COLD COLD WARWAR

Potsdam and the Cold War The final World War II conference

between allied leaders transitioned the victors into a new more deadly era that was called the Cold War. Wartime alliances were now replaced with

suspicion and animosity as the nations of the world witnessed a competition for proxy states and satellites in the global conflict between Liberal democracy and Communism.

CAUSES OF THE COLD WAR The Soviet Union wanted to spread its ideology of

communism worldwide, which alarmed the Americans who followed [LIBERAL] democracy.

The acquisition of atomic weapons by America caused fear among the Soviets.

Both countries feared an attack from each other. The Soviet Union’s action of taking control over

Eastern Europe was a major factor for US suspicions. The US President had a personal dislike of the Soviet

leader Josef Stalin. America was annoyed by the Soviet Union’s actions

in the part of Germany it had occupied. The Soviets feared that America would use Western

Europe as a base to attack it.

BACKGROUND Even before the end of the 2nd World War, the

Soviet Union had gradually extended her influence in Europe. By the fall of 1944, the Red Army had

liberated and controlled a large part of eastern Europe.

By 1945, at the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union obtained the Curzon Line as her new boundary line with Poland and also the control of the eastern zone of Germany.

As the war was drawing to a close in May 1945, the Soviet Union quickly consolidated her control of eastern Europe.

Despite the increasing Russian influence in eastern and central Europe, many politicians in the United States were optimistic about the chances of co-operation with the Soviet Union after the war and did not advocate strong resistance against Russian expansion.

But from May 1945 onwards, the situation was changed.

The U.S. government favored a policy of strong resistance against Russia.The first reason was that President

Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. He was succeeded by Harry S. Truman.

President Roosevelt was an optimistic man. He seemed to have believed that although eastern Europe had fallen under the influence of Russia, the Russians would nonetheless keep her promise (made at Yalta) by setting up freely-elected parliamentary governments in the area.

So Roosevelt did not advocate strong resistance against Russian expansion.

The second reason was that just before the Potsdam Conference was to take place, the United States had successfully exploded her atomic bomb. President Truman thought that

since the United States alone possessed the atomic bomb, she could adopt a stiff attitude towards Russian expansion in Europe.

The third reason was that President Truman was disgusted at the non-co-operative attitude of the Russians at the Potsdam Conference. Russia was determined to exact

heavy reparations from Germany. Russia also accused the British of

upholding a reactionary monarchy in Greece and supporting an Italian Fascist regime in Trieste.

Stalin also blocked Truman's proposal on the internationalization of all principal waterways.

DETERIORATION OF RELATIONS The deteriorating relations between the Soviet

Union and the United States were reflected in two minor incidents in the year.

Land-Lease Program was abruptly terminated by the United States and

During the Second World War, the U.S. supplied much war material to the Allied nations through a Lend and Lease program.

As the Lend and Lease program was suddenly stopped, the war-ravaged Soviet Union could not obtain American material support to help her post-war economic reconstruction.

1. The Russian request for American economic aid for the purposes of post-war reconstruction was ignored by the government of the United States.

The poor relations between the East and West were also reflected in a speech by Winston Churchill. In March 1946, Churchill made a speech

at Fulton, Missouri in which he said, "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 central and eastern Europe - all are subject in one form or another not only to Soviet influence but also to a very high and increasing control from Moscow."

TRUMAN DOCTRINE

On March 12, 1947, President Truman enunciated the Truman Doctrine.

The essence of the Doctrine was that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."

This was clearly an anti-communist doctrine. This amounted to an American declaration of

war upon Communist Russia.

President Truman followed his speech with massive military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey.

(The communist guerillas were defeated by the American troops in 1948 in both Greece and Turkey.)

With the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine of March 1947 and the launching of the Marshall Plan, the United States was clearly leading the western nations to resist Russian Communist expansionist activities in Europe.

Cold War thus begun.

The Potsdam Conference and the Cold WarThe Final Meeting of Allied Leaders in WW II

Began a New Era of Wars

July 17, 1945 would be the last time the “Big Three” – Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, and Harry Truman, would ever meet.

Truman had replaced Franklin Roosevelt earlier that year when FDR died.

Churchill himself would be replaced before the conference ended, having lost parliamentary elections in Britain.

The new PM, Clement Attlee, would be inconsequential, symbolic perhaps of the British Empire itself.

The Potsdam Conference would represent the first crucial step in the origins of the Cold War.

First Signs of the Pending Cold War History writer Douglas Botting writes that,

“The Potsdam conference was destined to be…not so much the finale to a past conflict as the overture to a new one – the worldwide tremor of the Cold War…”

Although reparations issues were settled at the conference, more ominous results involved a Soviet-led Poland, recreated at the expense of Germany’s eastern frontier.

The American atomic bomb test in New Mexico took place the day before the Potsdam Conference began.

It would be the subtle bargaining chip Truman would hold over Stalin, not knowing that the Soviets were already working on their own bomb, a feat that ended with a successful test four years later.

The bomb, though used to end the war with Japan, would ultimately be deemed a sterile weapon in the face of Soviet divisions parked across the European divide.

Yet atomic bomb production would lead to the hydrogen bomb, ICBMs, and a deadly arms race characteristic of the Cold War and producing such policies as “mutually assured destruction.”

Although the Soviet Union and China started off as allies in 1949 there emerged an estrangement between them, which was cleverly exploited by the Americans.

The US formed an alliance with China in 1971 to contain the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1980, which led to the United States and its allies boycotting the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow.

In retaliation, the Soviet Union and its allies boycotted the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles, USA.

The US financed and armed the Afghan guerrillas to fight against the Soviet troops.

The Afghan War was a major factor in bankrupting the Soviet Union.

BUILDING OF ALLIANCES

In the '80s President Ronald Reagan of the US dubbed the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and predicted that it would be consigned to the ash heap of history.

He announced a major weapons buildup and the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) also dubbed "Star Wars".

The Soviet Union was too economically enfeebled to reply in kind.

In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union.

He adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the Americans and many arms reduction pacts were signed.

In 1989 there was a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and in 1990 the Soviets agreed to the reunification of Germany.

Movements against communist governments in Eastern Europe followed the Berlin event.

As the decade came to an end, much of the Eastern Bloc began to crumble. The Hungarian government took down the barbed wire

on its border with Austria and the West. The Soviet Union did nothing in response. Although travel was still not completely free, the Iron Curtain was starting to unravel.

On November 10, 1989, one of the most famous symbols of the Cold War came down: the Berlin Wall.

By the end of the year, leaders of every Eastern European nation except Bulgaria had been ousted by popular uprisings.

By mid-1990, many of the Soviet republics had declared their independence.

Turmoil in the Soviet Union continued, as there were several attempts at overthrowing Gorbachev.

On December 8, 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian Republic, formed

the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S.). After 45 years, the Cold War was over.

EFFECTS OF THE COLD WAR Both the United States of America and the Soviet Union built up

huge arsenals of atomic weapons and ballistic missiles. The military blocs NATO and The Warsaw Pact were formed

The Warsaw Pact is the name commonly given to the treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, which was signed in Poland in 1955 and was officially called 'The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance'.

It led to destructive conflicts like the Vietnam War and the Korean War.

The Soviet Union collapsed due to economic weaknesses. The Berlin Wall was demolished and the two German nations

were unified. The Warsaw Pact disintegrated.

The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved in Prague in 1991, after successive governments withdrew their support of the treaty.

The Baltic States and some former Soviet republics achieved independence.

America became the sole superpower [Hegemony] of the world. Communism collapsed in most part of the world, especially in

Eastern Europe.