The Cold War

1
The Cold War

• The Beginning
• 1945 1950
• There are now two great nations in the world,
  which starting from different points, seem to be
  advancing toward the same goal the Russians and
  the Anglo-Americans. . . . Each seems called by
  some secret design of Providence one day to hold
  in its hands the destinies of half the world.
• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
  (1835)

2
Roots of the Cold War

• Munich Conference
• Summer 1938 Tensions between Germany and Great
  Britain, Czechoslovakia, and France escalated as
  Adolph Hitler insisted the Sudetenland be
  transferred from Czechoslovakian to German
  control.
• Representatives from France, Britain, Germany and
  Italy meet at Munich in September to discuss
  Hitlers demands.
• Edouard Daladier
• (France)
• Neville Chamberlain
• (Britain)
• Adolph Hitler
• (Germany)
• Benito Mussolini
• (Italy)
• Chamberlain informed Czechoslovakia England and
  France were unwilling to go to war over the issue
  of the Sudetenland but also informed Hitler that
  German occupation was unacceptable.

3
Roots of the Cold War

• Hitler realized both Britain and France were
  unwilling to go to war or form an alliance with
  the USSR because of the totalitarian system they
  hated more than they hated Hitlers fascist
  government.
• Mussolini recommended that Hitler hold a four
  power conference including Britain, France,
  Germany and Italy but excluding Czechoslovakia
  and the USSR. This would increase the likelihood
  of an agreement AND undermine the solidarity that
  was beginning to develop against Germany.
• Frantic to evade hostilities, and eager to escape
  an alliance with the USSR Chamberlain and
  Daladier agreed to German control of the
  Sudetenland.Hitler in turn pledged not to make
  any further territorialdemands in Europe.
• Eduard Benes, the Czechoslovakian head of state,
  protested theagreement but was informed by
  Chamberlain that Britain wasunwilling to go to
  war over the Sudetenland.

4
Roots of the Cold War

• APPEASEMENT
• Chamberlain returned to England proclaiming
  peace in our time.
• Many, including Winston Churchill and Anthony
  Eden attacked the agreement claiming Chamberlain
  and therefore the British government had acted
  dishonorably and had lost the respect of the
  Czechoslovakians and their military which was one
  of the best in Europe at the time.
• When Germany seized Czechoslovakia in March
  1939Hitler broke the Munich Agreement and
  Chamberlain finally understood Hitler could not
  be trusted and his (Chamberlains) appeasement
  policy had been waste of time.
• Throughout the Cold War US and British
  politicians and policy makers continually pointed
  back to the Munich Agreement as an example of
  what NOT TO DO in their relations with the USSR.
• The led to several policies including the Truman
  and Eisenhower Doctrines.

5
War Conferences

• Atlantic August 1941 Britain and the US
• Moscow September/October 1941 Britain, the US
  and the USSR
• Arcadia Dec. 1941 Jan. 1942 Britain and the
  US
• Casablanca January 1943 Britain, the US and
  France
• Cairo November 1943 Britain, the US and China
• Bretton Wood July, 1944 44 Nations
• Dumbarton Oaks August 1944 39 United Nations
• 2nd Quebec September 1944 Britain and the US
• 4th Moscow October 1944 Britain, the US and the
  USSR
• Malta January/February 1945 Britain and the US
• Yalta February 1945 Britain, the US and the
  USSR
• United Nations April June 1945 50 Nations
• Conference on International Organization
• Potsdam July/August 1945 Britain, the US and
  the USSR

6
The World - 1945
7
Roosevelts Three Part Plan

• Economic Liberalization
• Collective Security
• Political Self-determination
• International Monetary Fund Bretton Woods
  Conference
• World Bank Bretton Woods Conference
• United Nations United Nations Conference
• Together these organizations would lessen the
  probability of future depressions by
• lowering tariff barriers
• stabilizing currencies
• coordinating government planning with the
  workings of markets
• provide the means to
• contain future aggressors
• if necessary defeat future aggressors.
• The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank
  and the United Nations provided for economic
  liberalization and collective security political
  self-determination would have to wait until after
  the defeat of Nazi Germany.

