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The ‘Iron Curtain’
 The Potsdam Conference ended without complete agreement on any of the
issues that were discussed.
 Over the next nine months, Stalin achieved the domination of Eastern
Europe that he was seeking.
o By 1946, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania all had
communist governments which owed their loyalty to Stalin.
o Churchill described the border between Soviet-controlled countries
and the West as an ‘Iron Curtain’.
 In the countries that the Red Army ‘liberated’, communist-dominated
governments took power.
o The Communists made sure that they controlled the army, set up a
secret police force, and began to arrest their opponents.
o Non-Communists were gradually beaten, murdered, executed and
terrified out of power.
o By 1949, all the governments of Eastern Europe, except Yugoslavia,
were hard line Stalinist regimes.
Cominform
 In October 1947, Stalin set up Cominform, or the Communist Information
Bureau, to co-ordinate the work of the communist parties of Eastern
Europe.
 Cominform regularly brought the leaders of each Communist party to
Moscow to be briefed by Stalin and his ministers.
o This also allowed Stalin to keep a close eye on them.
o He spotted independent-minded leaders and replaced them with
people who were completely loyal to him.
 The only leader who escaped this close control was Tito in
Yugoslavia. He resented being controlled by Cominform and
was expelled for his hostility in 1948.
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Country
Date
Method
Albania
1945
Bulgaria
1945
East Germany
1945
Romania
1947
Poland
1947
Hungary
1947
Czechoslovakia
1948
The Communists immediately took
power.
In the 1945 elections, a Communist-led
coalition was elected, but the
Communists executed the nonCommunists.
East Germany was the Soviet zone. In
1949, they set up a Communistcontrolled state called the German
Democratic Republic.
In the 1945 elections, a Communist-led
coalition was elected to power. The
Communists gradually took over and in
1947 they abolished the Monarchy.
Stalin had promised to set up a joint
Communist/non-Communist government
at Yalta, but then he invited 16 nonCommunist leaders to Moscow and
arrested them. Thousands of them were
arrested, and the Communists won the
1947 election.
The non-communists won the 1945
elections with Zoltan Tildy as president.
The Communists’ leader, Rakosi, took
control of the secret police and executed
and arrested his opponents. Tildy was
forced to resign and Cardinal Mindzenty,
head of the Catholic Church, was
imprisoned. By 1948, Rakosi had
complete control of Hungary.
A coalition government was set up and
led by the non-Communist Benes.
However, the Communists’ leader
Gottwald made sure they controlled the
radio, the army, and the police. Gottwald
became prime minister and set up a
secret police force. Non-Communists
were arrested. In 1948, Communist
workers went on strike, the nonCommunist minister Masaryk committed
suicide and Gottwald took over the
government.
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American Reaction to Soviet Expansion
 When Churchill, Roosevelt and their successors agreed that Soviet security
required friendly governments in Eastern Europe, they hadn’t expected
such complete communist domination.
o They felt it should have been possible to have governments in
Eastern Europe that were both democratic and friendly to the USSR.
 By 1948, Greece and Czechoslovakia were the only Eastern European
countries not controlled by communist governments.
o It seemed to the Americans that not only Greece and Czechoslovakia
but even Italy and France were vulnerable to communist take-over.
o Events in two of these countries were to have a decisive effect on
America’s policy towards Europe.
Greece, 1947
 When the Germans retreated from Greece in 1944, there were two rival
groups – the monarchists and the communists – who wanted to rule the
country.
o Both had been involved in resistance against the Nazis.
o The communists wanted Greece to be a Soviet republic, while the
monarchists wanted the return of the king of Greece.
 Churchill sent troops to Greece in 1945 supposedly to help restore order
and supervise free elections.
o The British supported the monarchists and the king was returned to
power.
 In 1946, the USSR protested to the UN that British troops were a threat to
peace in Greece.
o The UN took no action, so the communists tried to take control of
Greece by force.
 A civil war developed.
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 The British could not afford the cost of such a war and announced on 24
February 1947 that they were withdrawing their troops.
 Truman paid for some of the British troops to stay in Greece.
o They tried to prop up the king’s government.
 By 1950 the royalists were in control of Greece, although they were a very
weak government, always in crisis.
The Truman Doctrine
 American intervention in Greece marked a new era in the
USA’s attitude to world politics.
 Under the Truman Doctrine, the USA was prepared to send
money, equipment and advice to any country that was
‘threatened by a communist take-over’.
 While Truman accepted that Eastern Europe was now
communist, he sought to contain communism as much as
possible.
The Marshall Plan
 Truman believed that communism succeeded when people faced hardship
and poverty.
 He sent the Secretary of State and former Army general George Marshall to
assess the economic state of Europe.
o What he found was a ruined economy.
 The countries of Europe owed $11.5 billion to the USA.
o There were extreme shortages of all goods.
o Most countries were still rationing bread.
o There was a coal shortage in the winter of 1947 that in Britain all
electricity was turned off for a period each day.
 Churchill had described Europe as ‘a rubble heap, a breeding ground of
hate’.
