Cold war crises

• Why was the Berlin wall built?

  • The four summit meetings in 1959-61 failed to solve the problem in Berlin and tensions
  • Khrushchev could not risk nuclear war with USA, but still needed to solve the refugee problem
  • building a wall would avoid war with USA but Krushchev would still look strong
• When was the Berlin wall built and what was it?

  August 1961

  • designed to prevent East Berliners travelling to West Berlin
  • in the future, any trying to travel to West would be shot
• 12 August 1961 - barbed wire fence placed around the city and then became a wall

  Soviet tanks were deployed to stop Western access to the East

  By October 1961, all West Berlin was completely cut off from Eastern Germany
• When the USA discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba, it had two options:

  1. ATTACK while it could
  2. DO EVERYTHING possible to avoid war
• The USSR saw Cuba as a way to fix a problem:

  The USA had missiles in Turkey (near Russia)

  So putting missiles in Cuba would make them even
• In September 1962 - Soviet ships carried nuclear warheads and missiles to Cuba
• US spy planes discovered the missiles in Cuba in October 1962

  The US public were in panic as they were now in range of Soviet missiles
• Kennedy's options in response to missiles in Cuba:

  1. Ignore Cuban missiles - already have some close to Russia
  2. Make a deal - withdraw missiles from both sides
  3. Invade Cuba and remove Castro's government
  4. Launch a nuclear attack quickly on USSR before they can attack
  5. Blockade Cuba to stop any more missiles coming
  6. Destroy Cuban missile sites
• The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968
• What was Brezhnev's response to Dubeck's reforms?

  1. He could not allow the reforms as any weakness in control may mean the break-up of the Warsaw Pact
  2. He failed to convince Dubcek to stop the reforms
  3. August 1968 - USSR sent tanks and 500,000 troops from the Warsaw Pact and arrested Brezhnev
  4. Czechoslovakia returned to strict communist rule under Gustav Husak
• What was the Brezhnev doctrine? (26 Sept 1968)


  Any country trying to move away from communism would be attacked by the Warsaw Pact
• The USA could not interfere with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia as it feared war and would break the Truman Doctrine as Czechoslovakia was already communist
• Yugoslavia and Romania wanted to move away from communism but they feared the attack of the Warsaw Pact due to the Brezhnev Doctriner
• Due to the Brezhnev Doctrine, Eastern European countries had to continue Soviet-style communism or risk invasion