In early March 1946, the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a speech in which he coined the phrase the “iron curtain” to describe the USSR’s division of Eastern Europe from the West.
During the Cold War anti-communist hysteria gripped the general population. Many people were interrogated and “suspects” were asked to name people. If they did not they were suspected of being communist. This became known as “The Red Scare”. Politicians could see an opportunity in winning voted by condemning communism. A by product of The Red Scare was McCarthyism. Senator McCarthy was a ruthless and ambitious man. He rose to power after claiming to have a list of 200 communist that had infiltrated the government. The claims turned out to “be a fraud and a hoax”, however he accused anybody who attacked his policies as being a communist and was well known for turning his committee into a weapon to increase his personal power and terrify others. In 1954 he turned his attacks on the army. By this time, his claims seemed ridiculous and he was publicly humiliated by the army lawyer. As a result McCarthy lost all his public credibility and died three years later, in 1957.
France, Britain, and the United States gradually united their three zones of occupation within Germany and in 1948 announced their intention to create a West German Republic. In opposition to the proposed republic—which would have included West Berlin, situated deep in the Soviet zone—Stalin established the Berlin Blockade in June 1948, cutting off all rail and highway access to Berlin from the west. Choosing not to abandon Berlin or use military force, Truman ordered an airlift, called “Operation Vittles,” to supply West Berlin. The airlift continued until May 1949, when the USSR lifted the blockade. Western forces immediately pulled out of Germany and approved the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany. The USSR responded by creating the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany.
Nuclear weapons played a central role in the possibility of military engagement between the U.S. and the USSR. In 1946, Truman proposed a plan to the United Nations to require the USSR to cease construction on any atomic weaponry, saying that only then would the U.S. destroy its growing arsenal. The Soviets rejected this plan and both sides rushed to develop weapons of mass destruction. In 1946, the federal government established the Atomic Energy Commission to oversee the development of nuclear energy and arms. The battle for nuclear dominance was characteristic of the Cold War, in which few battles were ever waged face to face.
In September 1949, the USSR detonated its first atomic bomb. This development, combined with the establishment of a communist regime in China, inspired a new and fiercer anticommunism in the U.S. government, expressed in its decision to more than triple the defense budget and to mount a furious campaign to develop a hydrogen bomb. The drive for the hydrogen bomb succeeded in the November 1952 detonation of an H-bomb in the Marshall Islands. But the American advantage was short-lived. In July 1953, the Russians detonated their own H-bomb.
In addition to this, a by-product of the Cold War was the Korean War. When Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, President Truman sent the American military into action. The Korean War ended three bloody years later in a truce that left the border between North and South Korea intact, the infamous 38th parallel. The U.S. suffered 157,530 casualties and South Korea sustained over 1.3 million casualties. Estimated Communist casualties were 2 million.
