Origins of the Cold War

3. Historical Rivalry:

• The USSR had become a communist country for more than 30 years, officially in 1922 but the revolution had started in 1917 and the Allies (Britain, USA, and France) had supported the anti-Communist White Movement. Although the Civil War was won by the Red Army, and Communists, the two sides remained enemies.

• The USSR remained isolated from the Allies. It was not allowed to join the League of Nations until 1934 and still, Communism was considered a great evil.

• Britain and France, in the 1930s also followed the Policy of Appeasement which further deteriorated their relations with the USSR because they were effectively allowing Nazi Germany to grow to power so that Hitler could attack. The Soviet leader, Stalin responded to this by signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 which was considered cynical by the Western nations on Stalin’s part and it did directly lead to the outbreak of the Second World War.

• In 1941, Hitler declared war on the USSR and launched Operation Barbarossa. This led to the Soviets forming a wartime alliance with Britain and France which was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, Stalin remained embittered because the Allies had not launched a second military front against the Germans until June 1944.

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Yalta Conference:

• In February 1945 it was clear that Germany was losing the Second World War hence the Big Three, Stalin (USSR), Churchill (Britain), and Roosevelt (USA) met at Yalta, Ukraine to decide some important matters.

• It was agreed that Stalin would join the war against Japan once Germany had surrendered. In return, the USSR would receive land in Manchuria and territory lost to Japan during the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War.

• Unconditional surrender & occupation of Germany.

• Germany to pay reparations, be disarmed and de-industrialized.

• Germany would be divided into four zones; American, French, British, and Soviet. The German capital Berlin itself was divided into the respective four zones as well.

• The Big Three agreed that as countries would be liberated from German occupation, they would be allowed to hold free elections and choose the government they want.

• A United Nations Organization would be set up which would aim to keep the peace after the war.

• It was agreed that tribunals would be set up for war crimes committed by the Germans in Germany, Central, and Eastern Europe for perpetrating the Holocaust and Japanese war crimes committed in the Asian-Pacific countries.

• The Soviet Union had suffered terribly due to the war and Stalin was concerned about the future security of the USSR, specifically another invasion from Europe hence he wanted friendly countries on the borders of the USSR. The Big Three agreed that Eastern Europe should be seen as a ‘Soviet Sphere of influence’.

• In Poland a provisional government would form, comprising pro-Soviet Lublin Poles and exiled London Poles who fled in 1939.

• The only disagreement was about the Polish border:

1. Stalin wanted the border of the USSR to move westwards from Poland. Stalin argued that Poland, in turn, could move its border westwards into German territory.

2. Churchill did not approve of Stalin’s plans for Poland, but he also knew that there was not very much he could do about it because Stalin’s Red Army was in control of both Poland and Germany.

3. Churchill persuaded Roosevelt to accept it, as long as the USSR agreed not to interfere in Greece where the British were attempting to prevent the Communists from taking over. Stalin accepted this.

Aftermath:

• After liberating the countries in Eastern Europe, the Soviet troops did not leave and people fearing a Communist takeover began to flee. Stalin had set up a Communist Government in Poland, which was liberated by the end of January 1945, against the wishes of the Poles and insisted that his control of Eastern Europe was a defensive measure against possible future attacks.

• On 12 April 1945, President Roosevelt died and was replaced by Vice-President, Harry S. Truman who was much more anti-Communist and suspicious cops of Stalin. He thought of Stalin’s action in Eastern Europe as a larger scheme for a Soviet takeover of the rest of Europe.

• In May 1945, Germany surrendered and the war ended in Europe. Joint occupation of Germany in 4 occupational zones. The capital, Berlin was also jointly occupied and the borders of Poland and Germany also adjusted.

• On 16 July 19th 45, the USA successfully tested the Atom Bomb. At the Potsdam Conference, Truman informed Stalin about it.

• On 26 July 1945, Churchill was defeated in the elections and replaced by Clement Attlee during the Potsdam Conference.

Potsdam Conference:

• It took place on 17 July 1945, in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam.

• Stalin wanted to cripple Germany completely to protect the USSR against future threats. Truman did not want to repeat the mistake of the Treaty of Versailles.

• Twenty million Russians had died in the war and the Soviet Union had been devastated. Stalin wanted compensation from Germany but again Truman did not want to repeat the mistake of the Treaty of Versailles.

