hey there and welcome back to heimlich history and furthermore welcome to the first video explaining unit 8 of the ap u.s history curriculum in this video we're going to consider together the cold war from 1945 to 1980 and oh baby this is a juicy one so get them brain cows ready for milking let's get to it so the learning objective for this video is as follows explain the continuities and changes in cold war policies from 1945 to 1980. that's got me all jiggly let's talk about it however before we get into it let me remind you that if you're needing help getting an a in your class and a five on your exam in may then i have something that'll make all your dreams come true it's the ape review packet and it's got exclusive video content note guides practice questions and two full-length practice exams if that's something you're into then go grab it it helps support my work on this channel and it'll keep you from failing out of school and living in a van down by the river okay so we ended unit seven by talking about how the united states emerged from world war ii as the most powerful nation on earth but there was a group of folks who were not so happy about the ascendancy of the democratic united states and those folks happen to live in the soviet union as you can imagine after the war was over everyone just wanted to go back to normal life but the growing tension between the u.s and the soviet union would make that impossible so instead of going back to normal what we got was the cold war which when being defined is a conflict between two belligerents in which neither engages in open warfare with the other in other words a cold war is more of a battle of ideologies than a war with all the pew pew in the bang bang but the thing is the tension was so thick that it really could have erupted into actual fighting at any moment so let's get down to the causes of the cold war now as you can probably remember there had been tensions between the us and the soviet union stretching all the way back to the russian revolution in 1917. from the moment of its birth the united states could see that communism was an ugly baby and it needed to just stay in its crew and that's essentially what the cold war was about the ugly baby of soviet communism would patently not stay in its crib and wanted to crawl everywhere it could and claimed whatever it grabbed the united states however was staunchly opposed to this kind of authoritarian communism and instead wanted to make the world into a democratic capitalist utopia and the thing is both of these ideologies are expansionist by nature like each of them cannot rest until the world is remade into its image so that was the central question of the cold war would the world be remade into the image of soviet communism or would the world be remade into the image of democratic capitalism now the mistrust between these two powers began even before world war ii had ended remember the u.s and russia were allies during that war but a few events sparked mutual suspicion and distrust first the allies agreed that when the war was over central and eastern european countries would hold free elections but joseph stalin the leader of the soviet union decided he'd rather keep soviet troops stationed in those countries after the war and therefore create a kind of buffer zone between russia and germany you know on one hand you can hardly blame the guy for wanting this like after all in both world wars germany had done immense damage to russia and so you know you can kind of understand but understandable or not the problem was that was not the agreement that they made and so when stalin kept his troops in those nations basically turning them into communist satellite states of the soviet union whose sole reason for existence was to serve the purposes of the soviet union the u.s saw this as a flagrant violation of their agreement to allow these countries the right of self-determination and more to the point democratic governments and then there was even more distrust when it came to the post-war agreement for the city of berlin one of the provisions of the treaty that ended the war was that germany would be divided into four occupation zones one for the british one for the french one for the soviets and one for the united states but zoom in further and we see that they also divided up berlin according to that arrangement as well and here's where things get a little janky because that city sits squarely in the soviet territory on which more in a moment these german occupation zones were intended to be a temporary peacetime necessity but the eastern section which belonged to the soviets quickly just became another communist state you see the soviets intended to keep germany weak so they could pose less of a threat and furthermore they wanted to extract reparations from them but the western powers wanted to help germany become strong again especially economically because they saw revitalized germany as one of the keys to a stable central europe so it was clear by this point that there was a significant political and ideological division running right through europe winston churchill famously said that an iron curtain has descended across the continent so those are the origins of the cold war now let's talk about how the united states responded to that threat the first term you need to know is containment and that's exactly what it sounds like many resources were poured into containing the spread of communism to this end president harry truman issued what became known as the truman doctrine which essentially advocated containment of communism by lending support to any country that was threatened by soviet communism truman issued this doctrine as a result of soviet pressure on turkey and greece to accommodate soviet goals congress agreed to spend 400 million dollars in economic aid and military support to fend off the soviets in both of those places second illustration of the truman doctrine was the marshall plan it was developed by secretary of state george marshall and essentially it allocated almost 13 billion dollars in financial aid for european countries to rebuild this was a key strategic move because as these countries were struggling to rebuild the communists seemed to have a good plan to support them and the rationale behind the marshall plan was that if nations had a healthy economy they would be more likely to opt for a democracy rather than communism you know what in many cases that worked and the fact that it worked really bugged stalin truman you are overcooking my grits and of particular annoyance to stalin was the u.s meddling in berlin you see because berlin was deep inside of soviet occupied territory and because western powers kept west berlin alive with the hope of democracy stalin decided to block their entry into the western part of the city and something that became known as the berlin blockade which included soviet blockage of canals and roads and railways by which western powers supplied western berlin now the goal here of course was to absorb west berlin into the soviet occupation but in response to the blockade the us organized the berlin airlift which included over 200 000 flights in u.s and allied airplanes to carry supplies into western berlin and so the berlin airlift effectively prevented the soviets from taking over the city another illustration of the us commitment to containment was the formation of the north atlantic treaty organization otherwise known as nato the nato member nations entered a military alliance in order to resist any aggressive actions of the soviet union and not to be outdone by such an alliance the soviets formed a counter-alliance called the warsaw pact which did the same thing for communist nations of eastern europe okay so that's not everything that was happening with respect to containment but it's enough to illustrate the point another key feature of the cold war was nuclear proliferation another way to say this is that there was a fierce arms race between the united states and the soviets remember that the united states developed the first iteration of the atomic bomb in 1945 and thanks to soviet infiltration in american intelligence agencies the soviets were able to test their first atomic bomb in 1949. so truman ordered the development of a more powerful hydrogen bomb which was completed and tested in 1952 the next year the soviets tested their first hydrogen bomb and the point here is that the u.s and the soviet union kept stockpiling increasing amounts of increasingly powerful nuclear bombs and the possibility that the world would get blown to a smoking husk of carbon ash became very real but both sides came to understand that even though they couldn't stop producing these weapons they could never use them because to do so would result in mutual assured destruction okay now we've been talking about the cold war as an ideological battle that never really erupted into actual fighting but that's not quite accurate because there were many proxy wars that occurred over the course of the cold war proxy in case you don't know is when one thing stands in place for another thing so these proxy wars actually did have real fighting but not directly between the united states and the soviet union they were only the ones backing the wars up now there are a lot of these wars we could mention but in this unit we're only going to consider two the vietnam war is going to get its own video so we'll save that one for later so for now let's just talk about the korean war so korea was a japanese colony before the end of world war ii but after the war it was divided right along the 38th parallel the soviets administered the affairs of the north and the u.s administered the affairs of the south well in june of 1950 north koreans invaded south korea using soviet munitions and supplies and that fired up both sides the united nations sent a whole host of troops to support the south mainly made up of american troops and under the leadership of general douglas macarthur the u.n troops pushed back the north koreans day near all the way to the southern border of china china was all and sent troops to repel the un troops back below the 38th parallel and that's basically how the war ended which is to say korea was in the exact same position as when the war started they were divided at the 38th parallel with communists in the north and u.s allies in the south but what you need to know about this war is that it illustrates two very important things first it was a proxy war between the united states and the soviet union and second it was a direct result of truman's containment policy all right that's what you need to know about unit 8 topic 2 of the ap us history curriculum if you want to grab my ultimate review packet then i will not seek to contain you go crazy if you were helped by this video and you want me to keep making them then you can 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