Cold War

ANTECEDENTS
• Post WWII allies rivalries and differences sharpen
• Post War Plan : Yalta Conference , Postdam Conference
(desnazification,trials)
• U.S.A. and Soviet Union : incompatibility
• Stalin´s Declaration and Churchill´s Speech
• NATO vs. Warsaw Pact
 Yalta Conference 1945
German division after WWII Weak agreements
• Unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.
• Yalta conference : agreement to divide
Germany into 4 zones controlled by
military forces and Eastern Europe as
Soviet Sphere of influence.
• Roosevelt suggested Stalin granted free
elections in Poland, never happened. S.U.
installed a puppet government in Warsaw
controlled from Moscow.
 STALIN´s expansionism
• “ Everyone imposes his own system as far as army can reach” Stalin at
Postdam
• Capitalism and Communism can not exist in the same world, he thought.
• After WWII ended Soviet Union already occupied:
• Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia
• Half of Germany and Northern Iran
• Wanted sea ports in the Mediterranean and threaten to enter the Atlantic
 SOURCE ONE
• PRIMARY SOURCE From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron
curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals
of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. . . . All these famous cities
and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject in one
form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing
measure of control from Moscow.
• WINSTON CHURCHILL, “Iron Curtain” speech, March 5, 1946
• Why might Winston Churchill use “iron curtain” to refer to the division between
Western and Eastern Europe?
The Iron Curtain
 U.S. vs S.U
How should society be organized?

• Democratic government, • Communism : one-party rules: the

individual can choose by voting in communist party ( a few decide not
a multi-party political system. the majority )

• FREEDOM (of thought, of • NO FREEDOM ( people were

speech, of press, of religion)
• Economic system : free-market ;
private property allowed. State
supports the population needs too.
persecuted because of their ideas or
religion. Eg. Pope Jean Paul II
• Planned economic system : No
private property; the state owns the
land and all the country’s resources.
 Two Systems:
• Capitalism Freedom/Oppression • Communism
 SOURCE 2
• PRIMARY SOURCE One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and
is distinguished by free institutions . . . free elections . . . and freedom from
political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority
forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression . . . fixed
elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe it must be the
policy of the United States to support free people . . . resisting attempted
subjugation [control] by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
• PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN, speech to Congress, March 12, 1947
• What was Truman’s major reason for offering aid to other countries?
MARSHALL PLAN
RESPONSE TO BERLIN BLOCKADE
 WHAT IS A COLD WAR?
• Is it a struggle ?
• Is it based on differences ? Which?
• Is military action or war permitted?
• What strategies are used?
• Deterrance policy
• Spionage; propaganda.
• Alliances; United Nation.
 U.S.A. and the NATO
1949-2020
• In 1949, there were 12 founding members of the Alliance: Belgium, Canada,
Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway,
Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.
• The other member countries are: Greece and Turkey (1952), Germany (1955),
Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004), Albania
and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020).
• Its aim: Collective defense is at the heart of the Treaty .
 Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact
1955 - 1991
• Military command of the Soviet Union and military units on the territories
of the other members.
• Members : Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovaquia, East Germany, Hungary,
Poland and Romania.
• Photo : Prague , Soviet invasion
 EASTERN EUROPE Discontent
• Berlin Wall ( 1961 – Nov.1989 )
• Hungarian revolt ( 1956)
• The Prague Spring in Czechoslovaquia republic ( 1968 )
 Spheres of Influence
USA : Freedom fighters Soviet Union/China: National Wars
of Liberation
• 1947 : Greece, Turkey , Israel • 1950 : Korea: China Soviet-backed
• 1953 : Iran • 1961 : Vietnam: China Soviet-backed
• 1950 : Korea • Cuba : 1962
• 1961 : Vietnam
• Egypt : 1973
• 1965 : Dominican Republic
• Angola : 1979
• 1973 : Chile
• 1961 : Cuba
• Mozambique : 1976
• 1954 : Guatemala • Afghanistan : 1979
TIME LINE