Early Cold War Quiz Flashcards
(33 cards)
Tehran conference Nov-Dec 1943
The USA and Britain agreed to open up a second front by invading
Nazi-occupied Europe.
© The Soviet Union would declare war on
Japan once Germany was defeated.
© The boundaries of Poland would be
moved westwards; Poland would gain territory from Germany and lose it to the Soviet Union.
© It was also agreed that an international body would be set up to settle future disputes between countries. This set the scene for the establishment of the United Nations.
The Yalta Conference
(February 1945)
© Germany, when defeated, would be reduced in size, divided and demilitarised. It would have to , pay reparations.
© Europe would be rebuilt along the lines of the Atlantic Charter. Countries would have democratic elections.
• The UN (United Nations) would be
set up.
• The Soviet Union would declare war on Japan once Germany was defeated.
Poland would be in the Soviet sphere of influence’ but run on a broader democratic basis.
The Potsdam Conference
(July-August 1945)
A Council of Foreign Ministers was set up to organise the rebuilding of Europe.
The Nazi Party was banned and war criminals were to be prosecuted.
• Germany was to be reduced in
size and divided into four zones of occupation run by Britain, France, the USA and the Soviet Union.
• Berlin was also to be divided up into zones of occupation.
The Soviet Union was to receive 25% of the output from the other three occupied zones.
The outcomes of the conferences
Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union were able to work together to defeat Germany, who had surrendered in May 1945, tension was increasing between the wartime allies. Differences were beginning to emerge over the future of Germany and Eastern Europe. Moreover, Roosevelt’s death had led to Truman becoming president and he was much more distrustful of the Soviet Union.
Why was there increased tension between the superpowers and the start of the cold war.
The USA dropped atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945. This gave them a huge military advantage over other countries.
Stalin disliked the way in which Truman had tried to push him around at Potsdam in 1945.
Roosevelt was prepared to work with Stalin but he died in April 1945 and was replaced by Truman.
Truman trusted Stalin much less, as he had broken the promises he made over Poland at Yalta. He felt that, thanks to the atomic bomb, he could push Stalin around at the Potsdam Conference.
Britain had finished on the winning side in 1945 but was economically exhausted by the war. It was therefore unable to stand up to the Soviet Union on its own and became only an ally of the United States. The Cold War therefore became increasingly about the relationship between the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.
USA, Britain and other capitalist countries thoughts about communism
Said communism enslaved people to the state. Capitalism was based on freedom and democracy:
• Everyone should be free to make money for themselves.
• Individuals are better at deciding what to make/ sell than the state.
• Trade between countries makes everyone richer.
The Soviet Union and other communist countries thoughts about capitalism
Said capitalism exploited the workers to make the rich even richer. Communism was based on fairness:
• Capitalism only makes some people rich by exploiting everyone else.
• Individuals are not as strong as everyone working together for the same aim.
• The state should take control of the economy and run it to benefit everyone.
Long telegram 2946
A secret report from the US ambassador
Kennan in Moscow to President Truman said:
• the Soviet Union saw capitalism as a threat to communism that had to be destroyed
• the Soviet Union was building its military power
• peace between a communist Soviet
Novikov’s Telegram (1946)
A report from Novikov, Soviet ambassador to the USA, told Stalin that:
• the USA wanted world domination and was building up its military strength
• the Soviet Union was the only country left after the war that could stand up to the USA
• the USA was preparing its people for war with the Soviet Union.
Satellite states
Between 1947 and 1949, the Soviet Union spread its sphere of influence to neighbouring countries.
Countries like Poland and Hungary became ‘satellite states’ under the control of the Soviet Union.
Communism and ‘free’ elections
Communism and ‘free’ elections
ESTONIA,
• At the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, the Soviet Union agreed to free elections in the countries in its sphere of influence.
• However, elections were fixed to make sure the Communist Party won and non-communists were removed from government.
• Once in control, the communists shut down the opposition parties and each country
YUGOSLAVIA
became a single-party state.
The impact of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe on superpower relations
The USA saw the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe as a betrayal of the Yalta agreement, in which Stalin had made promises about holding democratic elections.
• Others saw it as evidence of Soviet expansion:
Eastern Europe was a stepping-stone to a
Soviet takeover of Western Europe.
• The USA was determined to contain communism through military and economic assistance: the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Aid.
• The Soviet Union argued it needed to control
Eastern Europe as a buffer zone, protecting it from attack by the West. The US response was unnecessary and unreasonable.
