In a previous post, I mentioned that America had just dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and that the Soviets were responding by pushing forward with an effort to produce their own atomic weapon. In other words, the arms race was on. In this post we’ll be focusing more on the threat of conventional military confrontation.

You can listen to Cold War Studies podcast on “More Causes of the Cold War” here. But you may want to take a look at the Timeline first.

1946: Churchill and Stalin Declare Cold War – Truman Hesitates

End of WW2: The communists control one-fifth of China and more than 105 million people. The Nationalist President, Chiang Kai-Shek squanders more than a billion dollars of American aid.

1945: Stalin demands a partnership with the Turks to control the strategic Dardanelles Straits.

1945: Russian armies move into Manchuria to disarm the Japanese. They remain to loot industrial machinery for the rebuilding of Russian industrial capacity. Mao and Chiang race to control Manchuria.

August 1945:  Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Chinese government and Stalin agree to a Treaty of Friendship and Alliance.

October 1945: A plebiscite is held in Outer Mongolia. Voting under Soviet supervision, the country decides to become independent of China and to move closer to Russia. The vote count is 483,291 to 0.

1946: American and Russian military forces confront each other in Manchuria, Iran, Turkey, and Europe. The situation in China is critical.

Early 1946: Most British and American forces have withdrawn from Iran. The Russians refuse to leave, demanding oil concessions. Washington takes the Iranian case to the UN Security Council.

February 1946: Stalin brings charges in the UN Security Council against the British repression of the Greek rebellion and British and Dutch attempts to suppress revolution in Indonesia.

February 9, 1946: In an appearance at the Boshoi Theater, Stalin announces that war is inevitable as long as capitalism exists.

March 1946: The US releases a plan for the control of the atom called the Acheson-Lilienthal Proposal.

March 5, 1946:  In a speech in Fulton, Missouri, Britain’s Prime Minister Churchill claims that “an iron curtain has descended across the continent” allowing a “police government” to rule Eastern Europe.  What the Soviets want, he says, is “the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrine.” The speech is not well received.

Late March 1946: Iran and Russia announce that the Red Army will leave Iran.

March and April 1946: Soviet occupation troops suddenly withdraw from Manchuria and Mao’s troops move in.

April 1946: Bernard Baruch is named the first American delegate to a new UN Atomic Energy Commission. He distrusts the Acheson-Lilienthal Proposal and comes up with his own plan, the Baruch Plan. His plan focuses on eliminating any Soviet power to veto inspections or sanctions. This is unacceptable to the Russians.

Summer 1946: Europe is in the limelight. Germany, and the control of atomic weapons, emerge as the central issues.

June 1, 1946: The American Congress establishes a US Atomic Energy Commission under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. The act prohibits any exchange of information on the use of atomic energy with any nation.

July 1946: Bikini Atoll. You can read more about it here.

August 1946: Stalin sends a note to Turkey which the US interprets as a Soviet attempt to dominate that nation, threaten Greece, and intimidate the rest of the Middle East.

Autumn 1946:   Truman’s task now centers on the rebuilding of wartorn Western Europe. The West isn’t threatened by the Red Army, but by internal collapse.

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to listen to Cold War Studies podcast on “More Causes of the Cold War.” You’ll find a lot more information there about early Cold War events. (Unfortunately, the text of the podcast is no longer available)

Photograph by Andrew Milligan sumo (Flickr)

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Terms You Should Know

TREATY OF FRIENDSHIP AND ALLIANCE: A treaty between the Soviet government and (Nationalist or ‘Old’) China signed in August 1945. According to the terms of this treaty,  Stalin received substantial territorial concessions in return for his agreement to deal with Chiang Kai-shek, not Mao Ze-dong. You can read the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance here.

DOMINO THEORY: In 1946, the theory was based on the assumption that Stalin, like Hitler, was intent on unlimited conquest. The theory was (later) formally defined by President Eisenhower who said:

You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have the beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.

ACHESON-LILIENTHAL PROPOSAL: Released in March 1946 as a plan for the control of the atom. The report suggested a series of stages through which the world could pass to international control of atomic weapons. It outlines a plan for international control of atomic energy. You can read the full report here.

The report represented an attempt by the United States to maintain its superiority in the field of atomic weapons while also trying to avoid a costly and dangerous arms race with the Soviet Union.

