The Cold War

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Background and focus
Polarisation of East (USSR) and West (USA)
During the Second World War, Russia, America and Britain had put their ideological
differences aside in order to win the war against Germany. Europe was economically
shattered at the end of the war and countries such as Britain and France were no longer
able to play leading roles in the world as they had before the war. This opened the way for
two superpowers to emerge: the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States of America
(USA). The tensions between them that re-emerged after World War II led to decades of
rivalry and tension that became known as the Cold War.

What is a cold war?

A cold war is a state of political tension and military rivalry that stops short of full-scale
war. The Cold War between the USSR and the USA was waged between 1945 and 1990.
It began as a dispute over the future of Europe and spread to include confrontations
around the world.
The threat of new and even deadlier weapons of nuclear technology prevented outright
open warfare between the USA and the USSR, although they came close to it on various
occasions. Instead, the conflict was conducted through proxy wars, the manipulation of

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more vulnerable states through extensive military and financial aid, espionage,
propaganda, rivalry over technological, space and nuclear races and even through
international sports events.
Besides periods of tense crisis in this bi-polar world, the Cold War deeply affected the newly
independent countries in Africa and the liberation struggles in southern Africa from the
1960s until the 1990s, when the USSR was dismantled.
Never having been declared, the Cold War did not end on a single agreed date, but it can
reasonably be said that it ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union from 1989 and
the creation of a united, independent Germany in October 1990.
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The Origins of the Cold War
The end of World War II – Why did the Cold War develop?
The roots of the Cold War stretch beyond the Second World War to the Russian Civil War
that you learned about in Grade 11. During this civil war, the West had supported the White
Army against the Red Army. This meant that during World War II, Stalin, on the one hand,
and Roosevelt and Truman, on the other, never really trusted one another, even while
working together to defeat the Nazis. The US, USSR and Britain were the three main
countries in the Alliance against Germany and became known as the Big Three. Their
leaders during the war were Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. Tensions between the Big
Three emerged during two conferences held to decide the future of Germany and Europe.
When Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met at Yalta in February 1945, there was agreement
over the division and occupation of Germany, but disagreement over the future of Poland.
The Big Three met again on 25 July 1945 in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin. By this time Hitler
and Goebbels had committed suicide and Germany had signed an unconditional
surrender. President Roosevelt had died and was replaced by the vice-president, Harry
Truman. Truman was much more strongly against communism than Roosevelt had been
and was suspicious of Stalin. During the conference, Churchill’s Conservative Party lost a
general election in Britain, and Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, replaced him at
Potsdam. This change of leadership in the USA and Britain meant that Stalin was the most
experienced leader at the conference. In addition, the Soviet forces were occupying most
of the countries in Eastern Europe that had been liberated from German control. The Big
Three disagreed over Soviet policy in Eastern Europe and over reparations from Germany.
Tensions increased when the USA successfully tested an atomic bomb without informing
Russia before the event. Truman felt that the USA was in a strong position, so he took a
tough attitude towards Stalin over Eastern Europe. While there is evidence that Stalin knew
the Americans were working on a bomb, he was angry that he had not been told officially
before this. In response, he gave orders for Soviet scientists to develop their own nuclear
weapon. The nuclear arms race had begun. Some historians believe that the development
of the atomic bomb caused the Cold War, not because of Stalin’s attitude, but because it
encouraged Truman, who was deeply committed to capitalism and democracy to seek
confrontation with the USSR. His attitude at Potsdam became more aggressive. He also
replaced his pro-Soviet advisors with anti-communist advisors.

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The war with Japan was to continue for several more months. It ended in August 1945
when the USA dropped two atom bombs on Japan: the first on Hiroshima on 6 August and
a second on Nagasaki on 9 August. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally five days
later. Stalin saw the dropping of the bombs on Japan as a move directed more at Russia
than Japan. He felt that the USA was trying to intimidate the USSR and as a result, his
attitude became tougher against the West. On 27 October 1945, Truman made a speech
about US foreign policy. He stated that the US did not want any territory and did not intend
to go to war with any country. However, the USA would be setting up defensive military
bases, and would not be sharing the secrets of the atomic bomb with anybody. The speech
alarmed the British. They felt it would not only increase the tension between America and
the Soviet Union, but that it was also an insult to Britain, which had a close relationship
with the United States. The stage had been set for the development of the Cold War over
the next decades.

