From Hot War to Cold War
Summation
Roosevelt’s Arrangement
From 1943 onward, postwar arrangements had increasingly concerned the Big Three – The United
States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. Each country had different goals, some of which were in common
while others were unique to their nation:
The US (Roosevelt)
- Establish a structure of
international relations
capable of preventing
war
- Ensuring trade and
economic stability
- Maintain national selfdetermination
Britain (Churchill)
- Establish a structure of
international relations
capable of preventing
war
- Ensuring trade and
economic stability
- Maintain national selfdetermination
- Safeguard the British
Empire, including routes
through the eastern
Mediterranean (the
Suez Cannel)
- Wanted Germany to be
capable of maintaining a
balance of power on the
Continent
Soviet Union (Stalin)
- Protect the Soviet Union
from future attack
- Establish a buffer zone
of influence in Eastern
Europe
- Enfeeble Germany so
that it can never wage
war again by breaking it
up
- Control over Poland
because twice in 30
years Russia had been
invaded through Poland
The Big Three meet at a number of conferences that focused how to restructure after the war
Tehran Conference
November 1943
Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire
1944
Yalta
February 1945
- Germany would be partitioned in a way to be determined (could not agree
on how to divide Germany)
- Roosevelt told Stalin he would not oppose pro-Soviet Governments in the
Baltic states if free elections were allowed in the area
- Moscow meeting two months earlier the Allied nations committed to
cooperation to ensure peace and security after the war
The three nations founded:
1. International Monetary Fund (to stabilize the international value of
money)
2. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World
Bank) to lend money to the countries devastated by war & foster
trade
*Red Armies had occupied most of Eastern Europe and established a
communist puppet government in Poland.
- Stalin agreed to reconfigure the Polish government to allow free elections
- Germany divided into 4 temporary zones of occupation (controlled by the
Big Three and France)
- Russia would help in the Pacific War against Japan
- Russia would get land in Manchuria that they had lost to Japan in 1904
From Hot War to Cold War
Summation
Conservative critics have long charged the Roosevelt and Churchill caved in to Stalin at Yalta, betraying
Eastern Europe in a fruitless effort to appease the Soviet dictator. More recently, revisionist scholars
have reversed this scenario, arguing that Stalin made most of the concession and that Anglo-Americans
were mainly interested in keeping Eastern Europe and Asia safe for Western capitalism. However, the
Red Army’s presence in Eastern Europe left Roosevelt and Churchill little room for maneuver. They could
only hope that Stalin would live up to his promise, made at Yalta, to consult on ways to help the people
of Europe freely elect democratic governments. However, soon after Yalta, Stalin violated his pledge to
support political freedom in Romania and Poland. His behavior prompted Roosevelt to remark three
weeks before his death, “We can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he
made at Yalta.” Still, Roosevelt declined to break with Stalin or even to push him hard, not least because
he believed that the Allies needed the Soviets to conclude the war with Japan.
Questions:
1. What were the goals of each of the Big Three nations as the war came to a close?
2. What was decided at each of the following conferences/ meetings?
- Tehran Conference
- Bretton Woods
- Yalta
3. Why did Roosevelt continue to support the Alliance with Russia towards the end of the war,
despite the fact that Stalin had not kept the promises that he made at Yalta to allow democratic
governments in Eastern Europe?
Truman and the Emergence of the Cold War
On April 12, 1945, less than a month before the defeat of Germany, the news flashed across the world
from Warm Springs, Georgia: that afternoon, Franklin Roosevelt, had died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
The new occupant of the Oval Office, Harry S. Truman, had to learn quickly how to deal with the Allies,
manage the terrible atomic weapon that physicist were developing, and bring the war with Japan to a
close. All these matters were fraught with implication for the United States’ relations with the Soviet
Union.
In foreign affairs, the immediate postwar years were marked by the beginning of the Cold War. That
face-off eventually cost the United States trillions of dollars, half a century of the fear of nuclear
annihilation, the loss of thousands of lives in local wars, and the undermining of democratic institutions
in the name of the need to maintain national security. Deciding who was responsible for its origins – in
man treatments Stalin, in others Truman - has thus generated energetic historical debate.
From Hot War to Cold War
Summation
Arguments for who was responsible for starting the Cold War
Truman was responsible
- Truman was determined to
maintain American atomic
monopoly and thought these
weapons would keep Russia in line
- failure to understand the Soviet
legitimate interests in Eastern
Europe (including ensuring that they
would not be invaded from the East
again)
-at the end of the war insulted the
Russians by cancelling lend-lease
shipments and reducing amount of
reparations ($) they would receive
after the war
- inexperience in Foreign affairs
- concerned about internal politics in
the US (Democratic voters) who
accused the Yalta agreements as a
‘sellout’ of Eastern Europe
Truman was not
responsible
- Reluctant to
antagonize The
Soviet Union but
was angered by the
extension of Soviet
totalitarianism into
Eastern Europe
- rightly concerned
about American
economic interests
in Eastern Europe
Stalin was responsible
- aggressiveness in
Eastern Europe and
the establishment of
Communist
Totalitarian regimes to
create a sphere of
influence in the region
- ‘expansive
tendencies’ of the
Soviet Union
- Soviets will only
respond to a show of
military strength
Stalin was not
responsible
- Stalin interpreted the
Yalta agreements to
mean that the US and
Britain acknowledged
the establishment of a
Soviet sphere of
influence in Eastern
Europe
- viewed Eastern
Europe, especially
Poland, as a first line of
defense against further
invasions from the west
Early in 1946, Truman privately declared himself ‘tired of babying the Soviet,’ and in March he sat on the
platform of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, while Winston Churchill delivered an address
expressing apprehension about the “expansive tendencies” of the Soviet Union. “From Stettin in the
Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” Churchill declared.
He added that from what he had seen of the Russians during the war, “I am convinced that there is
nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than
weakness, especially military weakness.”
Questions:
1. What are the historical arguments concerning who was responsible for origins of the Cold War?
(why do some historians believe that Stalin was to blame while some revisionist historians argue
that Truman also contributed to the beginning of the Cold War?
2. How did Churchill describe Russia and Stalin’s actions after World War II?
From Hot War to Cold War
Summation
Questions:
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