Download Origins of the Cold War

Origins of the Cold
War
After WWII
• Germany & Japan were in Ruins
Germans were “…without houses without window
panes, without roofs, holes in the asphalt, rubble,
rubbish, and rats.”
“Tokyo was flattened, and people were living in
holes with corrugated roofs.”
Postwar Germany
July 1945 - Allied leaders met in Potsdam,
Germany
Potsdam Conference
Stalin, Truman, & Attlee
Came up with joint occupation of four zones
West -- Britain, France & America
East -- Soviets
• They also divided Austria into zones
• Jointly with Russia  Berlin with in Eastern
patrician
Founding of Israel
• Zionism: The movement seeking a Jewish
homeland in Palestine. Both the US and the
Soviet Union recognized the nation of Israel in
1948
• Arabs reacted violently, and set out to reclaim
the state for Palestine.
• Cold War = the competition for global power
and influence between the US and the Soviet
Union.
• The Cold War (1945-91) was one of perception.
Where neither side fully understood the intentions
and ambitions of the other. This led to mistrust and
military build-ups.
United States
– U.S. thought that Soviet expansion would
continue and spread communism throughout the
world.
– They saw the Soviet Union as a threat to their
way of life; especially after the Soviet Union
gained control of Eastern Europe.
IRON CURTAIN
• In 1946, Winston Churchill gave a speech at
Fulton College in Missouri in which he
proclaimed that an “Iron Curtain” had fallen
across Europe.
Truman Doctrine
• In March 1947, U.S. president Harry Truman
proclaimed the Truman Doctrine.
• Reasoning
– Threatened by Communist influence in Turkey and Greece
– “Two hostile camps” speech
•Financial aid “to support free
peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation”
•Sent $400 million worth of war
supplies to Greece and helped push
out Communism
•The Truman Doctrine marked a new
level of American commitment to a
Cold War.
Marshall Plan
• Economic aid to all European countries offered in the
European Recovery Program
• $17 billion to western Europe
• Soviets were refused – The blame for
dividing Europe fell on the Soviet union,
not the United States. And the Marshall
Plan proved crucial to Western Europe’s
economic recovery.
•George C. Marshall won the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1953
Berlin Airlift
• The Soviet Union opposed the Marshall Plan
• June 24th 1948 Soviets blocked all roads in and out of Berlin
cutting off supplies and shipments.
• Western leaders over the next 10 months carried more
than 2 million tons of food and supplies to the people of
West Berlin.
Beginning of NATO
• After Berlin the US shifts attention from
economic recovery  military security.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization & the
Warsaw Pact
• Stalin’s aggressive actions accelerated the American
effort to use military means to contain Soviet
ambitions.
• The U.S. joined with Canada, Britain, France, Belgium,
the Netherlands, and Luxembourg to establish NATO, a
mutual defense pact in 1949.
• Early critics of the UN insisted that it was doomed to fail
because it did not have the power to enforce its own
decisions
• When West Germany joined NATO in 1955, the Soviet
Union countered by creating its own alliance system in
eastern Europe– the Warsaw Pact (1955)