Sources about the cold war

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedom. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

 George Marshall, Secretary of State, speech at Harvard University (5th June, 1947)

This policy conflicts sharply with the principles expressed by the General Assembly in its resolution of 11th December, 1946, which declares that relief supplies to other countries "should at no time be used as a political weapon". It is becoming more and more evident to everyone that the implementation of the Marshall Plan will mean placing European countries under the economic and political control of the United States.

The so-called Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan are particularly glaring examples of the way in which the principles of the United Nations are violated, of the way in which the Organisation is ignored. As is now clear, the Marshall Plan constitutes in essence merely a variant of the Truman Doctrine adapted to the conditions of postwar Europe. In bringing forward this plan, the United States Government apparently counted on the cooperation of the Governments of the United Kingdom and France to confront the European countries in need of relief with the necessity of renouncing their inalienable right to dispose of their economic resources and to plan their national economy in their own way. The United States also counted on making all these countries directly dependent on the interests of American monopolies, which are striving to avert the approaching depression by an accelerated export of commodities and capital to Europe.

It is becoming more and more evident to everyone that the implementation of the Marshall Plan will mean placing European countries under the economic and political control of the United States and direct interference by the latter in the internal affairs of those countries. Moreover, this plan is an attempt to split Europe into two camps and, with the help of the United Kingdom and France, to complete the formation of a bloc of several European countries hostile to the interests of the democratic countries of Eastern Europe and most particularly to the interests of the Soviet Union. An important feature of this Plan is the attempt to confront the - countries of Eastern Europe with a bloc of Western European States including Western Germany. The intention is to make use of Western Germany and German heavy industry (the Ruhr) as one of the most important economic bases for American expansion in Europe, in disregard of the national interests of the countries which suffered from German aggression.

It is impossible to understand the present condition of Germany without a brief survey of what happened after 1945. The unconditional surrender of the German armed forces in May 1945 was interpreted by the Allies to mean a complete transfer of governmental authority into their hands. This interpretation was wrong from the point of view of international law. By it the Allies in practice assumed a task which it was impossible for them to fulfil. I consider it to have been a grave mistake. They would have been unable to solve this task with the best will in the world. There was bound to be failure and this failure badly affected the prestige of the Allies in Germany. It would have been wiser if the Allies had, after a short intermediate state due to the confusion left by the war, let the Germans order their affairs and had confined themselves to supervision. Their attempt to govern this large disorganized country from outside, often guided by extraneous political and economic criteria of their own, was bound to fail. It brought about a rapid economic, physical, and psychological disintegration of the Germans which might have been avoided. It also seems that intentions such as had once been manifested in the Morgenthau Plan played their part. This continued until the Marshall Plan brought the turning point. The Marshall Plan will remain for all time a glorious page in the history of the United States of America. But the change was very slow and the economic, physical, moral, and political decline of Germany which had begun with the unconditional surrender took great efforts to reverse.

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments. They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.

They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.

They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security.

They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty:

Article 1: The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

Article 2: The Parties will contribute towards the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.

Article 3: In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.

Article 4: The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any one of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.

Article 5: 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, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, 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, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area. Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

Article 6: For the purpose of Article 5 an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America ... on the occupation forces of any Party in Europe, on the islands under the jurisdiction of any Party in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer or on the vessels or aircraft in this area of any of the Parties.

Willy Brandt, A Peace Policy for Europe (1968)

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is first and foremost an effective defence alliance. It prevents potential opponents from being tempted to exert political pressure on any one of the allies through military force. But constant effort is required to maintain this defensive strength in the face of constantly advancing technical development. We realise that the commitment in Europe is a great burden on the United States.... I am afraid that the time for any significant lightening of the United States' burden has not yet come.