BARUCH PLAN: Presented to the United Nations on June 15, 1946, the Baruch Plan proposed that atomic energy be controlled through international management of the necessary raw materials and inspection by international agencies. The Russians were opposed, and the plan failed to gain acceptance, setting the stage for the Cold War arms race.

ATOMIC DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY: As part of his plan, Baruch proposed the establishment of an international atomic development authority.  This group would control all activities dangerous to world security and possess the power to license and inspect all  nuclear projects. Once such an authority was established, no more bombs should be built and existing bombs should be destroyed. The authority was unacceptable to the Russians and was not established.

US ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION: The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established by the US Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology.

ATOMIC ENERGY ACT OF 1946: President Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective January 1, 1947. The agency was abolished by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974.

You can listen to our first podcast here: CAUSES OF THE COLD WAR.

Did you ever wonder where Donald Trump got the idea for his “big, beautiful wall?” Was he thinking of the Berlin Wall? The Korean demilitarized zone? Exactly what kind of wall does he have in mind? Maybe it’s like the one Dr. Seuss describes in his Butter Battle Book, published on January 12, 1984. The book is an anti-war story, a parable about arms races, mutually assured destruction, and nuclear weapons.

Theodore Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, took on the Cold War in several of his books, starting with Horton Hears A Who in 1954. So this wasn’t the first time he had written about the Cold War. But it was the first time he had written about a wall.

The narrator of Butter Battle introduces the wall in the book’s first two lines:

“On the last day of summer,” he says, “ten hours before fall . . . . . . my grandfather took me out to the wall.”

Maybe Seuss was thinking about the Iron Curtain or the Iron Fence as it was sometimes called, because we learn very quickly that the wall he writes about was meant to separate the Yooks and the Zooks, just as the Iron Curtain was meant to separate communist and non-communist Europe.  Physically, the Iron Curtain took the form of border defenses between the countries of Europe in the middle of the continent. The most notable border was marked by the Berlin Wall and its Checkpoint Charlie which served as a symbol of the Iron Curtain as a whole.

The Berlin Wall (1987)

Berlin Wall (1987) by Hunter Desportes (Flickr)

You remember the Berlin Wall, right? That wall was built to separate East and West Berlin, and it was the site of several historical events in the late Cold War, involving two very different men, David Bowie and Ronald Reagan.

David Bowie’s Concert

In June 1987, David Bowie returned to the divided city of Berlin for a concert that some Germans, rightly or wrongly, view as having changed history. Bowie had lived in West Berlin for three years in the 1970s and had recorded three albums there.

In 1977, the year Bowie recorded Heroes, the second of his three Berlin albums, East German border guards shot and killed 18-year-old Dietmar Schwietzer as he tried to flee west across the wall. A few months later, 22-year-old Henri Wiese drowned trying to cross the Spree River. Heroes was, thus, haunted by the Cold War themes of fear and isolation that hung over the city.  

When, in 1987, Bowie returned for the Concert for Berlin, he chose Heroes for his performance. The concert was near enough to the border for many East Berliners to crowd along the wall to listen to the forbidden music, and the show was broadcast in its entirety by a US run radio station in the American Sector as well.

Bowie said:

“We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realize in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert where the wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life, and I guess I never will again.”

You can watch Bowie’s performance below.

Reagan’s Speech

A week after Bowie’s performance at the Concert for Berlin, the American president, Ronald Reagan, visited West Berlin. Standing in front of the city’s famous Brandenburg Gate, Reagan called on Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” You can watch the speech in its entirety below. (Courtesy of the Reagan Foundation.)

The Berlin Wall came down just two years after these 1987 events. I leave it up to you to decide what role Bowie and Reagan played in its fall. But for now, let’s get back to Seuss since his wall is all about separating too.

The Yooks and the Zooks

According to the Butter Battle Book, the people who need to be kept apart are the Yooks and the Zooks who have two very different approaches to buttering their bread. Grandfather Yook makes this very clear in a warning to his grandson, the narrator — and chief player —  in the book:

“It’s high time that you knew of the terribly horrible things that the Zooks do. In every Zook house and in every Zook town, Every Zook eats his bread with the butter side down!”

Even worse, grandfather goes on to opine:

“But we Yooks, as you know, when we breakfast or sup, spread our bread with the butter side up. That’s the right way, honest way!”