• At Yalta, the Allies agreed that Stalin could set up pro-Soviet governments in Eastern Europe. But Truman now felt this went against democratic principles and soon adopted a ‘get tough’ attitude towards Stalin.

• Stalin wanted a joint occupation of Japan, but Truman did not want any Soviet involvement in Japan.

• It was decided that the Nazi Party would be banned and the Allies would initiate a process of denazification in Germany.

• Each country was to take reparations from its zone.

• The Polish-German border was to be the Oder-Neisse Line formed by two rivers; however, there was still no agreement on the future government of Poland.

Atomic Diplomacy:

• In August 1945, the USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

• In October 1945, Truman made a speech outlining 12 Points in American foreign policy.

• These included a pledge that the US did not desire any territory and did not intend to go to war with any country; however, he also announced that the USA would be building military bases around the world.

• These naval and air bases, along with radio and radar outposts, would give the USA the ability to project its military power around the globe.

• Furthermore, Truman said that he did not intend to share the secrets of the atomic bomb with anybody, instead of retaining it as a “sacred trust in the cause of peace”.

• Truman claimed that his speech outlined peaceful intentions but was criticized by some for ‘sabre-rattling'.

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Communism in Eastern Europe:

1. East Germany:

• The Allies had given the USSR control of the eastern sector of Germany. It was run by the USSR effectively under Red Army control until the creation of the German Democratic Republic in 1949.

2. Poland:

• Soviet troops remained after liberation.

• The new government formed in June 1945 was dominated by Lublin Poles, an executive governing authority established by the Soviet-backed communists in Poland at the later stage of World War II.

• The coalition government formed with the exiled London Poles ended when opposition leaders were arrested and murdered.

• The rigged elections in 1947 gave Communists 80 per cent of the vote.

3. Czechoslovakia:

• The left-wing won the elections in 1945. In 1946 Communists became the largest single party, but still in a coalition.

• Foreign Minister Jans Masaryk, a popular and non-Communist politician was murdered in May 1947.

• All non-Communist members of the government resigned in February 1948, with Communists filling vacant positions. After this, all other parties were banned and Czechoslovakia became a one-party state.

4. Hungary:

• Soviet troops remained after liberation.

• Communists won 17 per cent of the vote in the November 1945 elections but they used secret police to discredit and persecute rival politicians and parties.

• The rigged elections of 1947 gave Communists control of a coalition government and in the next year, 1948, the Social Democratic Party and Communist Party merged.

5. Romania:

• In 1945 a Communist was elected Prime Minister within a left-wing coalition and they gained other key positions.

• In 1946, the rigged elections gave the Communists and their allies 90 per cent of the vote.

• In 1947 the Communists also abolished the monarchy.

• Bulgaria:

• A left-wing coalition won elections in 1945. The Communist members of the coalition then executed the leaders of the other party.

• The monarchy was abolished in 1946.

• A new constitution in 1947 effectively destroyed parliamentary democracy.

• Albania:

• Communists gained power immediately after the war. There was little opposition as during the war Communist and nationalist resistance movements opposed the Italian and later German occupation forces. As the war ended, the strong Communist movement had the backing of Communist Yugoslavia and the USSR.

6. Yugoslavia:

• Marshall Tito had led wartime resistance to the Nazis. He was elected President in 1945. However, he was determined to apply Communism in his way and was expelled from Cominform in 1948. He also accepted aid from the West.

• Greece:

• Britain and the USSA supported the royalist side in the Greek Civil War which defeated the Communist opposition.

7. Both France and Italy had strong Communist parties which belonged to Cominform.

Cominform:

• In October 1947, Stalin established the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform).

• Its headquarters were first in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1947-48) then shifted to Bucharest, Romania (1948-56).

• It was a form of the communist party whose actions were to be coordinated by the USSR.

• The countries now under Soviet control became ‘satellite’ states.

• Cominform regularly brought leaders of each Communist Party to Moscow to be briefed by Stalin and his ministers.

• This allowed Stalin to spot single-minded leaders and replace them with those loyal to him. The only Communist leader who escaped his close control was Marshall Tito in Yugoslavia. He resented being controlled by Cominform and thus was expelled in 1948. Subsequently, the bureau’s headquarters were shifted.

Comecon:

• The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance - an economic organisation was founded in January 1949 and dissolved in 1991.

• It was the Eastern Bloc's response to the formation of the Marshall Plan in Western Europe.

• It comprised the countries of Eastern Europe under the leadership of the Soviet Union along with several Communist states elsewhere in the world namely, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Cuba, Mongolia, and Vietnam.

