Cold War Crises

Berlin

In 1945 Germany was split into four. America who were capitalist effectively controlled the west and the Soviet Union who were communist effectively controlled the east. Kennedy was the American leader and Khrushchev was the Russian leader. Having a split down the middle of the country led to the refugee crisis, this was when 2.7million Germans fled from the east to the west as they wanted more freedom and this therefore made communism look bad. In 1961 Khrushchev gave Kennedy a six month ultimatum, Kennedy has 6 months to remove his troops from Germany, or declare war. Kennedy refused to with draw his troops and said if the Russians wanted war then there would a nuclear war. Kennedy then spent millions on nuclear weapons and protective shelters. However Khrushchev knew that Russia wouldn’t be able to win a nuclear war against the USA as they had nowhere near enough money or weapons so he withdrew his ultimatum. Instead in 1961 Khrushchev decided to build a wall right through the middle of Berlin to separate the east from the west. This then solved the refugee crisis. Kennedy didn’t do anything to stop the building of the wall as he said that ‘a wall is better than a war’. In 1963 Kennedy toured West Berlin to show how he was supporting them and he said ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ which meant that he said he was a jam doughnut.

Cuba

Batista was the leader of Cuba in 1959, he did everything that the Americans told him too. Effectively this meant that the Americans controlled Cuba, including all their largest businesses. The Castro took over and led the revolution. At first Castro didn’t tell anyone that he was communist. Castro signed a treaty with the USSR to swap Cuban sugar for soviet oil and machinery. Cuba now had close links with the USSR and this made America feel threatened because Cuba was only 90 miles from the USA. There was a fear that communism would spread so America stopped buying Cuban sugar hoping to put the Cuban government under pressure so that Castro would stand down. Instead Castro sought helped from the soviets. America knew they had to get rid of Castro, this then led to the ‘bay of pigs’ invasion in 1961. This was an attempt by the USA to overthrow Castro, 1,400 Cuban exiles were trained by the CIA to invade Cuba and take it over. This led to Castro fearing another American attack so he sought more help from the soviets. This again frightened America. In October 1962 the Americans sneakily sent spy planes to fly over Cuba to see what was happening. They saw that the soviets were building nuclear missile bases on Cuba. America saw that this was a threat to them as Cuba were only 90 miles away and the nuclear missiles would be able to reach America. This lead to the Naval Blockade which was when the USA surrounded Cuba with its naval ships and told the soviets that if any of their weapons crossed that line then that meant that they wanted war. This then led to the ‘Secret Deal’. This was when America said that they would pull their missiles out of turkey (that no one knew about) if the soviets would withdraw their missiles from Cuba in public. This then made the USA look better than the soviets. To stop this from happening again, relationships between the countries were improved through 2 ways in 1963. One way was through a hotline called Détente, this was when Kennedy and Khrushchev could talk to each other directly. Another way was the test ban treaty, this was signed to improve relations, and the treaty was when they banned the testing of their nuclear weapons above ground.

Czechoslovakia

Novotny was the Czech communist leader. Novotny was the reason why Czech people had no freedom, no privacy and poor living conditions. Dubcek stepped in and started something called the Prague spring. His aim was to make life for the Czech people better. Dubcek’s Prague spring which was when he made communism nicer. He called it ‘socialism with a human face’. This was just a slightly nicer version of communism including some capitalism. Czech people had more freedom to do what they wanted, newspapers had more freedom to write about what they wanted and there was a relaxation of press censorship. Students welcomed these changes however the older generation were not. This led to the Brezhnev doctrine. Brezhnev saw the reforms as a threat as the reforms were coming even more popular. He saw this as a threat because the USSR were in control of the whole of the eastern block and he felt that if the other countries were to do the same then this may weaken the soviet control. As they felt that Czechoslovakia were a threat to them they thought that they had the right to invade with the other Warsaw pact countries. This was to show that the soviets were in charge. As a result the USSR invaded into Czechoslovakia. Dubcek told the Czech people to have a non-violent approach towards the invasion. But someone set himself on fire as a form of protest and people stood in front of tanks but it didn’t work and over 100 people were killed. This led to Dubcek being kidnapped and taken to the soviets capital of Moscow. Dubcek was arrested and in the soviets capital he was sacked from his job and forced to reinstate censorship and the Prague spring was ended. Everything went back to the way it was before. However other countries reacted to the invasion. The western European response: communist parties in the USA used to be funded by the USSR and did what they said, in the end they turned their back on them and said that the invasion was a bad idea. America publically condemned the invasion but offered no military support otherwise the USSR would help the Vietnamese in the war that they were fighting with America. Eastern European response: Communist countries such as Yugoslavia and Romania became close with China as they were scared the soviets were going to invade them too. This means that the soviets lost support from those two countries.

	Created by Lucy Jarrett about 10 years ago

GCSE History GCSE Note on Cold War Crises, created by Lucy Jarrett on 15/04/2014.