CAL Online

Lesson 9.02 "Dollars Defeat Communism: Halting the Spread of Red"

After the threat of the Axis was wiped clean from the global landscape, America emerged as the foremost power in the world. It was matched only by the ever-growing USSR. Once the two new superpowers had finished defeating the Nazi’s, their cooperation came to an end. Each side settled down for a long, drawn out war in which no shots would be fired. This “Cold War” was officially recognized when former Prime Minister of England, Winston Churchill, gave a speech likening Communist control of Eastern Europe an “Iron Curtain descending across the continent.”

President Truman

In 1947 President Harry Truman announced his famous Truman Doctrine that called for preventing the spread of Communism and promised assistance to all peoples fighting “outside subjugation.” This was seen as a containment plan for the USSR.

Shortly thereafter Secretary of State George Marshall proposed his Marshall plan: over 400 billion to be given to countries attempting to rebuild their infrastructure and economies after the war. Supposedly, economic security would prevent the rise of Communist parties in these countries because Communism was often an answer for desperate peoples. America knew that it could use monetary and military aid to prevent Communisms spread.

During the Cold War the United States adopted the “Containment” Doctrine to stop the spread of Communism. The author of this famous doctrine was a young member of the State department by the name of George Kennan. He believed that if you could stop the spread of Communism into other nations then the Soviet Union would destroy itself.

George Marshall

Assignment 9.02 "Dollars Defeat Communism: Halting the Spread of Red"

Research the following sites and then answer the questions below:

Helpful links:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/coldwar1.htmà a map of the influence of the USSR versus the influence of the U.S.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/trudoc.htmà complete text of the Truman Doctrine speech.
http://www.hpol.org/marshall/ à explanation and text of George Marshall’s proposal, called the Marshall Plan.

Questions for analysis

According to the map which nation, the US or the Soviet Union, controlled the most territory?
Which two countries received the initial supply of American money to stop the spread of Communism internally, under the Truman Doctrine? Was it successful?
Why do you think that the Soviet Union and its allies refused money that was offered to them under the Marshall Plan?
How does “dollars stop the spread of Communism?”
What might be some limitations of the Containment Doctrine?