• It was set up to coordinate the industries and trade of the Eastern European countries.

• The idea was that members of Comecon traded mostly with one another rather than trading with the West.

• Comecon was set up initially to prevent countries in the Soviet sphere of influence from moving towards that of the United States and aimed at establishing stronger links for Soviet bloc countries over economic issues.

• Comecon favoured the USSR far more than any of its other members. It provided the USSR with a market to sell its goods. It also guaranteed a cheap supply of raw materials. For example, Poland was forced to sell its coal to the USSR at one-tenth of the price that it could have got selling it on the open market.

• It set up a bank for socialist countries in 1964.

Aftermath:

• Over the next nine months after Potsdam, Stalin achieved the domination of Eastern Europe that he was seeking. On 5 March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a speech at Fulton, Missouri in which he first used the term iron curtain.

• The term “iron curtain” had been employed as a metaphor since the 19th century, but Churchill used it to refer specifically to the political, military, and ideological barrier created by the U.S.S.R. following World War II to prevent open contact between itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies on the one hand and the West and other non-communist regions on the other.

• He stressed the necessity for the United States and Britain to act as the guardians of peace and stability against the menace of Soviet communism, which had lowered an “iron curtain” across Europe.

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Development of the US foreign policy:

Background:

• When the Germans retreated from Greece in 1944, there were two rival groups, the Monarchists and the Communists, both of whom wanted to rule the country.

• The Communists wanted Greece to become the Soviet Republic whereas the Monarchists wanted the return of the King. Both groups had also been involved in the resistance against the Nazis.

• In 1945, Winston Churchill sent British troops to Greece to help restore order and supervise free elections but the British supported the Monarchists and wanted to ensure the King’s return to power.

• In 1946, the USSR protested to the United Nations that British troops were a threat to peace in Greece but the UN took no action.

• In March 1946 the third phase of the Greek Civil War broke out between the Greek government (supported by the United Kingdom and the United States) and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) – the military branch of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) (supported by Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia, and covertly by the Soviet Union via their Eastern European proxies).

• On 24 February 1947, Britain withdrew from the war on grounds of not being able to sustain the cost of war.

• Truman now intervened and with American support, the Monarchists won the civil war. The victory of the Kingdom of Greece marked the establishment of a government that was always in crisis.

Truman Doctrine:

• It is an American foreign policy that originated with the primary goal of containing Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War.

• Under the doctrine, the USA was prepared to send money, equipment, and advice to any country that was threatened by a coercive Communist takeover.

• The policy was not only meant to prevent the subjugation of other countries from Communism but to contain the spread of communism; this policy became known as Containment.

Marshall Plan:

• After the end of the Second World War, Truman sent American General George Marshall to assess the economic state of Europe. What he found was a ruined economy.

• The European Countries owed $11.5 billion to the USA thus Marshall suggested about $17 billion would be needed to rebuild Europe’s prosperity.

• In December 1947, Truman put his plan to the American Congress. Initially, they refused to grant the money because it was a large sum and they were concerned about Truman’s increasing involvement in foreign affairs.

• However, after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état, the Marshall Plan was quickly adopted.

1. Czechoslovakia had been ruled by a coalition government that, although including Communists, had been trying to pursue policies independent of Moscow.

2. In late February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia, marking the onset of four decades of communist rule in the country.

3. The Anti-Soviet leaders were purged and the pro-American Minister, Jan Masaryk was killed.

• The Marshall Plan was introduced in April 1948. The United States transferred over $13 billion in economic recovery programs to Western European economies. It was available for over four years.

Why was the Marshall Plan offered to all countries of Europe?

• All of Europe had been devastated by the war and needed help to rebuild, there was a coal shortage in the hard winter of 1947 that in Britain electricity was turned off for a period each day.

• To reduce the spread of communism since it appealed to those suffering from poverty and hardship. The European Countries were suffering from an extreme shortage of goods and most countries still had rationing.

• To improve American trade by making Europe a market for American goods. Truman wanted to prevent another worldwide economic recession like the Depression of the 1930s.

• Offering the Marshall Plan to communist countries would be diplomatically beneficial and might draw some communist countries away from the USSR.

• US aid throughout Europe would also make their respective economies dependent on the US. The policy of dollar imperialism would allow the US to maintain and dominate distant lands through economic aid.

What was the Soviet response to the Marshall Plan?

