cold war

• Cold War


  War between the USA and the USSR with threats, propaganda, and other measures but no open warfare between them
• The Allies


  • Britain
  • France
  • USA (from 1941 after Pearl Harbour)
  • USSR (from 1941 when Germany invaded)
• The Axis


  • Nazi Germany
  • Italy
• The Communist USSR was very suspicious of all other Allies before the war started
• Events before the war

  • When Russia became Communists in 1917 there was a Civil War. Britain and France sent troops to help fight against communists
  • In the 1920s, the US government deported thousands of suspected Communists from the country
  • In the 1930s, Britain followed appeasement where they tried to avoid a war with Hitler. The USSR thought Britain wanted Hitler to get strong to attack the USSR
• Capitalism


  People can own their own businesses and property to make money
• Communism


  All businesses were run by government. Nobody was very poor but the standard of living for most people wasn't very high
• Differences between USA and USSR

  • The USA was a democracy – this means people vote for the president and the leaders of the country and they can be voted out if they do a bad job
  • People could vote but they could only choose Communists
  • The USA was the richest country in the world but some people there were very rich and others were extremely poor
  • Communists believed people's rights were less important than the country, so their freedom was restricted
  • For Americans being free and having rights was more important than being equal
  • The government controlled the press, radio, film and art. Communism didn't like religion either
  • Most Americans believed in the American way of life and thought communism threatened it
• Yalta Conference


  February 1945, Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt met at Yalta in Ukraine before the end of the war to figure out what to do with Europe when the war ended
• Yalta Conference outcomes


  1. Stalin would help the USA fight against Japan

  2. Germany would be divided into 4 zones, controlled by the USA, the French, the British and the USSR

  3. Berlin was in the USSR zone but was also split up into 4

  4. They agreed to hunt down and punish Nazi war criminals

  5. They agreed that countries freed from Nazi control would have free elections to choose the government they wanted

  6. The United Nations would be set up to keep peace after the war

  7. The USSR wanted security and agreed that eastern Europe would be a 'soviet sphere of influence'

  8. Stalin wanted to make the USSR bigger and push the border of Poland sideways

  9. Britain and the USA agreed but only if Stalin didn't get involved in the communist revolution in Greece
• Potsdam Conference


  July 1945, after Germany surrendered in May, Clement Attlee, Harry Truman, Josef Stalin agreed that Germany should be split into 4 zones
• Potsdam Conference outcomes


  1. The allies wanted to help rebuild Germany and make it strong again so the Germans weren't angry

  2. They didn't want Germany to pay too much for damages after World War 2 as this had caused Hitler to rise to power after World War 1

  3. Truman was suspicious that Stalin wanted to control Eastern Europe and wanted there to be free elections

  4. USSR wanted to crush Germany and take control of Eastern Europe, Stalin would take money from Germany

  5. If he turned Eastern Europe communist then he would create a buffer between the USSR and the enemy
• Atomic bomb


  A single bomb with huge destructive power
• Development and use of atomic bomb

  1. The USA successfully tested it on the 16th July 1945, the day before the Potsdam conference

  2. It was made completely in secret but Truman told Stalin he had once he knew it worked

  3. Germany surrendered in WW2 but Japan refused and on 6th August 1945 the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima

  4. A second was dropped on Nagasaki on 9th August

  5. The atomic bomb killed about 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki, about half on the day and the rest from injuries or illnesses caused by radiation
• Arguments for using the atomic bomb

  • The war against Japan had lasted 5 years and their system of honour told them not to surrender
  • An invasion of Japan could possibly cost between 75,000 and 100,000 US soldiers' lives – dropping the bomb and forcing a surrender would save this
  • All armies had killed innocent people in WW2; the British bombed German Cities and London was bombed in the Blitz
  • The Japanese were not innocent – they attacked the USA first at Pearl Harbour and had committed atrocities
  • Bombing Japan would send a strong message to the USSR that the USA was powerful – it would also stop the USSR from gaining any land in Asia
• Arguments against using the atomic bomb

  • Japan was on the edge of surrender – more than 60 cities were already destroyed
  • The USA made it hard for Japan to surrender – they wanted the Japanese Emperor to step down which was unacceptable to the Japanese
  • The bombs were morally wrong – they killed huge amounts of innocent people and caused harm through the years because of radiation poisoning
  • The second bomb could not be justified – there was not enough time between the first and second bomb for the Japanese to officially surrender
  • The bomb was a strong message to the USSR but no message is worth sending at the cost of thousands of innocent lives
• Iron Curtain


  The divide between the Communists in the East and the Capitalists in the West, as described by Winston Churchill in a famous speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946
• Both France and Italy had strong Communist parties which belonged to Cominform
• In Greece, Britain and the USA supported the royalist side in a civil war which defeated the Communist opposition
• In Bulgaria, a left-wing coalition won elections in 1945, the communist members of the coalition then executed the leaders of other parties
• In Albania, communists gained power immediately after the war, there was little opposition
• In Czechoslovakia, the left-wing coalition won elections in 1945. In 1946 communists became the largest single party, but still in a coalition. In 1948 when their position was threatened they banned other parties and made Czechoslovakia a Communist one-party state
• In Romania in 1945, a communist was elected Prime minister within a left-wing coalition, In 1947 the communists also abolished the monarchy
• In Yugoslavia Marshal Tito had led wartime resistance to the Nazis, he was elected president in 1945, however, he was determined to apply Communism in his own way and was expelled from Cominform in 1948
• In Hungary, communists became the largest single party in the 1947 elections, they imprisoned opposition leaders and attacked Church leaders
• In Poland, the communists joined a coalition government after the war then became outright leaders in 1947 when they forced the non-communists leader into exile
• In East Germany, the allies had given the USSR control of the Eastern sector of Germany. It was run by the USSR effectively under Red Army control until the creation of the German Democratic Republic in 1949
• Meeting on the Elbe – east and west armies met after pushing Hitler's army back, celebration of victory
• The Iron Curtain


  A buffer zone for the USSR, shielding them from attacks from the west
• David Low – artist who made weekly comics to comment on current events
• The Truman Doctrine


  A doctrine is a belief or set of beliefs held by a church, political party or other group OR a stated principle of government policy
• There were two hotspots where communism looked like it would spread – Greece and Turkey
• Truman wanted to step in but he needed to convince the people and the US Congress that it was the right thing to do
• Truman had to 'big up' the danger from the USSR with his speeches
• The Nazis were kicked out of Greece in 1944 and 2 rival groups wanted to control the control the country
• The communist vs The monarchists ( wanted the return of the King)
• Churchill sent British troops to help put the king back in power but this caused a Civil War in 1941
• The British didn't have the resources to control the situation and announced they would leave on 24th February 1947
• There was now a danger that Greece would become Communist
• Turkey was a big prize for Stalin, Stalin would get the Dardanelles (the strip of sea which would let his ships get into the Mediterranean and sail around Europe)