8
The Yalta Conference

• 4 to 11 February 1945
• GB Winston Churchill
• US Franklin D. Roosevelt
• USSR Joseph Stalin
• Key Issues
• Dividing Germany
• The formation of the United Nations
• German war reparations
• The entry of Soviet forces into the Far-Eastern
  front (Japan)
• The final, and most difficult issue, the future
  of Poland
• Declaration of Liberated Europe
• Establish conditions of internal peace
• Carry out measures for the relief of distressed
  peoples
• Form internal governmental authorities broadly
  representative of all democratic elements in the
  population and pledged to the earliest possible
  establishment through free elections of
  governments responsive to the will of the people.
  
• Facilitate where necessary the holding of such
  elections.

9
The Potsdam Conference

• "The Governments of the United Kingdom, the
  United States and the U. S. S. R. consider it
  necessary to begin without delay the essential
  preparatory work upon the peace settlements in
  Europe.
• THE PRINCIPLES TO GOVERN THE TREATMENT OF GERMANY
  IN THE INITIAL CONTROL PERIOD
• POLITICAL PRINCIPLES
• ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES
• REPARATIONS FROM GERMANY
• DISPOSAL OF THE GERMAN NAVY AND MERCHANT MARINE
• WAR CRIMINALS
• POLAND

10
The Iron Curtain

• Winston Churchill March 1946
• Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri
• The United States stands at this time at the
  pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment
  for the American democracy. For with this primacy
  in power is also joined an awe-inspiring
  accountability to the future. As you look around
  you, you must feel not only the sense of duty
  done, but also you must feel anxiety lest you
  fall below the level of achievement. Opportunity
  is here now, clear and shining, for both our
  countries. To reject it or ignore it or fritter
  it away will bring upon us all the long
  reproaches of the aftertime.
• From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
  Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the
  Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals
  of the ancient states of Central and Eastern
  Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest,
  Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia all these famous
  cities and the populations around them lie in
  what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are
  subject, in one form or another, not only to
  Soviet influence but to a very high and in some
  cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.

11
The Transformation

• War aims translated into a wartime alliance
  between what would become known as the western
  democracies and the Soviet block because both, in
  Nazi Germany, faced a common enemy.
• As the war drew to a close the future enemies
  came into conflict over the nature of the post
  war world.
• US Vision
• Self-determination
• Territorial Integrity
• Free Trade
• Traditional Western Freedoms
• USSR Vision
• Secure borders
• Control over those nations closest to Russia
• Refashion Eastern Europe in its own image

12
Critical Issues of the Transformation

• GERMANY
• POLAND
• GREECE, ROMANIA AND OCCUPIED EASTERN EUROPE
• ATOMIC ENERGY
• ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION

13
Critical Issues of the Transformation

• GERMANY
• Should Germany be de-industrialized?
• Should Germany be permanently divided among the
  allies?
• How much must Germany pay in war reparations?

14
Critical Issues of the Transformation

• POLAND
• USSR
• Poland had been used on three occasions by
  European powers to invade Russia once by France
  and twice by Germany.
• A Polish government subservient or at the very
  least friendly to the Soviets was an overriding
  aim of Soviet leadership especially Stalin.
• Western Allies
• The very reason for the war was the right of
  Poland concerning the matter of
  self-determination.
• The right of Poland to democratically elect its
  own government was a basic test of the principle
  of the Atlantic Charter.

15
Critical Issues of the Transformation

• EASTERN EUROPE, GREECE and ROMANIA
• USSR
• The Soviet Union, fearing for its security,
  strongly desired to control its neighbors.
• Western Allies
• Envisioned a postwar world of capitalists
  democracies.
• The US specifically had dreams of a US-led
  coalition.
• When England could not live up to commitments
  made to Greece, President Truman challenged the
  US the Congress, and the people, that,
• We shall not realize our objectives, however,
  unless we are willing to help free peoples to
  maintain their free institutions and their
  national integrity against aggressive movements
  that seek to impose upon them totalitarian
  regimes.