 Marshall suggested that about $17 billion would be need to rebuild
Europe’s prosperity.
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 In December 1947, Truman put his plan to Congress.
o For a short time, Congress refused to grant this money.
 Many Americans were becoming concerned by Truman’s
involvement in foreign affairs.
 American attitudes changed when the communists took over the
government of Czechoslovakia.
Czechoslovakia, 1948
 Czechoslovakia had been ruled by a coalition government which had been
trying to pursue policies independent of Moscow.
 The communists came down hard in March 1948.
o Anti-Soviet leaders were purged.
o One pro-American minister, Masaryk, was found dead below his
open window.
 Despite his death being ruled as a suicide, Americans
suspected foul play being involved.
 Immediately after this incident, Congress accepted the Marshall Plan and
made $17 billion available over a period of four years.
 Stalin viewed Marshall Aid with suspicion.
o He forbade any of the Eastern European states to apply for Marshall
Aid.
o Stalin’s view was that the anticommunist aims behind Marshall Aid
would weaken his hold on Eastern Europe.
 He also felt that the USA was trying to make other states
dependent on their system of currency.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are
resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures…The free
peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining those freedoms.
If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world.
President Truman speaking on 12 March 1947, explaining his decision to help
Greece.
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Marshall Aid
 Marshall Aid, despite seeming like an altruistic act of generosity, was
motivated by American self-interest.
o The USA wanted to create new markets for America goods.
 They wanted to avoid another worldwide slump such as the
repeat of a great economic depression.
o Many in the US government argued that Aid should only be given to
states which embraced democracy and free-markets.
 In other words, a government and economy the USA would
approve of.
 They wanted an ‘open door’ to these countries, with no trade
tariffs or other restrictions to stop US countries.
The Berlin Blockade: Causes and Consequences
 By 1948 the extent of the distrust between the USA and the USSR was
downright alarming.
o Both sides increased their stocks of weapons, and a propaganda war
developed.
o Each side took every opportunity to denounce the policies/plans of
the other.
o Both Truman and Stalin wanted to prove to the public that they
would not be pushed around.
o War never actually broke out, but in 1948, it came very close.
Germany
 After WWII, Germany was divided into four zones.
 The Morgenthau plan was to remove all German industry and make it an
agricultural country so it could never again wage a modern war.
 As Truman grew more concerned over the USSR, he decided that a strong
Germany might be a useful ally.
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 It was also clear that if industries were not allowed to recover then millions
of Germans would simply starve.
 In 1946, Britain, France and the USA combined their zones.
o This region became known as West Germany.
The Berlin Blockade
 Stalin felt the need to show Western leaders that he would fight back if
they encroached on the Soviet ‘sphere of influence’.
 Although Berlin was divided into four zones, the city itself lay deep in the
Soviet zone and was linked to the western areas by roads, railways and
canals.
 In June 1948, Stalin blocked these supply lines, stopping the Western
Powers reaching their zones of Berlin.
o If the USA tried to ram the roadblocks/railway blocks, it could be
seen as an act of war.
 Stalin expected Truman to announce a withdrawal from Berlin, which
would give the Soviets control of Berlin and a propaganda victory.
The Berlin Airlift
 The Americans believed that the Blockade was an important test case; if
they gave into Stalin and withdrew, the western zones of Germany might
be the next to fall to the communist USSR.
 Truman ordered that aircraft should fly supplies into Berlin.
o This was known as the Berlin Airlift.
 As the first planes took off from their bases, everyone feared that the
Soviets might shoot them down (an undeniable act of war).
 For the next ten months, West Berlin received all the supplies it needed in
this way.
 Stalin eventually lifted the Blockade in May 1949.
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Consequences of the Berlin Blockade
 A powerful symbol: Berlin became a powerful symbol of Cold War rivalry.
o From the US point of view, it was an oasis of democratic freedom in
the middle of communist repression.
o From the Soviet point of view, it was a cancer growing in the
worker’s paradise.
 Cold War flashpoint: Berlin was one of the few places where US and Soviet
troops faced each other directly (and on a daily basis), and it would be
vulnerable if the Soviets chose to act.
 Cold War patterns of thinking and acting: Despite the mistrust shown by
the superpowers, the crisis in Berlin suggested that there would not be a
direct war between them. There would be other types of conflict.
o Each side would never trust the other and would never accept that
the other had a valid case or was acting responsibly or morally and
would use propaganda to criticize the other side.
o They would fight ‘proxy wars’: helping any state, group or individual
opposed to the other side, no matter what that state, group or
individual was like. There were also more formal alliances.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact
 During the blockade, war between the two powers seemed a real
possibility.
 At the height of the crisis, the Western Powers met in Washington DC and
signed an agreement to work together.
 The new organization, formed in April 1949, was known as NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation).
 Although the USSR was critical of NATO, Stalin took no further action until
1955, when the NATO powers allowed West Germany to join the
organization.
 In response, the USSR and the main communist states in Eastern Europe
formed an alliance known as the Warsaw Pact.
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