1. U.S. History 11 Unit 13: The Aftermath of World War II
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Coach Styles

2. Contributing to the reconstruction of war-ravaged Europe.
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The victory of WWII brought to the American people such responsibility as neither they—nor any other people—had ever known before.
Following the Allied in WWII, the United States assumed 3 main responsibilities that would affect its future for the next 50 years:
Contributing to the reconstruction of war-ravaged Europe.

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The single boldest step toward winning the peace was proposed on June 5, 1947 by George C. Marshall.
The European Recovery Program, commonly called the Marshall Plan (proposed by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff and then Secretary of State George C. Marshall) was instituted by the United States and 16 Western European nations to rebuild post-WWII Europe.

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The United States poured some $13 billion into Europe and established a massive Displaced Persons Plan, whereby almost 300,000 homeless Europeans (including many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust) immigrated to the United States and became citizens.

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Supporting democracy and freedom around the world (which also meant containing the spread of communism).
The Marshall Plan itself was a tremendous aid in supporting freedom and the containment of communism, as the greatest friend of democracy is economic well-being.

6. This became known as the “Truman Doctrine.”
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In 1947, President Harry S Truman warned the Soviet Union that the United States would act to stop the spread of communism anywhere in the world where it threatened democracy.
This became known as the “Truman Doctrine.”

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3. Taking the lead in establishing and sustaining an international organization strong enough to guarantee peace, the United Nations.

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In the years that followed WWII, the United States fulfilled many of these responsibilities, yet the world was still troubled by war and the rumors of war as the horizon loomed dark.
America’s new role of world leadership following WWII brought it into conflict with the Soviet Union, which had also emerged from the war as a world power.

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Main goal of communism?
To carry out this purpose, Communist agents were sent to many countries and working from within, these agents sought to spread the Communist ideology and influence by undermining the governments of these countries.
The U.S.S.R. regarded itself as the leader of a communist revolution designed to replace the capitalist world in which the United States was the principal power.

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This struggle between the Soviet Union (trying to spread communism) and the United States (trying to contain communism and spread democracy) began even as World War 2 ended and is known as the “Cold War.”

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Even before WWII ended, the Soviets began to move aggressively against their weaker neighbors.
In 1940, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia (countries to which the U.S.S.R. had some historical claims) were incorporated into the Soviet Empire.
As a result of WWII, the Soviets also acquired large parts of Poland and Rumania.
With the Allies (calling themselves the United Nations) taking no heed to Winston Churchill’s warnings of intended Soviet expansion in the 1940s, the U.S.S.R. was deeply entrenched in the Far East (Japan/China), the Mediterranean, and in Europe within a short time after the end of World War 2.

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The Communist leaders defended their actions on the grounds of self-defense from “capitalist” nations and claimed that they were forced to maintain powerful military forces to control bordering countries from which an attack might be launched.
The United States, however, adamantly objected to the Soviet Union’s domination of its weaker neighbors.
Additionally, the U.S., which had demobilized most of its troops after the war, resented the Soviet policy of maintaining huge military forces…and perhaps most of all, Americans despised the ruthless methods used by the Communists to crush all opposition and competition—bringing most Americans to regard the Soviet Union as the world’s newest and perhaps most dangerous aggressor.

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Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that an “iron curtain” divided the continent of Europe between the democratic nations of Western Europe and the communist nations of Eastern Europe.

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The Berlin Wall in Germany, built in 1961, divided not only the city and the country, but also the democratic and communist countries of Europe and served as an identifying symbol of the Cold War.

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From the end of World War 2 to 1990, just about every circumstance involving U.S. foreign policy was in some way related to the Cold War.