NATO and a policy of détente are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the existence of NATO - that is, its political weight and its readiness to defend our territory against all attacks - has shown that a policy of tensions and crises is of no avail. The weakening of NATO would reduce the possibility of a détente and lessen its effectiveness. The military deterrent has ensured the peace of Europe.... Military security and détente do not contradict, but supplement each other. Without the firm support of the alliance we cannot carry on any policy of détente. Similarly the political objective of the alliance will not be realised without an East-West détente.
DOMINO THEORY

Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs 1945-53 (12th July, 1952)

I had become more and more firmly convinced that Stalin had always intended to get hold of West Germany with as little destruction as possible. His policy of the first post-war years had not brought the result he wished, but I was convinced that the Soviet Union had not given it up. If Stalin were to succeed in gaining control in the Federal Republic without too much destruction, he would then be able to exercise a decisive influence on France and Italy, countries whose political order was not very firm and where there were strong communist parties. Soviet dominance in the Federal Republic, France, and Italy would make Soviet Russia into the strongest economic, military, and political power on earth. It would mean the victory of communism in the world, including the United States. My policy has always been informed by the conviction that this is the goal of Soviet Russia.

If Russia should succeed in including Western Germany in the Soviet system, it would mean such an access of economic and war potential that Russia would gain a preponderance over the United States. Russia would certainly respect the American atomic striking force until she herself possessed enough atom bombs. In January 1949 the Soviets had for the first time succeeded in exploding an atom bomb. Soviet Russia would probably refrain from an attack until a balance had been reached in atomic production. Then, however, it might happen that neither Russia nor the United States would use that weapon, as was the case with poison gas which both sides in the last war possessed in equal measure so that both sides were careful not to use it. Once an atomic balance had been reached, land armies and air forces might become the decisive factors.

Vice-president Richard Nixon, speech, (December, 1953)

If Indochina falls, Thailand is put in an almost impossible position. The same is true of Malaya with its rubber and tin. The same is true of Indonesia. If this whole part of South East Asia goes under Communist domination or Communist influence, Japan, who trades and must trade with this area in order to exist must inevitably be oriented towards the Communist regime.

Vietnam is a nasty place to fight. But there are no neat and tidy battlefields in the struggle for freedom; there is no 'good' place to die. And it is far better to fight in Vietnam - on China's doorstep - than fight some years hence in Hawaii, on our own frontiers.

 Professor George Kahin, speech (15th May, 1965)

Those who still are impressed by the simplistic domino theory must realize that non-communist governments of Southeast Asia will not automatically collapse if the Communists should come to control all of Vietnam. So long as Southeast Asian governments are in harmony with their nations' nationalism, so long as they are wise enough to meet the most pressing economic and social demands of their people, they are not likely to succumb to Communism.

 Theodore Draper, Abuse of Power (1967)

The Latin American dominoes did not fall after Castro's victory (in Cuba) because the world is far more complex and unpredictable than the theory gives it credit for being. Castro's growing force immediately set in motion counterforces throughout Latin America, not sponsored by the United States alone, which was most ineffective, but in the domestic policies of each Latin American country... The Cuban experience does not prove that the Latin American dominoes could not have fallen; it merely proves that Castro's victory by itself was not enough for them to fall.

 President John F. Kennedy, interview (1963)

I believe there is no country in the world . . . where economic colonisation, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, partly as a consequence of U.S. policy during the Batista regime. I believe that, without being aware of it, we conceived and created the Castro movement, starting from scratch. I also believe that this accumulation of errors has put all Latin America in danger. The whole purpose of the 'Alliance for Progress' (an economic aid programme for Latin America) is to reverse this fatal policy.

For many years, while revolutionary prospects there seemed promising, the Comintern poured the greater part of its money into Germany and Central Europe. But when it became more decisively an appendage of the Soviet Government, and revolutionary objectives were side-tracked in favour of Stalinizing public opinion and capturing key positions in the democratic governments, Moscow's budgets for France, Great Britain and the United States were enormously increased.

Whoever resisted these new policies was now ruthlessly purged. The Yugoslav Communists, standing up against all pressures, were expelled from the Cominform in July 1948 and excommunicated from world communism, and Tito's government denounced as pro-capitalist, even fascist. This in turn set the stage for vast new purges. Since Tito was the worst of all possible enemies, anyone associated with him or with his ideas of an independent, national development of socialism was considered an imperialist spy deserving to be eliminated. In frame-up trials (which I did not then view as frame-ups and fully endorsed), Slansky, Rajk, Kostov and others were executed, while Gomulka, Kadar and many more were removed in disgrace and thrown into prison.

It would not be fair to be over-critical, particularly when such a fine rescue operation for Berlin was mounted by the Western Powers. Maybe there were delays.... I would prefer to stress the positive aspects of the Blockade. First, it was a heroic episode in which the Allied pilots and the Berliners played the main roles. Then it brought about a feeling of real co-operation between the Berliners and the Allies. Those were grey, grim days; but our people showed their steadfastness, their courage, their dry humour and their basic decency.