The USSR and USA create spheres of interest in Europe

A sphere of interest is when a territorial region has certain political, economic or military
advantages that appeal to another country. The other country then uses its influence to
persuade or coerce that region to serve its own needs. Both the USSR and the USA used a
number of methods to influence spheres of interest during the Cold War.
Installation of Soviet-friendly governments in satellite states
The main issue for the two superpowers, USSR and USA, for the first two years after the
war was who would control Europe. Between 1945 and 1947 the Soviet Union took control
over Eastern Europe, setting up a number of satellite states. As the Red Army advanced
through Eastern Europe in the last months of the war, pro-Communist temporary
governments were set up. According to the Allied agreements, elections were held in
former German-occupied countries soon after the war. However, in Eastern Europe, these
elections were held while the Red Army still occupied those countries, and Communist
governments came into power. The West did not regard these as free elections but could
do nothing to change the situation. By 1946 Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and
Albania all had Communist governments loyal to Stalin. In March 1948, a Communist coup
d’état in Czechoslovakia overthrew a democratic government and the Soviet Union gained
a foothold in central Europe. Yugoslavia was the only Communist country that remained
independent of the Soviet Union. The climax came.

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In Germany the Soviet Union refused to consider uniting East Germany with the other
sectors occupied by the West and would not withdraw until they were sure that a
Communist-led government, sympathetic to the Soviet Union, was in place in East
Germany. The occupation of eastern Germany enabled the Russians to extend their
influence further into Europe than ever before. On 5 March 1946 Churchill was invited to
give a speech in Fulton, in Missouri, USA. Speaking to a crowd of 40 000 he declared that
an Iron Curtain had descended across Europe, dividing Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe
from the West. Many Americans reacted to this speech with disbelief. People knew of the
Soviet Union as an ally during World War II and felt as though Churchill was trying to cause
further conflict.

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What was the United States policy of containment?
Containment was a United States policy that used numerous strategies to prevent the
global spread of communism during the Cold War. The idea for this policy started in 1946
and the term was first used in 1947 in a report that US diplomat George F Kennan
submitted to US Defence Secretary James Forrestal. The US developed this policy as a
response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to extend Communist influence in
Eastern Europe, China, Korea and Vietnam. Two components of the US policy of
containment were the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
In 1946 Greece was in the middle of a Civil War between the Communists, backed by Tito
of Yugoslavia, and those supporting the Greek government. The Greek economy was close
to collapse, and Britain and France were supplying economic aid. By 1946, they were no
longer able to afford to send aid to Greece and Turkey, and the USA decided to take over.
On 12 March 1947 US President Truman announced that the USA would supply aid to
Greece and Turkey as part of a containment policy to ‘contain’ communism – in other
words, to prevent communism from spreading further into Europe. This became known as
the Truman Doctrine. In many ways, the Truman Doctrine marked the formal declaration
of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Under the Truman Doctrine, the USA announced that aid would be made available to any
country threatened by external Communist aggression. Three months after this
announcement, the USA announced the European Recovery Programme, which became
known as the Marshall Plan, named after the US Secretary of State at the time. This was
part of the overall plan to contain the spread of communism. Under the Marshall Plan, US
economic aid was made available for the reconstruction of industry in Europe. The
principle or belief underlying the Marshall Plan was that whereas poverty would encourage
the spread of Communist ideas, economic recovery would prevent the spread of these
ideas. Marshall Aid under the Marshall Plan was made available to all countries in Europe,
but Russia prevented her satellite states from applying for this aid. Marshall Aid
contributed to the rebuilding of the West European economy after World War II, particularly
in West Germany.
In 1947, in response to growing US influence in Europe as a result of the Marshall Plan, a
Communist conference in Warsaw, Poland, set up the Communist Information Bureau or
Cominform. The role of Cominform was to co-ordinate the activities of the European
Communist parties and was intended to counter this growing US influence.