Grandpa gritted his teeth. “So you can’t trust a Zook who spreads bread underneath!”

Now this is obviously a tremendously important problem for the Yooks, but they know just what to do. Patrol the border of course, like the Allies and Communists both did at Iron Curtain checkpoints. Perhaps the most well-known was the Allies’ Checkpoint Charlie which monitored the Berlin Wall. In the case of the Yooks, this means “watching Zooks for the Zook-Border-Patrol.”

Checkpoint Charlie

Of course, any of you who grew up in the Cold War can certainly argue that you don’t need a physical wall to patrol your borders. I remember monitoring the skies as part of the Civil Air Patrol with my babysitter, Rosie, who marched me to a tower in the local Methodist Church every Wednesday night. She took notes while I watched for planes through my powerful binoculars, noting their direction, the number of engines, and their markings. Remember the silly song “up in the air junior birdsmen.” It was like that.

At any rate, it was clear to the Yooks that “every Zook must be watched,” and kept away from the righteous and innocent citizens of their homeland so, in addition to the wall, they bolstered their security with the Zook-Watching Border Patrol.

The border patrol was necessary because the wall itself started out as a little thing, not so high. And the Yooks actually had a Snick-Berry Switch, designed to serve as an additional deterrent, a weapon hefty enough to keep the Zooks away. This tactic worked fine until, one day

“a very rude Zook by the name of VanItch snuck up, slingshotting our hero’s Snick-Berry Switch.”

The whole episode reminds me of Truman and the A bomb.

Truman and the A-Bomb

As you might remember, the first A-bomb — code named Trinity — was tested at Alamogordo (New Mexico) on July 16, 1945. On his way home from Potsdam less than a month later, President Harry Truman received news that the atomic bomb had obliterated Hiroshima (Japan). Thinking he now had the upper hand, Truman’s opinion was that he could figure out how to use the bomb to gain concessions from the Soviet Union. But he was never able to do this. Instead, Stalin immediately pushed forward the Soviet effort to acquire atomic weaponry. As would soon happen with the Yooks and the Zooks, the arms race was on.

“We’ll give you a fancier slingshop to shoot!,” says the Chief Yookeroo.

“My Boys in the Back Room have already begun to think up a walloping whiz-zinger one! My bright boys are thinking, They’re on the right track. They’ll think one up quick and we’ll send you right back.”

Interestingly, all of this talk about thinking, spurred some thoughts of my own. So I found an excerpt of President “Ike’s” Farewell Speech on YouTube. Beware the military industrial complex he said. Watch part of his speech below.

Escalation

Just like the United States in the late 1950s, the Yooks thought that what they needed was  an armaments industry of vast proportions. Consequently, the Boys in the Back Room were given additional resources which they used to come up with a gun called the Kick-a-Poo Kid, loading it with powerful Poo-a-Doo Powder. The Yooks also increased their troop strength, adding a new kind of specialist, “a really smart dog named Daniel to serve as [the] country’s first gun-toting spaniel.”

Bolstered by Daniel, our fearless young Yook marches toward the wall, thinking that he now has the upper hand. But imagine! VanItch is there waiting, ready to retaliate with an

“Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitz that shoots high explosive cherry pits, scaring the Yook troops out of their “witz.”

Demoralized, our wanna be hero and Daniel limp home, embarrassed by their defeat.

Instead of ‘our young Yookeroo’s’’ expected demotion, however, the Chief announces:

“You’ve been promoted! The Big War is coming and you’re going to begin it.”

So I’m confused. Is our young Yook expendable? Beginning a war, nuclear or otherwise, seems like a dangerous endeavor to me. Or does “little Yook” have talents that we’re still unaware of?

At any rate, our “little man” is now given a new weapon, a thing called the Utterly Sputter:

“so modern, so frightfully new, no one knew quite exactly just what it would do!”

“. . . it had several faucets that sprinkled Blue Goo which, somehow would sprinkle the Zooks as I flew and gum-up that upside-down butter they chew.”

Agent Orange

Seems like this new flying machine was the latest in the Chief’s long progression of ‘boy’s toys’, and it hadn’t even been tested. There was an obvious problem. Just like Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, when sprinkling Zooks with Blue Goo, our Yook ended up sprinkling himself as well.  