I was in the fifth wave that hit "Red Beach," which in reality was a rough, vertical pile of stones over which the first assault troops had to scramble with the aid of improvised landing ladders topped with steel hooks.

Despite a deadly and steady pounding from naval guns and airplanes, enough North Koreans remained alive close to
the beach to harass us with small-arms and mortar fire. They even hurled hand grenades down at us as we crouched in trenches, which unfortunately ran behind the sea wall in the inland side.

It was far from the "virtually unopposed" landing for which the troops had hoped after hearing of the quick capture of Wolmi Island in the morning by an earlier Marine assault. Wolmi is inside Inchon harbor and just off "Red Beach." At H-hour minus seventy, confident, joking Marines started climbing down from the transport ship on cargo nest and dropping into small assault boats. Our wave commander. Lieutenant R. J. Schening, a veteran of five amphibious assaults, including Guadalcanal, hailed me with the comment, "This has a good chance of being a pushover."

Because of tricky tides, our transport had to stand down the channel and it was more than nine miles to the rendezvous point where our assault waves formed up.

The channel reverberated with the ear-splitting boom of warship guns and rockets. Blue and orange flames spurted from the "Red Beach" area and a huge oil tank, on fire, sent great black rings of smoke over the shore. Then the fire from the big guns lifted and the planes that had been circling overhead swooped low to rake their fire deep into the sea wall.

The first wave of our assault troops was speeding toward the shore by now. It would be H-hour (5:30 P.M.) in two minutes. Suddenly, bright-orange tracer bullets spun out from the hill in our direction.

"My God! There are still some left," Lieutenant Schening said. "Everybody get down. Here we go!"

It was H-hour plus fifteen minutes as we sped the last two thousand yards to the beach. About halfway there the bright tracers started cutting across the top of our little boat. "Look at their faces now," said John Davies of the Newark News. I turned and saw that the men around me had expressions contorted with anxiety.

We struck the sea wall hard at a place where it had crumbled into a canyon. The bullets were whining persistently, spattering the water around us. We clambered over the high steel sides of the boat, dropping into the water and, taking shelter beside the boat as long as we could, snaked on our stomachs up into a rock-strewn dip in the sea wall.

In the sky there was good news. A bright, white star shell from the high ground to our left and an amber cluster told us that the first wave had taken their initial objective, Observatory Hill. But whatever the luck of the first four waves, we were relentlessly pinned down by rifle and automatic-weapon fire coming down on us from another rise on the right.

There were some thirty Marines and two correspondents crouched in the gouged-out sea wall. Then another assault

This is the heritage of the short weeks during which most of South Korea was learning Communism.

Only weeks ago in the region around Seoul and Inchon, people were being killed, dispossessed of land and homes, left to starve, or driven away from all they held dear - because they were not Communists and refused to act like Communists.

Today, in that same region, the same things are still happening - because some Koreans are Communists and propose to remain so.

Hidden in the hills a mile off the road to Seoul, there is a village of twenty-four mud-stone huts with thatched roofs. The
people raise rice and corn. Once they had a few cattle. There were no rich here and, by Koreans standards, no poor either.

Even before the North Korean military invasion last June, nine of the men in the village were Communists. The headman didn't know why. He simply said they belonged to a Red organization, and frequently went to meetings

"It made trouble," the headman told an American intelligence officer through an interpreter. She says the lectures talked about life in Russia, how things are done there, and how good everything is. She says it was convincing, and people believed what they heard. "But she is not a Communist. She went because she was hungry."

As a result, the headman said, some of the other villages banded together and beat the Communists. "There was always trouble and fighting," said the headman, "and we talked of driving the Reds away."

Then the North Korean army swept southward over this little village. The nine Communists suddenly appeared in uniforms. They killed some of their neighbors and caused others to be put in jail at Inchon. The headman himself fled to safety in the south. One of the villagers went with him.

"He did not want to go," said the headman. "He was to be married. The girl stayed here. She is 18 and a grown
woman, but she did not know what to do."

Back in the village the nine Communists began putting theory into practice. First they confiscated all land. Then they