• The Soviet Union prevented the countries in the Eastern Bloc to accept the Marshall Plan but was unable to stop Yugoslavia from doing so.

• In response to the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union introduced the Molotov Plan in 1947.

• The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned with the Soviet Union.

• The plan was a system of bilateral trade agreements which also established Comecon to create an economic alliance of socialist countries.

• Trade agreements were negotiated and designed to boost trade in Eastern Europe

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The Berlin Blockade:

Background:

• By 1948, distrust was increasingly growing between the USA and the USSR, and leaders of the nations talked about the threat of war. Despite all threatening talk, the two sides never engaged in a hot war however, the Cold War had been initiated - A state of political hostility between countries characterised by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare.

• After the war, neither the Allies nor the USSR wanted to rebuild Germany too quickly but the Allies still wanted a gradual economic recovery so that Germany could feed its people; however, Stalin, fearing a recovering Germany, wanted to cripple it.

• In 1947, Britain and the USA combined their occupational zones of Germany which became known as the Bizone. After the addition of the French-occupied zone in 1948, the entity became known as the Trizone and on 23 May 1949, the Trizone became the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly known as West Germany.

• Earlier in 1948, the Allies had also introduced a new official currency of West Germany, the Deutsche Mark (1948-90) and within months there were signs of German economic recovery.

• Stalin believed that the Western Allies had no right to be in Berlin and saw them as a threat as they had a base inside the Soviet Union that they could use to spy on Soviet activity behind the Iron Curtain.

The Blockade:

• Stalin felt that the USA’s handling of Western Germany was provocative but he could do nothing to prevent the economic recovery.

• Instead, he decided to stamp his authority on Berlin. It was deep in the Soviet zone and was linked to the western zones of Germany by vital roads, railways, and canals.

• On 24 June 1948, Stalin blocked all these supply lines, cutting off the two million-strong population of West Berlin from Western help.

• By cutting off all gas and electricity supplies, Stalin aimed to force the other three powers out of Berlin, making Berlin fully dependent on the Soviet Union.

• This was done to coerce the Western Allies into leaving Berlin, making it entirely dependent on the USSR. Or if the US troops would try to ram the roadblocks or railway blocks, Stalin would see it as an act of war thus getting a legitimate claim for a defensive attack.

The Berlin Airlift:

• Americans were not prepared to give up on Stalin and saw West Berlin as a test case in the policy of containment. For them, Berlin was a symbol of freedom behind the Iron Curtain.

• Truman also would not pull out of Berlin as it would render the Truman Doctrine an empty threat and mean countries would not trust the United States to stand up to Communism in the future.

• In response to the blockade, the only way into Berlin was by air. So from 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949, the Berlin airlift was initiated to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city's population.

• The supplies included food, medicines, clothing, oil, and building materials which were carried to Berlin in a constant stream of aeroplanes but still, there were enormous shortages and many Berliners decided to leave the city altogether.

• The airlift involved nearly 300,000 flights and planes were landing in West Berlin at the rate of one every two minutes.

• Although they did not fire on incoming aircraft, the Soviets used obstruction tactics, including jamming radios and shining searchlights to temporarily blind pilots.

• On 12 May 1949, the blockade was lifted and Stalin reopened communications.

Impact:

• As a result of the Berlin Blockade, Germany was effectively and firmly divided into two nations. Western Germany had already become the Federal Republic of Germany and the Communist easter zone in October 1949 became the German Democratic Republic.

• Throughout the next 41 years of the Cold War, Berlin remained a powerful symbol, for the West an oasis of democratic freedom in the middle of Communist repression, and for the Soviets invasive cancer growing in the worker’s paradise of East Germany. The differing perspectives would lead to the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin until its demolition in 1989.

• Berlin was more than a symbol but was also a potential flashpoint that affected the USA and USSR’s policies in other areas of the world.

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NATO:

• The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is an intergovernmental military alliance formed on 4 April 1949.

• It aimed to strengthen international ties between member states, especially the United States and Europe.

• It also served as a collective defence against an external attack and guaranteed the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

• It remains in existence today.

Warsaw Pact:

• The Warsaw Treaty Organisation (WTO), officially the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact (WP), was a collective defence treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, in May 1955.

• It was signed between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe namely, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria.

• The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO.

• It set up a unified military command under Marshall Ivan S Konev of the Soviet Union.

• It was dissolved in July 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR.

*Notes are taken from the class of Sir Iftikhar Zaidi (2020)