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Cold War Reading

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Cold War 1945 - 1991

YALTA CONFERENCE
Even before World War II ended, the US alliance with the Soviet Union had begun to unravel. The United States was
upset that Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s leader, had signed a nonaggression pact with Adolf Hitler, Germany’s leader,
in 1939. Later, Stalin blamed the Allies for delaying their invasion of German-occupied Europe until 1944. Driven by these
and other conflict, the two allies began to pursue opposing goals. In February 1945, the war was not yet over. But the
leaders of the three Allied nations – the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union- met in the Soviet Black Sea resort
city of Yalta. The Allies anticipated a victory in the near future and they began to make post-war plans. One of the most
important was how to handle Germany after the war to make sure they were truly ending their military campaign. All the
Allies, including the US, decided to divide Germany into four zones. Each zone would be occupied by one of the big Allied
countries, Soviet Union, United States, France and Britain. France, US and Britain took control of the western half of
Germany. The idea was to make the division temporary and reunite the four quarters at a later date. The Soviets, under
Joseph Stalin, took control of Eastern Germany. He promised that all Eastern Europeans would have free elections. In
return, Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan, an ally of Germany. Skeptical Winston Churchill recognized this as
empty promise. Franklin Roosevelt was President of the United States and was at the Yalta conference with Stalin. He
was not healthy at the time and many people criticized his decisions in “giving away’ too much to Stalin. Roosevelt died
just a few months after the conference.

SOVIETS AND US DISAGREE


The United States and the Soviet Union split sharply after the war ended. The war had affected these two superpowers
very differently. The United States, the world’s richest and most powerful country at that time, suffered 400,000 deaths.
Despite these losses, most of the fighting occurred in Europe. Cities and factories in the US remained undamaged. The
Soviet Union had totally different experiences in the war. At least 50 times more people were killed in the Soviet Union as
in the United States. One in four Soviets was wounded or killed. In addition, many Soviet cities were demolished in the
fighting. These differences were not the only things that separated the United States and the Soviet Union. For many
years, the Soviet Union had been controlled by communists in a totalitarian regime. Joseph Stalin ran a country whose
government made all of the basic decisions such as what factories would make and how much they would cost. His
leadership style limited civil liberties such as freedom of speech. Enemies were executed or exiled. The United States, on
the other hand, relied on capitalism or a free market economy. The people made most of the economic decisions and
civil liberties were considered very important. Because of these differences, the Soviet Union and the United States had
very different postwar goals.

United States Soviet Union

Encourage democracy in other countries to help prevent Encourage communism in other countries as part of a
the rise of Communist governments worldwide worker’s revolution

Gain access to raw materials and markets to fuel booming Rebuild its war-ravaged economy using Eastern
industries European’s industrial equipment and raw materials

Rebuild European governments to promote stability and Control Eastern Europe to protect Soviet borders and
create new markets for American goods balance the US influence in Western Europe

Reunite Germany to stabilize it and increase the security Keep Germany divided to prevent its waging war again.
of Europe

Cold War European History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rkIqtV07HE


Cold War 1945 - 1991
SOVIETS BUILD A WALL OF SATELLITE NATIONS
With the end of World War II, a major goal of the Soviet Union was to shield itself from another invasion from the west.
Even before the devastation of World War II, centuries of history had taught the Soviets to fear invasion. Because it
lacked natural western borders, Russia fell victim to each of its neighbors in turn. In the 17th century, the Poles captured
the Kremlin. During the next century, the Swedes attacked. Napoleon overran Moscow in 1812. The Germans invaded
Russia during World War I and World War II. By the end of the war, Soviet troops occupied a strip of countries along the
Soviet Union’s own western border. The Soviet Union regarded these countries as a necessary buffer, or wall of
protection. Stalin ignored his previous agreement to allow free elections in Eastern Europe. He installed or secured
Communist governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland and Yugoslavia. This division in
Europe became known as the Iron Curtain. On one side of the imaginary line were the western nations loyal to the
United States. These nations included Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Spain. On the other side was the
Soviet Union and her satellite nations of Poland, Albania etc. Germany had been divided for occupation reasons after the
war. It remained split with a new nation of Western Germany that was loyal to the United States and Eastern Germany
remained loyal to the Soviet Union and communism.

WHAT IS THE COLD WAR?


In 1945 US President Franklin Roosevelt died and a new president took over. Roosevelt’s successor, President Harry S.
Truman, was a tougher negotiator for Stalin. To the new president, Stalin’s reluctance to allow free elections in Poland
and other Eastern European nations represented a clear violation of those country’s rights. Truman, Stalin, and Churchill
met at Potsdam, Germany in July 1945. There, President Truman pressed Stalin to permit free elections in Eastern
Europe. The Soviet leader refused. In a speech in early 1946, Stalin declared that communism and capitalism could not
exist in the same world. He said that war between the United States and the Soviet Union was certain. These increasing
conflicts were the beginning of the Cold War. This was a state of diplomatic hostility that developed between the two
superpowers. Beginning in 1949, the superpowers used spying, propaganda, diplomacy and secret operations in their
dealings with each other. Much of the world allied with one side or the other. In fact, until the Soviet Union finally broke
up in 1991, the Cold War dictated not only US and Soviet foreign policy, it influenced world alliances as well. Well known
Cold War events include the Korean and Vietnamese Wars, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Space Race.

NUCLEAR THREAT AND THE COLD WAR


By 1949, the Cold War threatened to heat up enough to destroy the world. The United States already had atomic bombs.
The US had demonstrated their use of atomic weapons in 1945 when they used them in wartime against the Japanese.
As early as 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic weapon. The two superpowers had both become nuclear
powers. Atomic weapons, however, soon became outdated. United States President Truman was determined to develop
an even more deadly weapon before the Soviets did. He authorized work on thermonuclear weapons in January 1950.
This hydrogen or H-bomb would be thousands of times more powerful than the A-bomb. Its power came from the
fission, or joining together of atoms rather than from the splitting of atoms as in the A-bomb. In November 1952, the
United States successfully tested the first H-bomb. By August of the following year, the Soviets had exploded their own
thermonuclear weapons. Dwight D. Eisenhower became the US president in 1953. He appointed the firmly
anti-Communist John Foster Dulles as his secretary of state. If the Soviet Union or its supporters attacked US interest,
Dulles threatened the United States would “retaliate instantly, by means of and places of our own choosing” this
willingness to go to the brink or edge of war became known as brinkmanship. Brinkmanship required a reliable source of
nuclear weapons and airplanes to deliver them. So the United States strengthened its air force and began producing
stockpiles of nuclear weapons. For these reasons, the Soviet Union made its own collection of nuclear bombs. This arms
race would go on for four decades.

Cold War European History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rkIqtV07HE

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