The Cold War 1945 - 1970
The Origin of the Cold War

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The roots of the Cold War can be traced back to the Russian Revolution of 1917. This revolution turned Russia into a communist state opposed to Western capitalism and democracy. The communists associated capitalism with the Imperialism that they had fought to overthrow in the Russian Revolution. The Western countries were nervous of the force used to implement communism and did not trust the USSR, as Russia and its communist satellite states was called. They were fearful of communism reaching their own countries. At first, they did not try to crush communism, as there were more pressing problems to deal with especially that of economic crisis. The First World War had damaged the economies of the leading Western countries of Britain and France. Around 1930, the Great Depression crippled economies all over the world. In 1939 when the Second World War broke out, the West and the USSR were faced with the common enemy of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler’s Germany was a totalitarian state opposed to both democracy and communism. The Nazi aggression brought the democratic European countries and the communist Soviet Union together as allies.

Even though France, Britain and the USSR had agreed to unite, the USSR tried to guard itself separately from the Nazi’s by signing a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939. This followed the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, close to the USSR. The Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, made a pact with Germany, where Hitler promised not to invade the USSR. The two countries agreed to occupy and divide Poland (an old common enemy) between themselves: Germany from the West and the Soviets from the East. On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and two days later Britain and France reacted by declaring war on Germany. The USSR’s interference with Polish sovereignty shocked the West. They took this as proof that the Soviets could not be trusted, especially after Soviet takeover of other countries in Eastern Europe. When Germany broke its agreement with the USSR and attacked it in 1941 the Soviets realised the mistake and wanted to ally with the Western countries. The West was reluctant, but with the rising threat of Nazi Germany especially with a declaration of war on America, an alliance between Britain, France, the United States and the USSR was made.The alliance did little to end the distrust between these countries. The West had seen how Russia had broken its word, and Russia did not trust the capitalist Western democracies, whom it believed could be interested only in its own gain and progress. The hostility grew as the war progressed, as the Allies could not agree on issues like Russian expansion in Poland and allied military actions.

The Allies met several times to discuss strategies for the World War, but also to plan how they would co-exist after the War. The meetings had mixed success – some went well and made the alliance seem strong, while others widened the gap between them. By the end of the war they were viewed as irreconcilable, ushering in the Cold War.

The leaders of the wartime Allies (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) at the Yalta Conference
(Feb 1945) to discuss war tactics and the division of power after the Second World War.
It was at Yalta that Germany and Berlin were divided into 4 different occupation zones,
one each for the USA, Britain, France and the USSR.
(Source: www.history.navy.mil/.../ uspers-l/wd-leahy.htm)

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Learning Outcome:

Activity 2