Once World War II ended and the cold war started to surface, tons of nations felt renewed anxiousness over peace across the United States and all the other countries around the world. Norman A Graebner preached that because of the Soviets actions following World War II, they brought back up visions of “Munich Syndrome.” The comparison symbolized how effectively the Nazi’s military was able to spread through Europe. Due to the maneuvers of the newly developed Soviet Union, the United States and other allies in Europewere ready to stop the spread of communism and to make sure we did not live in a communist world. In order to stop the spread of communism, the Eisenhower administration developed a campaign called the Atoms of Peace. The …show more content…
The speech to help promote the peaceful use of the atom was conceived by pragmatism, dedicated to being used in realism, and promoted by the government using an ideal setting. At each stage of the speech and campaign many rhetorical purposes were used, some good, some bad, but both motivated by words and deeds. The speech that Eisenhower’s administration developed had three parts. First, despite American protestations to the contrary, Eisenhower 's "Atoms for Peace" speech was, in fact, a carefully crafted piece of Cold War rhetoric. The speech was specifically designed to gain a psychological victory over the Soviet Union. It was part of the American peace offensive launched, in part, as a response to an ongoing Soviet peace offensive. Second, the speech creates one audience on the level of explicit argument, but a much different audience when the implicit arguments are examined. Specifically, the speech is directed to the world at large, particularly those nonaligned nations in the midst of industrialization. It is aimed at that amorphous animal called world opinion. Implicitly, it is addressed to the Soviet Union, partly as warning, partly as a challenge. Third, the language is intentionally structured to invite the world at large to understand "Atoms for Peace" as a step toward nuclear disarmament. In addition to the internal structure, the
When discussing WWII and The Cold War from an American perspective, the focus is likely to be centered on the wartime efforts of the country while debating strengths and shortcomings within those efforts. However, while the physical and psychological wars waged on, America’s homefront saw a continuation of fighting in the form of social movements aimed at attaining equality for all Americans. Minorities like African Americans and Mexican immigrants continued to face discrimination and racism during WWII but were shaped in different ways by the war. The Cold War era in America is a very complex subject marked by heightened tensions, fear, and paranoia among citizens. Much in the same way that WWII shaped the plight of minorities and immigrants on the homefront, the Cold War era also effected what it meant to be an American by shaping the conformist social class. Reaction to this conformity would also be shaped by the Cold War era, and Americans would eventually become critical to these effects.
America constantly seemed to be on the verge of war, with Eisenhower controlling a significant Cold War crisis every year he was in office: Korea, Vietnam, Formosa, Suez, Hungary, Berlin, and the U-2 (Eisenhower National Historic Site). Many officials around Eisenhower clamored to drop the Atomic Bomb, yet he always kept a level head because he knew that real security meant preserving fundamental values (Miller Center – Dwight David Eisenhower). President Eisenhower was determined to find world peace by dealing calmly and realistically with each situation that transpired while he was in office. His objective was to find a solution that avoided war while upholding America’s
First, in the Stalin speech in 1946, he stated “the only key to future world peace was for “monopoly capitalism” to be replaced by Communism around the world.” It became clear to the Supreme Court Justice William Douglas that Stalin was declaring another World War based in his ideology. (Fraser 697). Based on Stalin speech, the American embassy in Moscow, George Kennan sent the “Long Telegram”, which he explained his strategy of “containment” against Soviet Union, “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree]”; as a result, America’s only choice
As World War II came to its end, agreements among the winning powers began to dissolve. The U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union…had very different views politically, socially, and economically. World War II, which was considered a “hot” war, was followed by the cold war. This war was a conflict primarily between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that persevered throughout much of the postwar period. The ideological differences were mutual distrust. As US was a capitalist country, Americans feared communism and the nuclear arms race were the major
During World War II the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, but by 1950, their relationship had disintegrated and the two nations were engaged in a “Cold War.” The “Cold War” occurred due to efforts by both nations after the war to maintain influence in regions like Eastern Europe for the Soviets and Turkey and Greece for the United States, but the “Cold War” wasn’t limited to these disputes. The “Cold War” was influenced by many factors on the United States side including the creation of and dropping of atomic bombs by the United States on Japan in 1945, the Truman Doctrine and the X Article in 1947, the Berlin Airlift and the Marshall plan in 1948, the formation of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in 1949,
In 1945 the entire world could have died. The sacrificial freedom and silence by a few would eventually save the American masses. While the decision to develop The Manhattan Project and drop the Atomic bomb on Japan surely ended World War II, there was a huge debate about the overall process and the social implications of allowing such a disastrous event to take place. There was a race to defeat the growing power of Hitler’s Germany, but that is not where the bomb landed. Scientists that had devoted their time to create the bomb felt they should have a voice in how it was used, but they were ignored. President Truman’s Interim Committee, a military General, and a group of scientists could not agree on how to use this new weapon of mass destruction. It was not easy for the opposition or those in favor of dropping the atomic bomb to make the decision of how to use it. It is important to understand the development of the bomb’s creation as well as the ramifications of its use in order to clearly understand both side’s opinion of its effects.