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Berlin Crises 1948–1961
The continued division of Berlin in the years after the war became a source of tension
between the USSR and the West. The USSR feared the recovery of Germany, so refused to
consider reunification and free elections. In 1946, the USA, Britain and France decided to
combine their zones, which later became known as West Germany. In 1948 they reformed
the German currency in their zone and within months there were indications of an
economic recovery in the western zones. Berlin, situated in the Soviet zone, had also been
divided into four sectors. Berlin was linked to the rest of West Germany by roads, railways
and canals. Stalin wanted control over all of Berlin; the USA refused to hand over the
sectors controlled by the Western powers.
The Berlin blockade
Stalin was angry that the USA refused to hand over the sectors controlled by the Western
powers, and about the unification of West Germany and the currency reform. He thought
he could force the USA, Britain and France out of Berlin by cutting off all road, rail and
canal supply routes to West Berlin. The USA realised that if they tried to use tanks to ram
the roadblocks or railway blocks, it could be regarded as an act of war. However, they were
not prepared to give in. There had been an international agreement identifying three air
routes into Berlin and it was decided to airlift supplies to the city.

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The airlift began in June 1948 and for the next ten months, US, British and French planes
flew supplies into West Berlin. By May 1949 it was clear that the Western Allies would not
be forced out of Berlin, so Stalin lifted the blockade and reopened the land routes to Berlin.
In August 1949, West Germany became the German Federal Republic; in September East
Germany became the German Democratic Republic.
Opposing military alliances: NATO and the Warsaw Pact
During the Berlin Blockade, war between the USSR and the USA seemed to be a real
possibility. In the last weeks of the airlift , the Western powers met in Washington in the
USA and signed a military agreement called the North Atlantic Treaty. The twelve countries
that signed the agreement formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO. In 1955
the occupation of Austria by the USA, USSR, Britain and France came to an end. In the
same year, the German Federal Republic was allowed to join NATO. The USSR responded
by organising its East European satellite states into a military alliance known as the
Warsaw Pact. In the case of a threat from the USSR and its satellite allies, the member
states of NATO would activate the defence alliance under US leadership.
This would strengthen the united front to resist a possible Communist invasion. Likewise,
if an attack were launched from the West on the USSR and her allies, then the defence
forces of the countries of the Warsaw Pact would unite forces to counter such an attack.
This in fact divided Europe into two armed alliances that strengthened the ideological
differences on the one hand, but also entrenched those differences. While this division
would have acted as a deterrent to open conflict due to the nuclear threat, it did also mean
that both superpowers and their respective allies embarked on an armed race that
increasingly militarised the world at the time.
The Berlin Wall
A crisis over Berlin flared up again in 1961. The German Democratic Republic had been
stripped of industrial machinery and raw materials taken as reparations by the Soviet
Union. The standard of living was low – far below the German Federal Republic. Because
of this, and the lack of political and intellectual freedom in the Democratic Republic, there
was a constant migration of East Germans to West Berlin and the Federal Republic. In
1953 there were widespread strikes and revolts against Communist control in the
Democratic Republic. These were quickly crushed and some of the Russian demands for
reparations were relaxed, but the migration to the West continued. The weak point in the
borders between East and West Germany was Berlin. On 13 August 1961, the Moscow-
trained leader of the Democratic Republic, Walter Ulbricht, decided to stop the flow of
migrants by closing the border between East and West Berlin. Overnight, East German
soldiers erected barbed wire barriers along the East–West border in Berlin. Over the
coming months, the temporary barrier was replaced by a wall, guard towers and armed
guards. Once the Berlin Wall was in place, Berlin and Germany ceased to be a flashpoint
in the Cold War.
The division of Berlin into four sectors became a more permanent arrangement, as the
four powers could not find a solution. Many East German workers expressed their
dissatisfaction in 1953 when uprisings occurred in Berlin and other industrial centres in
East Germany (which became the German Democratic Republic or GDR). Their attempts
to gain human rights and shake off Communist control were suppressed with force and