You may remember that Agent Orange was a tactical herbicide used by the US military from 1962 to 1975. Millions of gallons were sprayed on trees and vegetation during the Vietnam War, exposing American troops in the process. The US government has documented higher cases of leukemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and various kinds of cancer in exposed veterans. The herbicide also caused enormous environmental damage in Vietnam. So whether it’s Agent Orange or Blue Goo, you don’t want to mess around.

What was the Chief thinking? Was he intent on beginning a nuclear war, or was he just thinking of outsmarting the Zooks like the Allies thwarted the Communist blockade of West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift? In any event, whatever happened to peaceful coexistence through mutual deterrence? Not in the equation, I guess, because the Chief seemed determined. When the Utterly Sputter failed, he said:

“Everything is all right. My Bright Back Room Boys have been brighter than bright. They’ve thought up a gadget that’s Newer than New. It is filled with mysterious Moo-Lack-Moo and can blow all those Zooks clear to Sala-ma-goo. THEY’VE INVENTED THE BITSY BIG-BOY BOOMEROO!”

“You just run to the wall like a nice little man. Drop this bomb on the Zooks just as fast as you can. I have ordered all Yooks to stay safe underground while the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo is around.”

Duck and Cover

Remember Duck and Cover? Our young Yookeroo had no such protection. Was he dispensable? Luckily, for him, Grandfather Yook didn’t think so. He said:

“You should be down that hole! And you’re up here instead. . . .”

“Grandpa!” our hero shouted, as “VanItch klupped up,” his very own Big-Boy-Boomeroo in his fist.

“Be careful! Oh, gee! Who’s going to drop it? Will you or will he?

“Be patient,” said Grandpa. “We’ll see. We will see.”

Ok. Now we’re into brinkmanship. It’s a stalemate. Or is it?  Parity anyone?

Unfortunately, Seuss leaves us hanging.

Is there a winner and a loser here?

What happens to the wall? Does it eventually fall?

Maybe Dr. Seuss doesn’t actually have an end in sight. After all, the climax of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall were unforeseeable when he finished this book. But he could have taken a hint from the old nursery rhyme. Remember Humpty Dumpty?

PostScript: Think this arms race stuff doesn’t matter anymore? Well, you’re wrong. A recent New York Times article noted that as we begin 2018 a new kind of arms race is underway. According to the Times, “this one is based less on numbers of weapons and more on novel tactics and technologies meant to outwit and outmaneuver the other side.”  Read the article titled “To Counter Russia, U.S. Signals Nuclear Arms Are Back in a Big Way.” Just click here.

Be sure to check out our post on another Dr. Seuss book, THE LORAX. Access it here.

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Featured photograph by Martin Pettitt (Flickr)

[Do you want more background on Heroes? Read all about it here. ]

This year, 2018, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most turbulent years in recent American history: 1968. Here is a selected listing of that year’s most talked about happenings.

January 1: The New Year’s Day Battle of 1968, a military engagement during the Vietnam War involving units assigned to the US 25th Infantry Division and a regiment of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

Want to learn more about the battle? Watch the 1986 Oliver Stone film Platoon. Stone was serving in one of the American units during the battle. The final battle scene in the movie is a dramatization of the real battle as experienced by Stone.

January 23: North Korean patrol boats capture the USS Pueblo, a US Navy intelligence vessel along with its 83 man crew on charges of violating the communist country’s twelve-mile territorial limit. This crisis will dog the US foreign policy team for 11 months, with the crew of the Pueblo finally released on December 22.

January 31: At half-past midnight, the North Vietnamese launch the Tet Offensive  at Nha Trang. Nearly 70,000 North Vietnamese troops will take part in this action, taking the battle from the jungles to the cities, attacking more than 100 towns. The offensive lasts for weeks and is seen as a major turning point in American attitudes toward the war. At 2:45 that morning, the US Embassy in Saigon is invaded. It’s held until 9:15 AM.

February 2: Richard Nixon, a republican from California, enters the New Hampshire primary and declares his presidential candidacy.

February 18: The US State Department announces the highest US casualty toll of the Vietnam War. The previous week saw 543 Americans killed in action, and 2547 wounded.

March 16: Senator Robert Kennedy, brother of former president John F. Kennedy (1961-1964), announces that he will enter the 1968 Presidential race.

March 16: The My Lai Massacre: US ground troops from Charlie Company rampage through the hamlet of My Lai killing more than 500 Vietnamese civilians including infants and the elderly. The massacre is not public knowledge for more than a year.

