Origins Of The Cold War 2 Essay

, Research Paper

“We must build a new world, a far better world —

one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected.”

– President Harry S. Truman, 1945

The Cold War was the most important political issue of the early postwar period. It grew out of longstanding disagreements between the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1918 American troops participated in the Allied intervention in Russia on behalf of anti-Bolshevik forces. American diplomatic recognition of the Bolshevik regime did not come until 1933. Even then, suspicions persisted. During World War II, however, the two countries found themselves allied and thus ignored their differences to counter the Nazi threat.

At the war’s end, antagonisms surfaced again.

- Stalin does not keep promises from Yalta’s conference

- Expansionist vs. Revisionist Perspectives

- Containment & Kennan s famous Mr. X Article – Foreign Affairs 47

- The Truman Doctrine 47

- The Marshall Plan 47

- The National Security Act of 47

- “Iron Curtain”

- Dispute in Germany

- Divided into occupation zones after WWII

- Both nations begin to spread influence

- Establishment of NATO 49 &Warsaw Pact 55

The Cold War developed as differences about the shape of the post war world created suspicion and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first such conflict occurred over Poland. Moscow demanded a government subject to Soviet influence; Washington wanted a more independent, representative government following the Western model. The Yalta Conference of February 1945 had produced a wide-ranging agreement open to different interpretations. Among its provisions was the promise of “free and unfettered” elections in Poland.

Yalta revealed cracks in the Grand Alliance. Only the common objective of defeating Hitler had kept it together.

At his first meeting in the White House with Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov, Truman revealed his intention to stand firm on Polish self-determination, lecturing the Soviet diplomat about the need to carry out the Yalta accords. When Molotov protested, “I have never been talked to like that in my life”, Truman retorted, “Carry out your agreements and you won’t get talked to like that”. The Soviets now understood that the era of wartime collaboration was over. Washington officials realized that the new president would steer a course different that of his predecessor.

On the eve of Potsdam Conference, July the 16th 1945, an atomic bomb was successfully tested. Truman told Stalin that USA has a new weapon. Stalin new it was a nucler weapon of mass destruction. Whithin days, he had ordered Molotov to speed up the Soviet bomb project. This was the beginning for an Arms race, escalation of the weapon of mass destruction.

During the closing months of World War II, Soviet military forces occupied all of Central and Eastern Europe. Moscow used its military power to support the efforts of the communist parties in Eastern Europe and crush the democratic parties. Communist parties beholden to Moscow quickly expanded their power and influence in all countries of the region, culminating in the coup d’etat in Czechoslovakia in 1948.

Public statements defined the beginning of the Cold War. In 1946 Stalin declared that international peace was impossible “under the present capitalist development of the world economy.” Winston Churchill, wartime prime minister of Great Britain, delivered a dramatic speech in Fulton, Missouri, with Truman sitting on the platform during the address. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” Churchill said, “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” Britain and the United States, he declared, had to work together to counter the Soviet threat.

Devastated by the struggle in which 20 million Soviet citizens had died, the Soviet Union was intent on rebuilding and on protecting itself from another such terrible conflict. The Soviets were particularly concerned about another invasion of their territory from the west. The Soviet Union now demanded “defensible” borders and regimes sympathetic to its aims in Eastern Europe. But the United States had declared the restoration of independence and self-government to Poland, Czechoslovakia and the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe one of its war aims.

Containment, Truman Doctrine, Marshal Plan

Mutual suspicion had long existed between the West and the USSR, and friction was sometimes manifest in the Grand Alliance during World War II. After the war the West felt threatened by the continued expansionist policy of the Soviet Union, and the traditional Russian fear of incursion from the West continued. Communists seized power in Eastern Europe with the support of the Red Army, the Russian occupation zones in Germany and Austria were sealed off by army patrols, and threats were directed against Turkey and Greece.

Containment of the Soviet Union became American policy in the post war years. George Kennan, a top official at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, defined the new approach in a long telegram he sent to the State Department in 1946. He extended his analysis after he returned home in an article published under the signature “X” in the prestigious journal Foreig

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