The Origins of the Cold War

• The Iron Curtain

Winston Churchill gave the Map of the Iron

Iron Curtain speech in 1946 Curtain
1
The Truman Doctrine, 1947

President Truman outlined the

Truman Doctrine to a joint session
of Congress in March of 1947 2
 $400 million in economic
Truman aid to Greece and Turkey
Doctrine Truman hoped to stop
spread of
1947 communism

Soviet
P.O.V.
The Marshall Plan, 1947

Photo shows a delivery of

A map showing how the wheat from the U.S. being
plan’s $20B was unloaded in Rotterdam,
distributed by country 4
Netherlands
 NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact

• 1949 – North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) formed as a military alliance
pledged to help one another if one of them
was attacked
• 1955 – Warsaw Pact formed military
alliance of USSR and its satellites of
Eastern Europe
NATO Treaty, 1949. Warsaw Pact, 1955.

6
 Yugoslavia – Josef Tito breaks
from Stalin, though still communist
• The U.S. sent economic
assistance

• “The Yugoslav dictator might

be a “son-of-a-bitch,” the new
Secretary of State Dean
Acheson acknowledged in
1949, but he was now “our
son-of-a-bitch.”
• Stalin’s resentment
of Western countries Berlin Airlift
rebuilding of
Germany led him to
caught off Berlin
from supplies
• U.S. airlifted food
and supplies to
people
 How did the Soviet victory at the
Battle of Stalingrad alter the
foreign policy thinking of the
United States?
From that point on in the war, Roosevelt
and Truman had to design foreign policy
around not just defeating Germany and
Japan but on dealing with Russia as well.

History
Connection
When did the Cold War Start?
Historians debate the true start of the Cold
War, but through applying our knowledge
we could argue the following:
With the dropping of the Atomic Bomb
With the defeat of Germany in Europe
With the defeat of the Germans at
Stalingrad in 1943
 History Connection

Remember, Stalin was allied with the

Nazi’s at the beginning of the war [Nazi-
Soviet Pact 1939] and only when Hitler
turned on him did Russia join the
Allies.