V o L u m e I : a d

empire but would do everything possible to prevent its expansion, even in

countries outside its borders. The world would live for years in a state of

tension.

Exactly what accelerated the tensions is unclear, at least to me. The

Soviets certainly had nothing to fear from the small U.S. and British occupa-

tion forces in Europe. After the mad rush to bring our soldiers home from

overseas following the war, we finally left only one American infantry division,

the 1st, to occupy the American zones of both Germany and Austria. That

division was supplemented by a constabulary about the size of a combat

command of an armored division, but together they constituted little threat.

The United States possessed the atomic bomb, to be sure, but nobody out-

side the inner circles of government knew how many atomic bombs. Had

war come, we presumably could have destroyed Moscow, but the powerful

Red Army in Eastern Europe could overrun all of Western Europe with no

difficulty. At the same time, psychological factors were at work in the form of

books and other information leaking out of the Soviet Union. Books such as

Viktor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon

revealed aspects of the inner Soviet Union that Americans in general had not

previously known. The tensions between the two societies were now ideo-

logical as well as military.

In 1948 the Soviet Union had its first real confrontation with the United

States and Britain. Red Army forces cut off all ground communication be-

tween the Western sector of Berlin and the part of Germany occupied by

Western forces. Although it can be argued that the occupation of Berlin had

become an anachronism, the Western powers had developed an obligation to

the people of West Berlin to protect them from the Soviets, and the Allies

decided that they had to stay.

President Harry S. Truman, with the advice and counsel of Marshall, the

great soldier-statesman, took a moderate course. Although the United States

was still the sole possessor of the atomic weapon, Truman and Marshall

decided to wait out the siege and feed the population in the western zone of

Berlin by supplies sent in by aircraft.

The result, which comprises a story in itself, was a spectacular feat. For

eleven months, planes flew into Tempelhof Airport around the clock; a major

city was fed and provided coal by air. The Soviets, unwilling to push the

Allies further, raised the siege after eleven months. The world was astounded,

although many of our citizens had a feeling that the United States was being

pushed around and that the initiative in the East-West confrontation belonged

to the East.

In 1949 China joined the Soviet Union, adding millions of people to the

communist bloc. The corrupt regime of the Nationalist Chinese President

Jiang Jieshi fell to Mao Zedong’s communist regime. Although the partner-

ship between the Soviets and the communist Chinese regime was never as

close as the West imagined, they comprised, in the Western mind, a solid

bloc. This supposition did much to affect the actions of the West in dealing

with both countries.

A Personal Perspective

7

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The Korean War (1950–1953)

On Sunday 25 June 1950, forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of

Korea (DPRK, North Korea) crossed the artificial border between North and

South Korea, the 38th Parallel of latitude, invading the Republic of Korea

(ROK, South Korea). The North Koreans, armed with Russian weapons,

easily overran most of South Korea that half of the peninsula sponsored and

once occupied by American forces.

President Truman acted promptly. He committed American air and sea

power immediately to lend support to the South Koreans, and a couple of

days later he sent the ill-fated U.S. 24th Infantry Division from occupation

duty in Japan across to join the battle. The 24th Infantry was nearly wiped

out, and its commander was captured by the North Koreans.

Like the Berlin airlift, the Korean “police action” constitutes a story in

itself. Both sides built up strength, and the North Koreans were finally

stopped in the southeast corner of the Korean Peninsula. They were then

roundly defeated by a breakout from the Pusan Perimeter, coupled with an

amphibious landing at Inchon, near Seoul. It seemed as if the war was over

until the Chinese intervened and pushed back United Nations (UN) forces

from North Korea. After three years, two of them being fought while peace

talks were on, the two sides wound up along a line almost identical to the

original 38th Parallel. Others may argue, but to me the Korean War was a

success. The objective had always been professed as being only to liberate

South Korea.

The Korean War, however, produced consequences of great political

import. The overt communist aggression demonstrated to the West that

serious consequences could result from lack of preparedness. Congress gave

the president authority to raise American ground forces in Europe from one

division to six divisions. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),

previously a pact of little consequence, was transformed into a military organi-

zation with headquarters in Paris, with General Eisenhower called from re-

tirement to command it. The United States had been restrained in its policy

for fighting the war in Korea for fear of drawing the Soviet Union into a third

world war if we bombed its ally, China. For dissenting against national policy

in public, General Douglas MacArthur was removed from the Korean com-

mand, with serious consequences for the remaining eighteen months of the

Truman administration. What had begun with tensions after World War II

had now grown into a life-and-death affair.

The Crisis Years (1950s)

The world was to enjoy no respite from tension with the end of the fighting

in Korea. No sooner had an armistice been signed at Panmunjom in July

1953 than the West learned that the Soviets had now tested an operational

thermonuclear bomb, commonly called a hydrogen bomb. Soon thereafter it

became known that the Soviets had developed long-range aircraft, Bears and

Bisons, capable of hitting the United States. Thus, the crisis of the Korean

War was supplanted by a threat of an entirely new and intensified dimension.

8

A Personal Perspective

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