Section 1: Cold War: Superpowers Face Off

1. Section 1: Cold War: Superpowers Face Off

2. What is Cold War? • cold war: a state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare • The Cold War: conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in which neither nation directly confronted the other on the battlefield

3. Who were the competitors? • The Cold War was between the two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union • Why? They were rivals because they had opposing philosophies, and therefore opposing goals

4. Weren’t they Allies in WWII? • The United States and Soviet Union fought together in WWII against the Axis Powers, however the two nations distrusted each other even then. Why?

5. The Soviet Union distrusts the U.S • The Soviet Union distrusted the U.S. and all other Western nations because: • In 1919, Britain, France and the United States joined the "White Russians" to fight off the Bolsheviks (this is Stalin’s party) following the revolution. • The Western democracies did not invite the Soviet Union to participate in the World War I peace talks or the League of Nations. • The Western nations did not invite the Soviets to the Munich Conference which decided the fate of Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to World War II • Stalin believed that the Western allies were dragging their feet in opening up the "second front" in Europe, thus lengthening the suffering of the Soviets

6. The U.S. distrusts the Soviet Union • The United States distrusted the Soviet Union because: • The ultimate goal of the Communist Party was to secure world wide communist revolution. U.S. does not want such a revolution • The Soviet Union had made a pact, the non-aggression pact, with Hitler • Stalin was open about wanting "friendly governments" in Eastern Europe to protect his country's western frontier

7. Yalta Conference: A Postwar Plan • All of this was in the air when Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met at the Yalta Conference. • The conference took place in the Soviet Black Sea resort of Yalta, in February of 1945. There, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt made plans for the post-war world

8. Yalta Conference: A Postwar Plan • At the Yalta Conference, the three leaders agreed that: Germany would be broken up into four zones of occupation, Germany would pay money to the Soviets for loss of life and property, Soviets would join the fight vs. Japan, and Eastern European countries would have free elections

9. Creation of the United Nations • Despite the tensions between the two, the United States and the Soviet Union joined 48 other countries to form the United Nations (UN): to protect member countries against aggression • Created in June 1945 • Each member could cast one vote but an 11 member body called the Security Council has the real power. Of those 11, 5 are permanent members with veto power: United States, Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France

10. Differing U.S. and Soviet Goals • Despite their agreement at Yalta and the fact that they were members of the UN, the Soviet Union and the U.S. split sharply after the war due to their differing and conflicting post-war goals: • Because it had suffered so much during the War, the Soviet Union wanted to create a world safe for the Soviet Union • Because its industry and production had boomed during the war, the United States wanted to create a world with markets open to buying American products

11. Eastern Europe’s Iron CurtainSoviets Build a Buffer • The reason the Soviets want a buffer is that there are no natural borders preventing Western invasions • Stalin decided to use the countries that they occupied as they pushed the Nazis back as buffers to prevent invasions

12. B. Soviets Build a Buffer • Soviets installed communist governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech, Romania, Poland, & Yugoslavia • Churchill, Truman and Stalin met in Potsdam, Germany in July 1945 telling Stalin not to do this. However Stalin refused and then declared to the world that communism and capitalism cannot exist in the same world

13. An Iron Curtain Divides East and West • Europe was now divided between East and West. Germany itself was divided into two: on the east side Communist Germany was called German Democratic Republic and on the west side capitalist Germany was called Federal Republic of Germany • The term Iron Curtain represented Europe’s division into mostly democratic Western Europe and Soviet-controlled , communist Eastern Europe

14. United States Tries to Contain Soviets • After the Soviet Union took over Eastern European nations, the U.S. was afraid of further spread of communism. So President Truman came up with a policy called containment: • Policy of blocking Soviet influence and stopping the expansion of communism

15. Truman Doctrine • One way to contain communism and stop Soviet influence was devised by President Truman, and it is called the Truman Doctrine. This Doctrine involved giving financial aid to nations that resisted communism. • U.S. opponents felt that interfering with other countries would be too costly but Congress passed a bill to aid Turkey and Greece with 400 million dollars

16. The Marshall Plan • Western Europe was in shambles after WWII • In 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that the U.S. give aid to all European nations that needed it • “not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” – Marshall • His proposition was accepted by Congress and the Marshall Plan was put into effect. • the Plan was an assistance program that provided food, machinery and other materials to rebuild Western Europe • It was a 12.5 billion dollar program that was implemented in 1948