Figure 9.16 The age of atomic espionage opens. The late 1940s, then, saw the beginnings in Canada of a panic about spies that would push Canada further and faster away from her former Soviet ally and deeper into the orbit of Cold War America. Fred Rose (1907-1983), the lone Communist Party MP in Ottawa, was implicated in the Gouzenko documents and was subsequently jailed for nearly five years. The whole of the operation was geared towards uncovering nuclear secrets so that the Soviet Union could match the American arsenal at the earliest opportunity.īy February 1946, the public was aware of the Gouzenko Affair, which played out in the press and in Parliament. Igor Gouzenko (1919-1982) disclosed the existence of a spy ring that included sleeper agents working under deep cover in Canada. In Ottawa on 5 September 1945, a Ukrainian cypher clerk slipped out of the Soviet Embassy where he worked, carrying more than 100 top-secret documents detailing Russian espionage activities in Canada. The photo is good, but everyone in it was overexposed.Ĭanada’s role in the Manhattan Project and the corollary - that there were Canadians who possessed sophisticated knowledge about how to manufacture the world’s first weapon of mass destruction - made Canada a target worth spying on. Britnell and Stan McMillan unload the first shipment of uranium concentrate from the Northwest Territories. Canada was not, however, permitted to participate in the decision-making process as to when and where to deploy the new weapons. A Combined Policy Committee was established on which Canada was represented it had oversight and coordination responsibilities regarding the atomic bombs. In 1944, Canadian scientists and technicians joined the multinational team in the United States, along with tons of uranium-bearing ore from the Northwest Territories. The agreement ensured British and American collaboration on what became known as the Manhattan Project Canadian involvement was simply assumed. The Quebec Agreement was signed by United States President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) on 19 August 1943 in the old capital of New France. The bombings served to fuel Soviet distrust of the United States and are regarded by some historians not only as the closing act of World War II, but as the opening salvo of the Cold War.Ĭanada lacked the profile of the Americans in these events but was up to its elbows in complicity. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945) were, in part, a calculated effort on the part of the American government to intimidate the Soviet Union, limiting Soviet influence in postwar Asia. Serious differences emerged over the future development of Central and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, the United States sought military victory over Japan, the achievement of global American economic supremacy, and the creation of an intergovernmental body to promote international cooperation.Īt the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allies met to decide how to administer the defeated Nazi Germany. Given Russia’s historical experience of invasions from the West and the immense death toll it recorded during the war (estimated at 27 million), the Soviet Union sought to increase security by dominating the internal affairs of countries on which it bordered, and especially Germany. Having combined to defeat the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan), the Allies (principally, the USSR, the United States, and the United Kingdom) found themselves disagreeing on the shape of the postwar world. At the February 1945 Yalta Conference, the Allies could not reach a consensus on crucial questions like the occupation of Germany and whether Germany should be forced to pay reparations again. The addition of atomic bombs to their respective arsenals entitled them to a new title: superpowers. With the old “great powers” of Europe exhausted and battered by World War II, the United States (largely unscathed, the main creditor state in the world, and heavily industrialized) and the Soviet Union (badly beaten up but in a position to rebuild its defenses) emerged as the dominant powers. The Cold War was so named as it never featured direct military action between the two superpowers or their main allies. Its origins can be traced to several sources but it rapidly became a war of postures and proxy wars between the two heavy-hitters, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Cold War refers to the period of heightened tensions between the West (that is, the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and their allies) and the Soviet Union, lasting roughly from 1945 to 1991. Lambert, reads a comic book in a foxhole in Korea, 1951. A soldier with the Vandoos, Private G.U.I. 9.4 The Cold War Figure 9.14 War is mostly about waiting.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |