Cold War

Germany.

To prevent the Western powers from demanding the Wall be removed because it was on Western territory, the East Germans built the inside wall exactly 30 centimeters on their side of the DDR-West Berlin border. 30 centimeters doesn't sound like much, but when one considers the whole Wall was 117 miles in length you can see the DDR gave up many acres of land.

East Asia

In East Asia, China fell to the Communists in 1949. The countries around 'Red China' hurried to form alliances either with the US or with each other against the threat. It is often noted that Japan (though not technically a developing country in the 1950s, but still struggling to rebuild after WW2) was helped in this respect by the conflict in Korea, which boosted Japanese exports - an oft-quoted example being early transistor radios for American GIs. South Korea itself directly received large amounts of US aid.

South East Asia

In South East Asia, the Cold War had widely differing effects. Vietnam suffered several decades of bloody conflict that cost the lives of millions of Vietnamese people, as the US and its allies tried - ultimately unsuccessfully - to prevent reunification of the country under a Communist government. This conflict spilled over into Laos and Cambodia, which also both turned Communist in the mid 1970s (at the same time as the war in Vietnam ended). In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, in attempting to implement an agrarian 'workers' paradise', killed millions of Cambodians through starvation and genocide - a legacy that means that Cambodia still ranks among the world's poorest countries.

In neighbouring Thailand though, the story was happier - American aid, economic and military, flowed in to prevent this 'bastion of democracy' from falling to Communism. This led to high economic growth, and Communism was successfully repulsed. Many note though that, ironically, in order to keep Communism out and 'democracy' in, the country was ruled for most of the latter 20th Century by a military junta (which only last year - 2006 - seized power again from the democratically elected government) Others note that increased Western influence in Thailand - in particular the presence of US military personnel - led directly to the rise of HIV AIDS and the sex industry in Thailand.

A similar story to the Philippines, where US support kept the highly corrupt and undemocratic Marcos in power for a generation. Like Thailand however, this must be viewed against a story of fairly high economic growth.

Further to the south in South East Asia, Malaysia (with British military assistance) successfully crushed a Communist insurgency in a long 'Emergency' that lasted over the 1950s. With Communism crushed, Malaysia successfully implemented a high growth strategy that even now propels it forwards in terms of economic growth, but as with Thailand, it's democratic records is more questionable. Indonesia's brutal suppression of domestic Communists (with a massive death toll) was so bloody as to equal some of the worst excesses of Communism elsewhere.

Central and South America

In Central (and to a lesser extent South) America, the struggle against Communism and Communist insurgencies lead to US interventions which often resulted in protracted and bloody civil wars.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Across sub-Saharan Africa did the Cold War have perhaps the most enduring negative impact on the developing world. Cold War rivalries encountered newly-independent countries still struggling to find their feet. Both Communists and the 'Free World' found their champions in either the governments or 'freedom movements' in each particular country. Arms, money and other forms of support flowed, and the picture was (and still is) complicated further by the resource-rich nature of many of the countries involved. The results were often catastrophic - Angola, for example, suffered one of the longest conflicts in modern history. Unlike in certain parts of East and South East Asia, there were very few Cold War 'success stories' in sub-Saharan Africa, as superpower interference had a negative influence almost everywhere.

Further reading

The seminal work on the effects of the Cold War on developing countries is Odd Arne Westad's 'The Global Cold War'. Published by Cambridge University Press, ISBN-13: 9780521853644.

The "North Korean" side consisted of

• Democratic People's Republic of Korea
• People's Republic of China
• The Soviet Union

The "South Korean" side consisted of

• Republic of Korea
• Australia
• Belgium
• Canada
• Colombia
• Ethiopia
• France
• Greece
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Philippines
• South Africa
• Thailand
• Turkey
• United Kingdom
• United States

Naval Support and Military Servicing/Repairs:

• Japan

Medical staff:

• Denmark
• Italy
• Norway
• India
• Sweden

the main important ones were: United States, North Korea, South Korea, and The Soviet Union

china was a major player in this war sending 100,s of thousands of troops.