16
Critical Issues of the Transformation

• ATOMIC ENERGY
• USSR
• The US monopoly over atomic weapons represented
  an American effort to intimidate the Soviet
  Union.
• Western Allies
• The US refused to relinquish control of its
  nuclear secrets.
• Soviets would be able to share in nuclear
  weaponry only if they agreed to a comprehensive
  system of control and inspection by a United
  Nations agency.

17
The Atom Bomb
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
"Seldom if ever has a war ended leaving the
victors with such a sense of uncertainty and
fear, with such a realization that the future is
obscure and that survival is not assured."
18
Critical Issues of the Transformation

• ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION
• Who should receive rehabilitation loans?
• Who should finance rehabilitation loans?
• What should be the terms and limitations of
  rehabilitation loans?
• Capitalism vs. Socialism

19
The Marshall Plan

• The most serious threat to western interests in
  Europe was not Soviet military intervention but
  the risk that hunger, poverty and despair might
  cause Europeans to elect communists to office.
• Elected communists would then obey the desires,
  wishes and directions of Moscow.
• American economic assistance would produce
  immediate psychological benefits and later
  material benefits.
• The Soviet Union would not accept such aid.
• The Soviet Union would not allow its satellites
  to accept aid straining the relationship between
  the USSR and the satellites.
• Once this occurred the US could sieze both the
  geopolitical and the moral initiative in the
  emerging Cold War.

20
The Berlin Blockade

• Stalin responded to the Marshall Plan by
  tightening the Soviet Grip wherever he could.
• Stalin announced the formation of Cominform in
  September, 1947 Cominform was a post-war version
  of the prewar Comintern whose task had been to
  enforce socialist orthodoxy within the
  international communist movement.
• Stalin approved a plan by Czechoslovakian
  communists to seize power in that country which
  remained the only Eastern European state with a
  democratic government with the coup the
  prospects of any independence within Stalins
  sphere of influence disappeared.
• Stalin found Tito of Yugoslavia who had come to
  power in his own right to be outside the realm
  of Soviet power and by June, 1948, following
  several attempts to subject Tito to Cominform
  Tito broke with Moscow.
• Tito began to receive aid from the US.
• Dean Atcheson that while Tito might be a true
  son-of-a-bitch he was our son-of-a-bitch.
• During all this, Stalin began the blockade of
  Berlin.

21
The Marshall Plan
22
Containment

• Containment was a strategy used by the United
  States during the early years of the Cold War.
• The basic policy of containment was to prevent
  the supposed domino effect.
• According to the so called domino effect nations,
  especially eastern European nations, were moving
  politically towards Soviet Union-based communism,
  rather than European-American-based capitalism.
• The idea was to contain the spread of
  communism.
• George F. Kennan maintained the principal
  objective of the United States was to stop the
  spread of communism to contain communism with
  the borders in which it already existed.
• Containment, along with the Marshall Plan became
  integral policies of the overall Truman Doctrine.
  

23
NSC-68

• When Truman signed National Security Council
  Report 68 in April 1950 containment became the
  paramount aim of the overall US national security
  policy.
• NSC-68 shaped US government actions in the Cold
  War becoming a blueprint well into the 1970s.
• The document described the US and the USSR two
  powers existing in a polarized world.
• The USSR wished to impose its absolute authority
  over the rest of the world.
• The US was the center of power in the free world
  
• NSC-68 called for significant peacetime military
  spending, in which the US possessed superior
  overall power.
• The report strongly encouraged and later formed
  the basis for the US military buildup that
  occurred during the Cold War.

24
Communism in 1940 to 1954
25
Characteristics of the Cold War

• High degree of tension between the United States
  and the Union of Soviet Socialists Republic
  (USSR)
• Costly and dangerous arms race
• Polarization of domestic and international
  politics
• Division of the world into economic spheres
• Competition and conflict in the third world

26
The Cold War

• The Cold War shaped the foreign policies of the
  United States and the Soviet Union and deeply
  affected their societies and their political,
  economic, and military institutions.
• By providing a justification for the projection
  of US power and influence all over the world, the
  Cold War facilitated the assumption and assertion
  of global leadership by the United Sates.
• By providing Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and
  his successors with an external enemy to justify
  their repressive internal regime, the Cold War
  helped legitimate an unrepresentative government
  and maintain the grip of the Communist Party on
  the Soviet Union.