I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war -- and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears, But we have no more urgent task.” After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USSR tested its first atomic bomb a few years later as a form of leverage and defense against the U.S, thus the arms race began, in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis almost pushed the world into an apocalypse, and people lived in fear for those weeks, expecting
The cold war was a tension between political and military forces.The war was after World War II.There were very many different events that went on and most of them involving communism and government problems.Communism is where everything is shared and owned by the government and this had problems because people living in the communist government didn’t want to share everything so the people began to rebel against communism which led to many different things which we call the cold war.
Whatever the gathered strategy utility of atomic prevention in keeping up stable peace – an inquiry which I 'll come to in a minute – in pragmatic operational terms it has dependably been an unbelievably delicate protection. For a begin, as the surely understood Australian global relations researcher Hedley Bull has put it, 'shared atomic prevention … does not make atomic war inconceivable, but rather basically renders it silly '. Atomic discouragement relies on upon objective performers on both sides, every making sound judgments about the danger components included – and the assumption is by all accounts, as Bull wryly puts it, that a discerning vital man is one 'who on further colleague
United States president Dwight D. Eisenhower “Atoms for peace” speech was delivered on December 8, 1953 (during the Cold War) to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, due to the end of World War II and the attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the development of nuclear weapons were rapidly increasing and therefore, destroying the nation. I will analyze this historical speech according to the five cannons of rhetoric.
Soon after World War II ended in the mid-20th century, a new rivalry started known as the Cold War. This battle aroused enmity between the world’s two great powers the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union. In the late 1950s, space became center stage for this competition, as each side left no stone unturned to prove the superiority of its technology, military firepower and political-economic system.
During the period of the Cold War the United States became involved in global affairs to control areas that seemed dangerous by modernizing and providing economic aid with the hopes of containing communism. In 1947 the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan confirmed the US commitment to keeping Europe free from communism. Then the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreement in April 1949 confirming American willingness to go to war if necessary to protect democracy from communist challenges. The events of 1949, when the Chinese communists emerged victorious from their civil war and the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, seemed to confirm to the United States that communism was expansive and aggressive. By 1950, the Cold War had become pervasive both at home and abroad. In foreign policy terms the United States had proclaimed itself as the only major protection against communist expansion. In five short years the world had transformed dramatically. Harry S. Truman quickly made his mark as President and quickly turned cold warrior. President Truman proclaimed that the United States should act as the leader of an international moral crusade against an evil and aggressive foe, meaning the Soviet Union. Korea was not explicitly part of the United States sphere on interest, as outlined by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in a speech to the National Press Club in January 1950. In the post-war era American policy makers saw the world as
There are many different political theories that try to explain the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Two prominent political theories which I will explore throughout this essay are the Realist and Idealist theory. No one theory is completely correct, as many different factors must be considered regarding the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War. For example, one essential influence to the end of the Cold War was the role of nuclear weapons and how they were used.
The development of nuclear weapons through-out the cold war period, had led the world to believe that a nuclear war was soon on its way. The evolution of nuclear testing and the Cuban missile crisis indicated how far each state was ready to go to ensure their ideological interests were pursued and at the same time their global superpower status was retained. Such techniques depicted "peace" as simply an expression with no significance. However, measures were established to guarantee the acceleration of nuclear weapons was controlled and didn 't get out of hand. The marking of different arms treaties and limit arrangements demonstrated co-operation between the two superpowers, bringing about no immediate clash, guaranteeing peace was kept and war was prevented. ‘’War would now be disastrous for either side and therefore peace was necessary and possible’’ (Kennedy-pipe, 2007, p.122).
This chapter covers the period between the Second World War and the end of the Cold War, both of which are significant turning points in the history of the First World War and have influenced the emergence of memories on the Christmas truce. It will assess how the cultural and political context of the second half the 20th Century led to new modern historiographies of the war and why memories of the truce gained ground in the 1960s, after lacking coherence in the past 50 years. The context of the post-war period and the anti-war narrative facilitated the emergence of the truce in accounts of the war, but its continued remembrance is down to its perpetual message of peace and human kindness, through which the public express contemporary concerns about the political and cultural context of the time.