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Cold War
The Cold War [1945-1991]:
An Ideological Struggle
Soviet & Eastern Bloc
Nations
[“Iron Curtain”]
GOAL  spread world-wide
Communism

US & the Western
Democracies
GOAL  “Containment” of
Communism & the eventual
collapse of the Communist
world.
[George Kennan]
METHODOLOGIES:
1. Espionage [KGB vs. CIA]
2. Arms Race [nuclear escalation]
3. Ideological Competition for the minds and hearts of Third World
peoples [Communist govt. & command economy vs. democratic
govt. & capitalist economy]  “proxy wars”
4. Bi-Polarization of Europe [NATO vs. Warsaw Pact]
Yalta Conference-February 1945
The main purpose of Yalta
was the re-establishment
of the nations conquered
and destroyed by
Germany.
Stalin also agreed to permit free
elections in Eastern Europe and
to enter the Asian war against
Japan, for which he was promised
the return of lands lost to Japan
in the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-05
Yalta Conference-February 1945
 Joseph Stalin, February 1945…….
 Prime Minister [Churchill] has said that for Great Britain the question of
Poland
 is a question of honor. For Russia it is not only a question of honor but
 of security….During the last 30 years, our German enemy has passed
through
 this corridor twice.
 The Yalta Conference,
 Accordingly, Stalin made it clear that some of his demands regarding
Poland were not negotiable: the Russians were to gain territory from
the eastern portion of Poland and Poland was to compensate for that
by extending its Western borders, thereby forcing out millions of
Germans. Reluctantly, Stalin promised free elections in Poland,
notwithstanding the recently installed Communist puppet
government. However, it soon became apparent that Stalin had no
intentions of holding true to his promise of free elections
Potsdam Conference
 The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President
Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July
17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of
World War II.
Potsdam Conference
The major issue at Potsdam was
the question of how to handle Germany by
setting up a demilitarized and disarmed
Germany under four zones of
occupation.
Allied
The Division of Germany
The Division of Germany
The Iron Curtain
Potsdam Conference
 President Truman also informed the
Soviet leader that the United States
had successfully detonated the first
atomic bomb on July 16, 1945.
Distrust of Stalin and Communism
 Stalin developed a strong Communist Party with a firm
control over the country. He did this so that Russia had
become a one-party state, in which the people’s political
and economic rights had been severely curtailed.
 To Americans, the Soviet Union was seen as little better
than an oppressive dictatorship, depriving its people of real
freedoms and anxious to spread its communist ideology
abroad.
 At the same time, communist economics threatened the
American capitalist system
Distrust of Stalin and Communism
 Truman wrote:
“The personal meeting with Stalin
enabled me to see what the West had to
face in the future. Force is the only thing
the Russians understand. Stalin showed
what he was after ... the Russians were
planning world conquest.”
Distrust of Stalin and Communism
 What will be created from the information described below?
 Did you know?
 Churchill was worried about Soviet influence in Eastern Europe
even during the war, and clashed with Stalin over it at the Tehran
Conference of 1943.
 In October 1944, Churchill went to Moscow to meet Stalin faceto-face and made the so-called ‘percentages agreement’, where
Churchill suggested that Russia and Britain agree ‘spheres of
influence’ in the different countries of Eastern Europe (Romania
90-10, Greece 10-90, Yugoslavia and Hungary 50-50 etc.). Stalin
agreed.
 Although the Soviet Union took complete 100% control of the
Iron Curtain countries after the war, Stalin did keep his promise
to stay out of Greece.
Distrust of Stalin and Communism
 Secretary of State Cordell Hull was told
in 1943 by the American Ambassador to
the Soviet Union that since the Soviet
Union had been invaded, that after the
war, the communists believed they
should a the biggest voice in what
should take place after the war was
over.
Distrust of Stalin and Communism
 Formation of the United Nations
 The United Nations came into existence on October
24, 1945, after 29 nations had ratified the Charter
Soviet Union’s Plans
... Russia saw it as protecting herself from
future attack.
The West saw it as empire-building. Stalin,
1946
The Cold War
 Who is the man reaching out and smoking a pipe?
 What is the significance of this cartoon?
The Long Telegram
 George Kennan, the American charge d’affaires in
Moscow, sends an 8,000-word telegram to the
Department of State detailing his views on the Soviet
Union, and U.S. policy toward the communist state.
 His appraisal of the communist leadership of the
Soviet Union became increasingly negative and harsh
and his opinion that Soviet expansionism needed to be
contained through a policy of “strong resistance”
provided the basis for America’s Cold War diplomacy
through the next two decades.
Stalin’s Reach
New York Times 1948
 Source: The New York Times, February 25,
1948
 PRAGUE, Wednesday, Feb 25 – The “action
committees” of Communist Premier
Klement Gottwald were taking over
authority in the capital and throughout
Czechoslovakia yesterday in what looked
like a revolution. The country was rapidly
being turned into a “People’s Front” nation
of the typical Eastern Europe variety.
Stalin’s Reach