Truman’s concerns
Truman’s concerns
• Europe was devastated after the war.
• In many countries people had no money, no jobs and were feeling hopeless.
• Communism was attractive to these people, especially in France and Italy: it made sure everyone had enough.
• Many in Eastern Europe had been liberated from Nazi rule by the Soviets.
• Countries like Poland, Romania and Bulgaria had already had communist governments forced on them and Truman feared this could happen in other countries too.
• Some governments (e.g. Greece and
Turkey) were too poor to combat communist revolutions in their own countries.
• If Greece and Turkey became communist, then other countries across Europe and the Middle East would follow. This was known as the Domino Theory.
The Truman Doctrine (1947)
The Truman Doctrine (1947)
In a speech in 1947, US President Truman set out why the USA should get involved:
Countries faced a choice between either capitalism or communism.
© Communism was bad because it meant
, people could not be free.
• The USA must try to contain (hold back)
this spread of communism.
© The USA should provide money and troops (if necessary) to help free governments to combat communist takeovers
The Marshall Plan (1947)
© About $13 billion from USA to help rebuild Europe
communism appealed for most people with nothing to lose, so the Marshall Plan hoped to stop communism by giving people a stake in the countries muse trade with the USA to get the money.
Western European countries took the money including Britain, France and West Germany.
• The Soviet Union criticised the Marshall
Plan as an attack on them because it threatened communist control in
Eastern Europe.
Cominform
Cominform stood for the Communist
Information Bureau. Stalin set it up in 1947.
The bureau organised all the communist parties in Europe and arranged their leadership so they would do what Moscow told them to.
Key points:
Cominform got rid of any opposition to the Soviet Union’s control in satellite states.
© It encouraged communist parties in
Western countries to block Marshall
Plan assistance.
Comecon
Comecon stood for the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. Stalin set it up in 1949.
It was the Soviet Union’s alternative to the Marshall Plan.
Key points:
It built up trade links between
Comecon countries.
• It also prevented Comecon countries signing up to the Marshall Plan.
Comecon included the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Albania and, from 1950, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
The North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO)
NATO was set up in 1949. It was a military alliance made up of the United States, Britain, Canada, Holland, Belgium, France, Denmark and Norway.West Germany joined in 1955.
NATO was a military alliance based around the principle of collective security; if one country was attacked other countries had to assist it.
NATO was directed against a possible military attack from the Soviet Union on
Western Europe.
The significance of NATO
© NATO showed that, after the Berlin
Blockade and the Soviet Union’s own development of the atomic bomb, neither the United States nor Western European governments were prepared to accept future Soviet aggression.
• The Soviet Union therefore turned to strengthening its control over Eastern Europe, resulting in the formation of the Warsaw Pact in 1955.
• There were now two military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, facing each other across the Iron Curtain.
Bizonia and Western Germany
• It made sense for British and US zones to join together, as it would be easier to administer. The area was called Bizonia and was included in the Marshall Plan. Later on the French zone of occupation was added to create ‘West Germany’.
© This was not popular with the Soviet Union, as Stalin was not consulted.
He thought Bizonia went against the agreements made at the Potsdam Conference, and he suspected the USA was aiming to permanently divide richer
Western Germany from poorer
Eastern Germany.
Eastern Germany and the
Berlin Blockade
The Soviet Union had 1.5 million troops in its zone, whereas the Western countries had sent most of their troops home.
Eastern Germany grew almost all the food that
West Berlin ate.
Berlin was deep in Soviet-controlled Germany, and divided into US, British, French and Soviet zones.
In June 1948 the Soviet Union closed all road, rail and canal links into West Berlin to force British, French and US troops to leave their zone in the city.
The Soviet Union blocked all supplies into Berlin to show it had the power to stop a divided Germany working
The Berlin Airlift
West Berlin couldn’t last for many days without supplies. It looked like the Western powers would have to pull out of Berlin. That would look weak, undermining the USA’s image in particular. So Western powers responded with an airlift - between 26 June 1948 and 30
September 1949 thousands of tones of supplies were flown daily into Berlin.
West Germany
• The Berlin Airlift made the USA appear peaceful and generous.
• In September 1949, West Germany (FRG) was officially formed, with US support.
• In April 1949, Western European countries and the USA formed NATO to counter the Soviet military threat.
East Germany
• The Berlin Blockade made the Soviet
Union appear aggressive and threatening.
• In October 1949, East Germany (GDR) was officially formed.
• In May 1955, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact to counter the military threat from NATO.
