political problems. Permanent members can veto any action proposed by the UN and include the US, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, And China.
Economic and Social Council
International Court of Justice
Trusteeship Council - to administer territories
Secretariat – headed by the Secretary-General and administers the UN.
The US Senate overwhelmingly approved US membership, as did 60% of the US population. Headquarters of the UN are in New York City. Early critics of the UN believed it would fail because it had no power to enforce its decisions. At times this criticism appears to be valid, nonetheless the UN is an important forum for debate, negotiation, and cooperation among the nations of the world. The purpose of the UN is to promote peaceful cooperation among the nations of the world.
THE
COLD WAR BEGINS
The
Basis of the Cold War
After WWII the once powerful Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and France lay in ruins, leaving only the US and the Soviet Union left to compete for international domination. The competition between the US and the Soviet Union for global power was known as the COLD WAR.
The
Cold War was fought mostly on political and economic front rather than on the
battlefield. It was a war of opposing political and economic systems and the
ideologies that supported them, rather than a war of opposing armies. Mutual
distrust drove the conflict.
The
US system: democracy, free markets, and capitalism.
The
Soviet system: state-controlled economy (communism), one-party rule
(anti-democratic), suppression of religion, the use of force to crush all
opposition.
Each
side believed the other sought global domination and attempted to expand the
influence of its economic and political system. The Soviets claimed the
Americans were imperialistic, while the Americans feared Soviet expansion.
During WWII the Soviets had taken over the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia,
and Estonia, large areas of Poland and Romania, and also Manchuria (northern
China). America solidified its cooperation with the democratic and capitalistic
Western allies.
The
Soviets installed “friendly” communist governments in the countries forming
a buffer zone on the Soviets’ western border in Eastern Europe. They believed
this was necessary because they feared the US led West would invade the Soviet
Union. Satellite nations were the countries under the control of the USSR.
The
more the Soviets expanded their influence in Eastern Europe, the more the US,
France, and Great Britain solidified their own western alliance and sought to
rebuild West Germany so that it would not fall under Soviet influence. The
Soviets feared what they called encirclement, the attempt of the US led West to
support a circle of pro-US and anti-Soviet capitalistic democracies around the
borders of the Soviet Union.
In
March of 1946, wartime prime minister Winston Churchill made a famous speech in
Fulton, Missouri about the new animosity between the American led West and the
Soviet led East. An “Iron Curtain has descended across the continent,”
isolating Western Europe from Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. The US and Great
Britain agreed to cooperate to check Soviet power.
Competition over Atomic Weapons
The US was the first nation to develop Atomic weapons and the only nation to ever use them during war. In 1946 the UN created a commission to draw up a plan for the control of this awesome weapon. The commission came up with the Baruch Plan which called for the creation of a special UN agency with the authority to inspect any nations atomic energy installations. The plan would impose penalties on countries violating international controls.
The
Soviets meanwhile worked feverishly to develop their own atomic bomb. They
tested their first atomic bomb in 1949, ending the US monopoly over nuclear
power. This began the nuclear arms race, the attempt of the US and the Soviet
Union to acquire more and more atomic weapons because each side feared the other
would use them if they had superiority in nuclear arms. Although the Baruch Plan
failed, civilian control over atomic energy was established in the US through
the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 which set up the Atomic Energy Commission to
oversee nuclear weapons research and promote peacetime uses of atomic energy.
Its main activity however became supporting the government’s nuclear weapons
program.
Containment in the Mediterranean
The US gave assistance to the Greek monarchy to battle communist led rebels after the British were unable to provide aid to Greece. Meanwhile the Soviets pressured Turkey to give up control of the Dardanelle’s which linked the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, which would allow the Soviets to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean and threaten the security of the Suez Canal in Egypt.
In response Truman made a speech and declared it was the policy of the US to support free peoples who are resisting conquest by armed minorities or outside pressures (meaning communists and the Soviets). This was known as the Truman Doctrine and was the basis of the $400 million aid package sent to Greece and Turkey to help them resist the communists. In the future, the US sent much more foreign-aid to these countries.
Containment
in Europe
The Marshall Plan was proposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall who later won the Nobel Prize for this in 1953. Starting in 1948 the US sent $12 billion in aid to Western Europe in order to save Europe from economic, social, and political collapse and eventual domination by the Soviet Union. The US would promote European recovery to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions, democracy, and capitalism could exist. The aid was needed because European economies were in shambles after World War II and starvation and political and social chaos loomed on the horizon.
The Berlin Airlift: On June 24, 1948 the Soviets blocked all roads, canals, and railways linking Berlin and Western Germany and cutting off all supplies to the Western zone of Berlin in an attempt to drive the Western powers out of Berlin. The British and Americans responded with the Berlin Airlift. Over the next ten months over two million tons of food and supplies were carried to the people of West Berlin making over 277,000 flights. In May 1949 the embarrassed Soviets lifted the blockade. In may 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was formed. In response the Soviets set up the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). This division would last over 40 years until the end of the Cold War.
North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
NATO began as a military alliance between the US, Canada, and nine Western European nations in 1949. Each member nation pledged to defend the others in the event of an outside attack. In 1951 General Dwight D. Eisenhower became the supreme commander of NATO forces. The Soviet Union responded with its own military alliance with other Communist countries in 1955 called the Warsaw Pact.
The
Cold War at Home
The National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency joined the attempt to identify and isolate communists at home. There was another Red Scare – complete with a Loyalty Review Board, HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), the Hollywood Ten, Alger Hiss, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (who were executed for treason and espionage in 1953), the search for communists and spies, and blacklists. The Internal Security Act of 1950 required communist party members to register with authorities. Cold War anti-communism led to efforts in the US to expose alleged Communists in the US, creating a climate of fear and suspicion in which numerous individuals were deprived of their constitutional rights and lost their jobs because they were accused of being communists.