The Cold War

CountryMilitary deaths

Civilian deaths

Jewish Holocaust

deaths

Total deaths

Deaths per 1,000 population

Soviet Union 10 million 11.5 million 1 million 23 million 137.1

Germany 5.5 million 1.8 mil 160,000 7.5 mil 108.2

France 212,000 267,000 83,000 562,000 13.5

United Kingdom

307,700 61,700 369,400 7.7

United States

407,300 11,200 418,500 3.2

Japan 1.9 million 700,000 2.6 million 36.1

China 4 million 6 million 10 million 18.9

Poland 400,000 2.2 mil 3 million 5.6 million 160.9

42 OTHER NATIONS

2.2 million 9.2 million 1.5 mil 11 million

Totals 25 million 31.5 million 5.75 mil 62 million 31.6

Why COLD?

• 2 rivals never actually directly engaged each other

• Engaged in proxy wars:– war that results when 2 powers use 3rd parties as

substitutes for fighting each other directly.

• Why not face each other directly?– Too risky….

– Too HOT….

It felt HOT…

• Propaganda used on both sides• Rivals seen as imminent threat to

survival of nation-- as EVIL• Domino theory based on fear &

assumption that fall of one country to communism would bring about the fall of its neighbor…..

• Acknowledged the power of ideology…

Berlin Airlift

Building of the BerlinWall 1961

1949West Germany

Created

De-Stalinization

Nikita Krushchev 1956

EEC and COMECON

Decolonization, Alignment and Proxy Wars

• Post WWII Western Europe is giving up on their empire

• Domino Theory

• Also (remember) Truman Doctrine

US & USSR Compete

• For influence, allies, client states & economic power

• Pursued a policy of containment– Block foreign influence & expansion

• World gets divided into blocs:– Warsaw Pact– NATO

• Those who tried to stay out: non-aligned nations

Communist China: 1949

Stalemate till 1953: 38th Parallel

U-2 Incident

Coup in Cuba

Communism Close to Our Shores

Conflict inVietnam

Ho Chi Minh

Independence ofIndia 1946

The Arms Race

• Key strategy of Cold War = brinksmanship– Willing to go to the edge of war

• Stockpile enough nuclear weapons so as to make actual conflict too risky:– Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

1957 Sputnik

Nuclear Arms Race