early challenges

• the kapp putsch failed because it lacked support from the people, the police and the workers
• the kapp putsch was an attempt by the army to overthrow the government
• The Grand Alliance


  • The outcomes of the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences
• Ideological differences between the superpowers

  • Attitudes of Stalin, Truman and Churchill
• Development of the atomic bomb

  Impact on US-Soviet relations
• Long and Novikov telegrams

  Creation of Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe
• Alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States during the Second World War


  • Tensions between them, for example US and British anti-communism. Stalin's suspicion that the West did not want the Soviet Union to emerge strongly from the war
• Tehran Conference


  1. Opening of a second front against Germany in Europe

  2. Spheres of influence in Europe

  3. Soviet Union to join war against Japan
• Yalta Conference


  1. Arrangements for a defeated Germany

  2. The question of Poland

  3. Declaration on Liberated Europe and free elections across the continent

  4. Plans for a new United Nations Organisation

  5. Relations between the 'big three' leaders
• Potsdam Conference


  1. Strained relations over Soviet behaviour in Eastern Europe and US A-bomb

  2. Reparations payments by Germany

  3. Denazification
• Differences between the superpowers

  • Desire on both sides to restrict size of other's sphere of influence
  • Capitalism versus communism
  • Free elections and multi-party democracy versus one-party dictatorship
  • Private control of means of production versus state ownership
• US possession of the atomic bomb

  Worsening distrust
• Long telegram


  Containment of communism
• Novikov's telegram


  Condemnation of US economic power
• Ideological lines defining the Cold War as a war of words
• Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and growing tension
• Truman Doctrine


  Division of world into communist and non-communist, and change in US foreign policy with commitment to containment of communism
• Marshall Plan


  Soviet rejection in the USSR and its bloc in response to post-war aid to Europe
• Cominform


  • Network of alliances between the USSR and Eastern European states, enabling greater Soviet influence
• Comecon


  • Response to Marshall Plan enabling more Soviet control of Eastern bloc economies
• Formation of NATO


  • Western military alliance, with Europe now divided in a state of permanent hostility between the two superpowers
• Berlin Crisis (blockade and airlift) of 1948-49


  1. Soviet fears of West Berlin as a threat and a base for Western military

  2. Reactions to US introduction of Marshall Aid and a new currency into western zones of occupation in Berlin

  3. Soviet cutting off of links between the western zones of occupation in Germany and West Berlin

  4. US and British airlift of supplies into West Berlin

  5. Re-opening of land routes to West Berlin
• Formation of the Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic
• Impact of the Berlin Crisis, such as the formation of two Germanies; NATO and two militarised camps