Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Three Cold War Crises
- 5.1: Berlin: A divided city, 1961
- The situation in Berlin
- Berlin = Source of conflict for the Allies
- Contrast between high standard of living in the West + poverty in East
- 3 million people escaped from East to West Berlin 1946-60
- Economic survival of East Germany at stake
- Berlin Wall, 1961
- All movement from East to West stopped
- Immediate effects: flow of refugees
reduced to a trickle + propaganda fail
for the USSR and communism itself
- Propaganda victory for USA
- Berlin Wall symbol of division between capitalist West and communist East, 1960s-80s
- Kennedy's response, 1963
- Visited West Berlin
- Declared the city was a symbol of the struggle between
forces of freedom and communist world
- 5.2: Cuba: The world on the brink of war, 1962
- Cuban Missile Crisis = most serious conflict between the USSR and the USA in history of Cold War
- Castro and Cuba
- CAUSES
- Castro = Communist
Anmerkungen:
- Castro came to power in 1958.
- USA had retaliated – cutting off aid, stop buying cotton, sugar, tobacco
- Castro asked help from USSR
- USSR keen on gaining influence in Cuba,
close proximity to USA's coastline
Anmerkungen:
- Cuba less than 200km from USA's South-Eastern coastline.
- In exchange for Cuba's sugar, they
would provide them with machinery
- 1961, Kennedy alarmed at what he saw as Communist threat
- American support to invasion of Cuba by rebels
- Bay of Pigs, 1961
- Was a disaster/failed
- EVENTS
- 14 October 1962, US U2 spy plane located Soviet missile sites on Cuba.
- US naval blockade on Cuba
- US U2 spy plane shot down over Cuba
- Attorney General Robert Kennedy proposed deal to USSR
Anmerkungen:
- The USA would withdraw missiles from Turkey as long as shooting of U2 spy plane was kept secret.
- Khrushchev accepts deal
- RESULTS
- Major affect on superpower relations
- USSR + USA realise that nuclear war had been possibility
- Telephone hotline established – Direct communications between superpowers
- Test Ban Treaty, 1963
Anmerkungen:
- Signed by Britain, USA + USSR.
- 5.3: Czechoslovakia: The prague spring, 1968
- 1967, Dubcek had become Communist Party Secretary in Czechoslovakia
- Spring 1968, reforms:
- Censorship of press ended
- Other political parties allowed
- Political prisoners released +
Czech citizens granted greater
freedom to travel abroad
- Seen as major threat by
new USSR leader,
Brezhnev
- Four months of freedom
- Soviet reaction
- EVENTS
- August 1968, 400, 000 WTO troops entered Czechoslovakia
- Arrested leading reformers + seized key cities
- Dubcek resigned in 1969, replaced by Husak
- The Brezhnev Doctrine
- Force would be used whenever necessary
to keep WTO countries under Soviet control
- Showed Soviet leadership wouldn't accept
reforms in WTO + rejection of Communism
- Doctrine + Soviet actions in
Czechoslovakia did nothing
to improve relations between
USA + USSR