The Cold War:
1945 – 1969
1.World War Two: The Destruction of
the Old World Order
2.American Visions of the World Post
War
3.Soviet Russian Visions of the World
Post War
4.Your Task: Cold War Committees
Punishment for Germany:
The Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, 1945
Yalta Conference: February 1945
Towards the end of World War Two, in February 1945,
the three most powerful leaders in the world met
at Yalta.
The three leaders agreed to Germany’s unconditional
surrender, a joint occupation of Germany and a
crimes trial for leading Nazis.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Potsdam Conference: May 1945
Joseph Stalin
Winston Churchill
Hitler’s suicide in his bunker in Berlin allowed other
Nazi leaders to sign an unconditional surrender.
Following this, newly elected U.S. President Harry
Truman, Stalin and Churchill decided to divide
Germany into four zones – one for each of the
main Allied nations.
The New York Times
referred to the Yalta Conference as a
meeting of the “Big 3” who ‘doomed’ Nazism.
What effect might this have had on an
American audience in 1945?
Post World War Two:
The Official Division of
Germany
As a result of World War Two, approximately 60 million people
lost their lives.
The war’s losers were the Fascist states: Germany, Japan and Italy.
These countries each suffered around 3 million deaths.
Their ‘conquerors’, the Allies, suffered at least 35 million deaths.
As a result of the German surrender, each of the four key
Allied nations occupied an area in Germany (opposite
image).
The German capital, Berlin, was divided between the two most
powerful nations of the Allies: the United States and Soviet
Russia.
As seen in the image opposite, the East of Berlin was known as the
Soviet Bloc, and the Western division was controlled by the
U.S.
Historian, Robert J. McMahon, argues that “the roots of the Cold
War lay in the conflicting recipes for international order
that Washington and Moscow sought to impose on a
pliable and war-shattered world”. (McMahon, Robert J.,
The Cold War, Oxford University Press, 2003, p.12.)
The Iron Curtain
Descends Over Europe
The ‘Iron Curtain’: an Ideological and Geographical Divide
Between Communism and Capitalism in Europe.
Within a year after the Second World War, five countries in
Europe had converted to Communism and were loyal to
Stalin. These countries were: Poland, Hungary, Romania,
Bulgaria and Albania.
Winston Churchill described this as the “Iron Curtain” of
Communism descending on Europe.
Churchill’s “Iron Curtain”
Speech, 5 May 1946
“From Stettin in the Baltic to
Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron
curtain has descended across
the continent.
Behind the line lie all the capitals
of the ancient states of Central
and Eastern Europe …
The Communist Parties, which
were very small in all of these
Eastern states, are seeking
everywhere to obtain
totalitarian control.”
American Visions of the World Post War: A
Policy of Containment
The United States emerged from the wreckage of World War
Two with relatively moderate losses. In fact, the munitions
demands of the war meant that the U.S. encountered a
period of economic prosperity and abundance, while the
Soviet Union suffered the greatest human and economic
losses of the war.
With power, comes fear – a fear of losing prosperity and
international strength. The U.S. had become the most
powerful presence on the world stage, yet were desperately
afraid of the new world order established in Europe under
Joseph Stalin and Soviet Russia. This ushered in what was
widely known as the policy of “containment”, which aimed
at preventing the spread of communism in the Western
world.
“Following the war, U.S. strategic planners were operating from
an extraordinarily expansive concept of national security”.
(Robert J. McMahon, “The Cold War”, p.9.)
A Policy of
Containment:
U.S. Fears of a
Communist
Invasion
How do you think American civilians
would have responded to political
campaigns of this nature?
Would you classify this as anti-Communist
propaganda?
What does the symbolism in this poster
suggest to you about U.S. perceptions of
Communism?
Soviet Russian Visions of Post War Order:
A Military Power
Despite its political strength following
World War Two, Soviet Russia held
deep fears of security threats to its
key borders.
The geographical expanse of the Soviet
Union, a nation that covered one-sixth
of the earth’s land mass, made the
challenge of security a national
priority.
Also, Stalin and his top associates
assumed that conflict between the
Communist and Capitalist world was
inevitable and necessary for the
progression of a world-wide
revolution.