breakdown relations and yalta and postdam

• The Second World War took place

  1939-45
• Allied Powers (Allies)


  • Britain (led by Winston Churchill)
  • The USA (led by Franklin D Roosevelt)
  • The Soviet Union or USSR (led by Josef Stalin)
  • China (mainly led by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), although Mao Zedong's communists were gaining power)
  • France (led by Charles de Gaulle)
• Axis Powers


  • Germany (led by Adolf Hitler)
  • Italy (led by Benito Mussolini)
  • Japan (led by Emperor Hirohito)
• At the end of the war in 1945, the power of Germany and Japan had been broken, and the USA and USSR were established as the two main superpowers in the world
• Within months of the end of the Second World War, the USA and the USSR had become engaged in a new struggle for power, as the allies of 1945 became enemies
• This struggle came to be called 'the Cold War'
• Main differences between capitalist and communist systems


  • Free and regular elections where people vote for candidates vs no elections or only one party
  • Freedom of the press and speech vs only government-approved ideas heard
  • Individuals own industries and keep profits vs all industry under government control
• Mutual fear and distrust grew between the West and the USSR in the years following the Russian Revolution
• Britain, France, Japan and the USA helped the Bolsheviks' opponents (the "Whites") when civil war broke out in Russia in 1917 during the Russian Revolution
• Britain refused to recognise the communist regime as Russia's government until 1924, and the USA also refused to recognise the communist government until 1933
• During the 1930s, Britain and France refused to form an alliance with Russia against Nazi Germany
• Josef Stalin: 'Here I stand on the border line between the old, capitalist world and the new, socialist world. Here, on this border line, I unite the efforts of the proletarians of the West and of the peasants of the East in order to shatter the old world.'
• Stalin began a series of Five-Year Plans to ensure that the Soviet economy would be ready to fight a war against the West, which he believed wanted to destroy the USSR
• When it became clear in the 1930s that Britain and France did not intend to help him against the growing power of Nazi Germany, Stalin instead signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler in August 1939
• This was mainly because the USSR was not ready to go to war
• When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Stalin and the Allies joined together, but it was not an easy alliance
• The Soviets suffered terribly during the Nazi invasion, yet America ignored their pleas to open up a second front (an attack from the west to distract the Nazis) until the D-Day invasion of June 1944
• Stalin remained suspicious of the West, believing that Britain and the USA had delayed D-Day in the hope that Nazi Germany and the communist USSR would destroy each other
• As the Soviets first stopped the Nazis' advance and then began to drive them back into Germany, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill viewed their progress with alarm and tried to persuade the Americans to advance faster into Germany to stop it
• Nevertheless, mainly because of the willingness of the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) to trust Stalin, and also because of the shared need to defeat Hitler and the Nazis, the alliance of the USA, the USSR and Britain held together until it was clear that the war was coming to an end
• The Yalta Conference took place

  February 1945
• Source C: 'We really believe that we have found the way at last to bring about a new day and a new world - the kind of world that we have all been praying for.'
• Stalin was determined to ensure his country could never be invaded again, so he sought the creation of a buffer zone of communist-controlled countries between Western Europe and Russia
• Despite differences, agreements were reached at Yalta on dividing Germany, reparations, establishing the UN, and Soviet entry into the war against Japan
• There was also agreement that there would be democratic elections in Eastern Europe, although no agreement was reached on the type of government Poland would have
• The Potsdam Conference took place


  July 1945
• By the time of Potsdam, several important changes had taken place - Hitler was dead, Germany had surrendered, Roosevelt had died and been replaced by Truman, and Churchill had been replaced by Attlee
• US and British attitudes towards the USSR were hardening as they watched Germany being stripped of resources and saw puppet governments being set up in several Eastern European countries now under Soviet control
• President Truman: 'Our experience with them was such that I decided to take no chances in a joint setup with the Russians... Force is the only thing the Russians understand.'
• At Potsdam, there was considerable disagreement about the future shape of Europe, and the suspicions and tensions marked the first drop in temperature of what would become the Cold War
• Agreements were reached at Potsdam on how Germany and Austria were to be divided and occupied, and on changes to Germany's border with Poland
• Now that the common enemy of Nazism was defeated, the wartime alliance was breaking up