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170 executions took place. After 1953, the people in East Berlin and East Germany were
under increasing military control. Between 1949 and 1961 it is estimated that about 2
million East Germans left the GDR in search of a better life in the western sectors of Berlin
and Germany. Of great concern to the government of the GDR was that more than half of
these dissidents were under the age of 25 years. Germans regularly moved between the
different sectors of the city where they could see the economic and social reconstruction
in the western-controlled zones and the lack of development and coercion in the eastern
zone. On 12 August 1961 the Council of Ministers of the GDR announced stricter border
controls and one day later temporary barriers were erected between West Berlin and the
Soviet-controlled sector. Police guards and transport units monitored the uprooting of
cobbled stone streets and asphalt roads in the vicinity of the permanent barrier. Buildings
that were on the border were included in the construction of the barrier as the doors and
windows were bricked up. Gradually, large concrete slabs replaced the coiled barbed wire
fence. On 13 August Willie Brandt, Mayor of Berlin, publicly condemned the building of a
permanent wall as ‘inhumane’.
On 25 August a major crisis loomed at Checkpoint Charlie when US representatives
wanting to cross over into the Soviet zone were subjected to searches. It caused an outrage
and culminated in Soviet and US tanks taking up positions near Checkpoint Charlie. The
world assumed that the two superpowers would take up arms over the future control of
Berlin, but it was averted after the intervention of Kennedy and Khrushchev.

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Containment and brinkmanship: The Cuban Crisis
You have already looked at the US policy of containment as a way to prevent the spread of
Soviet influence. Another tactic that both the USA and the USSR employed in their attempts
to either contain one another’s influence or spread their own influence was brinkmanship.
Brinkmanship is the practice of pushing dangerous events to the brink (edge or verge) of
disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome. The Cuban Crisis is a good
example of both containment and brinkmanship.
The Cuban Crisis as an example of containment and brinkmanship
The Berlin crisis was hardly over when Cuba became a flashpoint in the Cold War in 1962
and the USA and USSR came close to a nuclear war. Kennedy was president of the United
States, and Khrushchev the leader in the USSR.
Cuba is an island about 145 kilometres off the coast of Florida. Until 1959, the USA had
strong political and economic interests in Cuba. It was a poor country whose economy was
dependent on the sale of its sugar harvest to the USA. In 1959, Fidel Castro and a small

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group of revolutionaries overthrew the brutal dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista who had
been in power since 1953. At this stage, Castro was not a convinced Marxist, although
some of his comrades were. His plans to reform Cuba, which included the nationalisation
of land, looked Communist to the US government. When Castro applied to the USA for
loans, he was refused, and the USA threatened to cut off its sugar imports from Cuba.
Castro then turned to the USSR and in February 1960 signed a trade agreement with
Russia. Cuba sent sugar to Russia, in return for oil, machines and money.
In July 1960, the USA carried out its threat and cut trade with Cuba. In retaliation, Cuba
nationalised all US-owned companies. The USSR then undertook to buy Cuba’s sugar. In
January 1961 the US cut diplomatic ties with Cuba.
Meanwhile, a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in America had been planning a
counterrevolution. In April 1961, supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
they invaded Cuba from the US bases in Guatemala, landing at the Bay of Pigs. They were
hoping to be supported by an uprising within Cuba, but this did not happen, and the
invasion failed. This was an embarrassment for President Kennedy. In response to the
failed invasion, Cuba asked for weapons from the Soviet Union to defend Cuba against the
USA. In December 1961, Castro declared himself a Marxist. The US was now convinced
that Cuba had become a Soviet satellite state.

The Cuban Crisis deepens

In June 1962, Cuba received shipments of Soviet arms: patrol boats, ground-to-air missiles
and MIG-21 fighter planes. By September medium-range offensive missiles and IL-28
bombers arrived. On 14 October 1962 an American U2 spy plane photographed a nuclear
missile base being built on Cuba. This would bring the main cities of North America within
range of the missiles. Kennedy’s advisers told him that he had 10 days before the missile
bases would be ready.
On 16 October, Kennedy set up a Committee of the National Security Council to advise him
and put US troops on the alert. On 22 October he announced a naval blockade of Cuba,
placing Cuba in ‘quarantine’ until the missile sites were removed. The USA announced that
they would consider an attack by Cuba anywhere in the Western hemisphere as an attack
by the USSR on the United States:

