Cold War- Origins Flashcards
(31 cards)
Definition of Cold War
A period of hostility and tensions between the ussr and USA that stops just short of war, 1945-1989
Effect of Stalinism
Competition with the west, his dominance influenced paranoia and violence
Keenan’s long telegram
February 1946- calling for containment, from Riga sourced by exiles
Churchill’s iron curtain speech
March 1946- Fulton Missouri, communism as a threat
Novikov’s statement about US foreign policy
September 1946 ‘the goal of US foreign policy is world supremacy’
Truman doctrine
March 1947- ‘contain communist expansion’ (beginning of Cold War?)
Sovietisation of Eastern Europe (salami tactics)
1946-7: Elections manipulated, other parties restricted. CIA intervention in Albania, Poland
Comic form
September 1947- keep the Sovietised countries under Moscow’s control
Zdhanov’s two camps doctrine
1947- ‘Marshall plan was preparation to extend US power in order to launch a new world war’ ‘imp. and anti-democratic vs anti-imp. And democratic camps’
Marshal plan
April 1947 approved, $17bil assistance in return for open books and free trade. Humanitarian- witnessed, charitable and generous aid. Selfish- ‘dollar imperialism’, served interests, poverty bred communism
Stalin blocks land routes in protest of the Deutschmark
June 1948 in Berlin.
NATO formed
April 1949
FDR and GDR formed
May and October 1949
NSC 68
1950 outlines US’s cornerstone policy of containment
Long term tensions
Civil war 1917-22; wilsonian liberalism vs Marxist Leninism (1920s); appeasement of hitler in 1930s due to fear of communism; Arcos raid may 1927; 1930s excluded from League of Nations solved by Litvinov; N-S pact 1939; bad communication
Number of army troops in Eastern Europe after ww2
11 million
USA’s industrial boom
1940-4 industrial output increased 90%
Comparative losses from ww2
USSR lost 27mill people, USA only 330,000; ussr lost 60% of transport network and 70% of industry
Power vacuum after ww2
In Japan, Germany and indochina
Mistrust and suspicion from ww2
A bomb, common enemy gone differences returned, NS pact, late second front
New world order of superpowers
USSR and USA were head and shoulders above the world, empires were gone, they were fighting for supremacy
Tehran
November 1943: tensions over stalin’s demands to keep territory in e.europe and Poland, Japan. Agreed UN and the need for a weak post war Germany
Yalta
February 1945: 4Ds, $20bil reparations 50% to ussr, ussr got Poland and moved Oder-Neisse line east.
Between conferences
Roosevelt died April 1945; Germany surrendered may 1945; Attlee replaced Churchill; US A-bomb July 1945