March 22: In Czechoslovakia, Antonin Novotny resigns the Czech presidency, alarming Moscow, and setting the stage for the Prague Spring.

April 4: Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis shocks and outrages the nation, sparking rioting in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington DC, and elsewhere. 46 deaths with be blamed on the riots.

April 11: The Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as the Fair Housing Act) is enacted during the King Assassination Riots.

April 23: Protestors angered over Columbia University‘s links to the Department of Defense occupy university buildings for more than a week to protest the Vietnam War. Police storm the buildings and violently remove the protestors at the Columbia administration’s request.

May 3: US and North Vietnamese delegations agree to begin peace talks in Paris on May 19.

May 6: In France, “Bloody Monday” marks one of the most violent days of the Parisian student  revolt. 5,000 students march through the Latin Quarter. Riots ensue.

June 3: Andy Warhol is shot in his New York City loft by Valerie Solanis.

June 4/5: Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles at 12:13 AM after addressing a large crowd of supporters.  The shooter, Sirhan Sirhan, was apparently angered by several pro-Israeli speeches given by Kennedy during his campaign.

June 6: Kennedy, age 42, dies in the early morning.

June 27: The Prague Spring continues in Czechoslovakia with President Ludvik Vaculi releasing his manifesto “Two Thousand Words.” The essay criticizes Communist rule in Czechoslovakia and concludes with a threat to “foreign forces” trying to control the government of the country. The Soviets (who conducted ongoing military exercises in the the country and who are planning an invasion later in the summer see this as a direct challenge).

July 7: Abbie Hoffman‘s “The Yippies are Going to Chicago” is published in The Realist. The Yippies will be in the center of the action six weeks later at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

July 24: Folk singer Arlo Guthrie performs the 20 minute long Alice’s Restaurant at the Newport Folk Festival. He gets rave reviews.

August 8: Republicans nominate Richard Nixon to be their presidential candidate at the Party convention in Miami Beach.

August 20: The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia with over 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops, putting an end to the Prague Spring.

August 26: Mayor Richard Daley opens the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Demonstrations are widespread, but generally peaceful. The city’s police attempt to enforce an 11 o’clock curfew.

August 28: Chicago police take action against crowds of demonstrators. At least 100 people are sent to emergency rooms and 175 are arrested.

September 1: Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey kicks off his presidential campaign in New York City.

September 7: Women’s Liberation Groups target the Miss America Beauty Contest in Atlantic City. Protestors engage in a “symbolic bra-burning.”

October 2: Police and military police in Mexico City react violently to a student led protest. Hundreds of demonstrators are killed or injured.

October 11: Apollo 7 is launched from Florida for an 11 day journey. It will orbit the earth 163 times.

October 18: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, US athletes and medalists, disrupt the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City by performing the Black Power Salute.

October 31: President Johnson announces a total halt to US bombing in North Vietnam.

November 5: Election Day. Nixon wins 43.4% of the total vote, Humphrey brings in 42.7% of the total, and Wallace gets 13.4% (o.4% goes to other candidates).

November 14: National Turn in Your Draft Card Day is observed with rallies and protests on collage campuses country wide.

November 26: The South Vietnamese government agrees to join in the Paris Peace talks.

December 21: Apollo 8 begins the first US mission to orbit the moon.

1968 was an eventful year for Popular Culture too. Here are a few of the things that happened:

April 29: “Hair” — known for its nudity and drug use — opens on Broadway. This may be the quintessential “period piece” of 1968.

August 1968: The Beatles release “Hey Jude.”

September: The first Big Mac is served in Pittsburgh by a McDonald’s franchise owner named Jim Delligatti. It cost 49 cents.

September 24: “60 Minutes” debuts on CBS.

November 1: A new movie ratings system was introduced with four categories: G, M, R and X.

December 3: The Elvis “comeback special” airs on TV. It’s widely considered one of the great rock ‘n’ roll moments.

The Rolling Stones stage a comeback also with their recording of “Jumping Jack Flash.” Here was the year’s real rock ‘n’ roll comeback.

As the year progresses, Cold War Studies will post frequently on this year of RESISTANCE and PROTEST. I hope you’ll check back often. If you want to make sure not to miss a post, why not SUBSCRIBE using the form below. We’ll never share your information. Meanwhile, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them . . . will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.