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It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against
any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States,
requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, 20 Soviet ships were heading for Cuba. Kennedy’s ultimatum put Khrushchev on the
defensive. His response was that the only purpose of the missile sites was to defend Cuba against
attack. He accused the US of piracy and warned that the USSR would have a fitting reply.
As the ships grew closer to Cuba the world waited to see what would happen. The first Russian
ship reached the naval blockade. It was an oil tanker and was allowed through. The other ships
carrying missiles turned back.
As the crisis developed, Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged a number of letters. Khrushchev
insisted that the missiles on Cuba were for the defence of Cuba and that the Soviet Union had no
aggressive intentions. On October 26 Khrushchev proposed that the missile bases would be
dismantled in exchange for a US promise not to invade Cuba. The next day Khrushchev sent
another letter offering to dismantle the missile sites if the USA dismantled their Jupiter missile
bases in Turkey. The US presence in Turkey was a threat to the USSR.
Publicly, Kennedy accepted the terms of the first letter: a promise not to invade Cuba in return for
the USSR dismantling of the missile bases on Cuba. However, secret negotiations were being
carried out and the deal struck was that the USA would promise not to invade Cuba and would
withdraw the Jupiter missiles in Turkey in return for the dismantling of the Cuban missile sites. Part
of the deal was that Kennedy would never publicly acknowledge its terms. It is only recently that
the full story can be told as documents in the USA and USSR are being declassified.
On 28 October Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the missile bases and return them
to the Soviet Union, expressing his trust that the United States would not invade Cuba. There is
evidence that Cuba really was afraid that the US was planning to invade the country. According to
Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs, in May 1962 he had the idea of placing intermediate-range nuclear
missiles in Cuba as a means of countering an emerging lead of the United States in developing
and deploying strategic missiles. He also presented the scheme as a means of protecting Cuba
from another United States-sponsored invasion, such as the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs in
1961.
Evidence has also emerged of the very real Cuban fear, both before and after the Bay of Pigs
landing, of a US invasion and therefore Khrushchev’s claim that the missiles were only there to
defend the Cuban Revolution was probably true.
We now know that in the build up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy had carried out covert
actions against Castro and Khrushchev had secretly deployed missiles. At the time it was believed
that the world had been brought to the brink of war and Kennedy’s public tactics became known
as brinkmanship – where his determination not to give in to Khrushchev had made Khrushchev
back down and a nuclear war had been averted.
More recent research has shown that the crisis was resolved after a series of secret meetings in
which Kennedy offered the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, not threats of nuclear retaliation,
but a diplomatic deal. Kennedy promised that the US would not invade Cuba and the US Jupiter
missiles in Turkey would be withdrawn. Furthermore, the terms would never be publicly
acknowledged by the US. While Kennedy gained prestige from the crisis, Khrushchev lost prestige
in the USSR and was later dismissed from office after a coup. China broke away from the USSR.
The USSR and the US had come close to a nuclear war, and once the crisis had ended, they realised
they could not afford to come this close to war again. There was a thaw in the Cold War at a
diplomatic level due to détente:

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 • In June 1963 a Washington–Moscow ‘hot line’ telephone link was set up for direct contact
between the presidents of each country.
• In August 1963 a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed which banned nuclear testing above
ground.
• In 1968 a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed, which attempted to stop the spread
of nuclear weapons to countries that did not already have them.

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Who was to blame for the Cold War?
This section shows the different interpretation of events that occurred during the Cold War and
explains why different accounts exist.
Deciding who was to blame for the Cold War depended on which side you were on: Russia blamed
America; America blamed Russia. It also depends on the point of view of historians.
All western writers before the 1970s blamed the Cold War on the Soviet Union’s attempt to impose
Communist ideology on the rest of the world. The occupation of Eastern Europe and the creation
of satellite states were used as evidence to support this argument.

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Russian writers claimed that Stalin’s motives were defensive. He wished to create a buffer zone of
Communist states around the USSR to protect it from the capitalist West. The western intervention
in the Russian Civil War (1918–1920) seemed evidence of aggressive intentions towards
Communist Russia.
As early as 1959 and into the 1960s, some western historians agreed with the Russian
interpretation. These historians were called Revisionists and they said that America was engaged
in a war to keep countries open to capitalism and US trade. These historians believe that Truman’s
use of the atomic bomb without telling Stalin was the beginning of the Cold War.
In the 1970s, historians were suggesting that neither Russia nor America were to blame, and that
the Cold War was the result of misunderstandings on both sides, and the failure of both to
understand each other’s fears.
After the collapse of communism, many of the Soviet Union’s secret fi les were made available to
Soviet historians. These fi les show that the Soviet leaders during the Cold War were genuinely
trying to avoid conflict with the US. This suggests that America was more to blame for the Cold War.
Today historians stress that the Cold War was a clash of ideologies: capitalism against
communism.
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