Early tension between East and west

Ideological differences, wartime conferences, grand alliance

Capitalism

• USA and UK

• Several political parties

• Democratic elections

• Free to setup private businesses

• Individual freedoms are important

• Freedom of speech

• Freedom of media

Communism

• One party state

• No democratic elections

• Businesses and factories owned by state

• Individual freedoms less important than obedience

• Censorship and state controlled media

Tehran conference - 1943

Objectives:

• Plan liberation of France

Outcomes

• USA and UK to invade France in May 1944

• USSR to join USA and UK in war against Japan

• Creation of international organisation after war to maintain peace ( UN )

• Stalin refuses to give up part of Poland he gained in 1939 when he worked with Hitler

Yalta conference disagreements - 1945

• Stalin wanted border of USSR to be moved west into Poland

• Stalin refused to give up land

• Churchill and Roosevelt wanted Eastern Europe to have free elections

Yalta conference agreements - 1945

1. Germany to be divided into 4 zones

2. Berlin to be divided into 4 zones

3. Countries freed from Nazi control to guaranteed free, democratic elections

4. Stalin to join war against Japan

5. Put Nazi's on trial

6. Set up the UN

Potsdam causes - New American president

• Harry Truman

• More anti-communist

• Suspicious of Stalin

• ‘Iron fist’

Potsdam causes - nuclear threat

• 16 July 1945 = USA successfully explode the atomic bomb

• USA didn't tell USSR

• Stalin knew already anyway through spies

• Caused tension between USA and USSR

Potsdam causes - expansion of communism

• Stalin broke agreement of Free elections in liberated Nazi territory

• Red army controlled Poland

• USSR setting up communist government there

Potsdam agreements - 1945

• Division of Germany and Berlin into 4 zones

• Germany demilitarised

• Free elections

• Nazis put on trial

• Equipment reparations to allies

• Polands border moved

Potsdam disagreements - 1945

• What to do about Germany

• Reparations

  • Stalin wanted compensation

• Soviet policy in eastern Europe

• Pro-soviet government in Eastern Europe

Potsdam consequences

• Continued disagreements

• USSR expanding influence and gaining more land in Europe

• Start of Cold War

• Germany in debt

Causes for the grand alliance

• Nazi invasion of Poland

  • Caused Britain to go to war

• Nazi invasion of Soviet Union in June 1941

  • Forced Stalin into grand alliance

• Japanese attack on Pearl harbour

  • America forced to get involved

Significance of grand alliance

• Soviet Union carried out most of the fighting and lost >20 million soldiers

• Roosevelt wanted to work with Stalin as he recognised the cost the war had on the USSR

• UK wanted to work with USA to create a new world order to protect people from extremism

Consequences of the grand alliance

• Nazi Germany encircled in Europe - winning the European war and defeating Nazism becomes priority for all 3

• USA and UK fighting war on two fronts - against Germany in Europe and against Japan in South East Asia

• 3 leaders - despite differences - have to find a way to get along

  • They will do this via war time summits to decide next steps

Long telegram

• Written by George Kennan in 1946

• He was American deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Moscow

• He was suspicious of Stalin and recommended tough action

• “It must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena”

• Led to Truman’s policy of containment

Novikov telegram

• Written by Nikolai Novikov in 1946

• He was the Soviet ambassador to the US

• Written in response to the long telegram

• “The size of the (US) army , which is supposed to amount to one million persons , was also increased significantly”

Creation of Soviet satellite states

• Poland - 1947 via rigged elections

• Romania - 1945 via forcing king to appoint communist prime minister

• Bulgaria - 1944 via rigged elections

• Hungary - 1947 via rigged elections

• Czechoslovakia - 1948 via military force

Iron curtain speech

• 5 march 1946

• Winston Churchill

• Condemned Soviet expansion in eastern Europe

• “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across Europe”

• Meant that the Allies had spent 6 years fighting freedom from fascism only to have half the continent under Soviet dictatorship