The Origins of the Cold War

From Yalta to Potsdam

 WWII
Agreements:
Background to
the Cold War

Moscow
Percentages
Agreement
 Video
Archive
The Yalta
Conference,
1945
The Yalta Conference, 1945
When: Feb 4 - Feb 11, 1945

Where: Livadia Palace, Crimean ASSR, Soviet Union

Who: The Big Three - Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin

Agenda: German defeat in the Second World War looked imminent. The
prospective victors thus got together to make decisions about Germany and the
world’s (specifically Europe’s) postwar fate.

Climate: Warm - some minor signs of cooling

Martin Walker (historian): “The last of the wartime conferences…[and] the first of the postwar
summits…”
The Yalta Conference, 1945 - Agreements
● FDR secured Stalin’s commitment to joining the fight against Japan once
Germany surrendered
● All three allies committed to joining the United Nations
● Allied soldiers uncovered the horrors of Nazi atrocities (i.e. concentration
camps) and agreed to administer judicial retribution
● Plans were finalised for the occupation of a soon-to-be-defeated Germany
○ France was only included among the occupying powers upon Churchill’s
insistence
○ Germany was thus divided into four zones of occupation; Berlin fell in the Soviet
zone so it was subdivided into four zones with a small section placed under four
power control
The Yalta Conference, 1945 - Uncertainties
● The Red Army’s presence in Eastern Europe and Stalin’s particular expectations
for Poland raised contentions/concerns but the allies were able to reach
agreement through a series of ambiguous compromises
● Stalin insisted that Poland’s eastern border would run along the Curzon Line
(which roughly corresponded with the Nazi-Soviet split of Poland)
○ He hoped to compensate by allowing Poland to move its Western border into German
territory but the borders were yet unspecified
○ Neither Churchill nor FDR were comfortable with the plan but they both conceded
knowing that the Red Army occupied both Germany and Poland
● Stalin also seemingly agreed to the ‘Declaration of a Liberated Europe’ by
which the allies assumed he would guarantee free elections in Eastern Europe;
Stalin’s interpreted his commitment differently - understood freedom and
democracy through a Soviet-Socialist framework
Poland After The Yalta Conference
Polish Governance:
● Members of Poland’s former government had set up a government in exile during the
Nazi occupation
● They were known as the ‘London Poles’ based on the city they settled in
● Placed pressure on the western allies to broker a liberal democratic future for Poland

Stalin’s Plans for Poland:

● June 1945: A new Provisional Govt of National Unity, primarily made up of members from
the Soviet organised Lublin Committee, was set up in Poland
● It primarily consisted of Polish communists with a token few non-communists, who would
not last in power all too long
● Raised alarm in the west and among the London Poles
Between Yalta and Potsdam, 1945
● April 12, 1945: Harry S. Truman became President after Roosevelt’s death; he had a
far more hardlined stance against Stalin and the USSR
● May 8, 1945: Three months after Yalta, Germany announced its unconditional
surrender from the war, leaving a vacuum of power that both the Soviets and the
west would look to fill
○ Initially Anglo-American troops flooded and occupied nearly half the area that would become
the eastern zone but retreated to the western side by July
○ Soviet troops were behind the liberation of a majority of eastern Europe, where the Red
Army remained after war, justifying it as a defensive measure for the USSR
● May 1945: Truman tried to end Lend-Lease Aid which had upheld the Soviet war
effort, but was forced to resume once reminded that the Soviets had committed to
supporting the war in the Pacific
● July 16, 1945: The USA successfully tested the atom bomb a week before the
Potsdam conference
Potsdam Conference, 1945
When: July 17 - August 2, 1945

Where: Cecilienhof Palace, Potsdam (Berlin outskirts), Brandenburg, Germany

Who: “The Big Three” - Joseph Stalin, Harry S. Truman (replaced FDR), Clement
Attlee (A July election victory for the Labour Party meant that Attlee replaced Churchill midway through the conference)

Climate: Cold and tense

Agenda: The interlinked fate of Poland and Germany had to be determined and the
final details of Germany’s postwar settlement and 4-zone administration needed to
be determined

“Both the atmosphere and leading personnel at Potsdam were markedly different from the previous ‘Big
Three’ conferences at Tehran and Yalta.”
Potsdam Conference, 1945 (Soviet Power)
Red Army Occupation of Eastern Europe:
● After liberating country after country in eastern Europe, the Red Army maintained
an occupying presence
● By July, the Soviets effectively controlled the Baltic States, Finland, Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania
○ Those who were averse to or fearful of a Communist takeover were overwhelmed
and often felt the pressure to flee the country
● Right after Yalta, a communist government, mostly containing members of the
Lublin committee, was established in Poland (despite local and western resistance)
Spirit of Revenge:
Stalin was aiming to administer a tough settlement for Germany, exacting retribution for
the 25 million+ Soviet lives lost, heavy reparations for the damage, and a weakening of
Germany to ensure no future attack
Polish Border Issue
Disagreement Over German-
Polish Borders
● Stalin was determined to seize
territory from Poland in the east
(based on the Curzon Line - or,
more plainly, the Molotov-
Ribbentrop settlement)
● In order to compensate Poland,
Germany would lose territory in
Lower Silesia upto the Oder-
Neisse line
● This would result in the
displacement of 3 million
Germans
Potsdam Conference, 1945 - Discord
Disagreement Over German Settlement
● The three allies agreed on measures for German demilitarisation, denazification, and
the punishment of war criminals and they set up the Allied Control Commission
(ACC), which included Generals representing armies of four occupying allied powers
● Allies were to receive reparations but their value was a major point of contention
● Over 20-25 million Russians had died in the war and the economy was devastated so
Stalin wanted tough compensation but the Americans were looking more at a
reconstruction approach
Potsdam Conference, 1945 - Discord
Disagreement over eastern Europe:
● Taking cue from the Yalta agreements, Stalin believed he had Allied support in setting up
pro-Soviet governments across countries in eastern Europe
● Based his negotiations on the rhetoric that stability in these Slavic states would depend on
their unity (under a single cause)
● Over time, the western powers and especially Truman became suspicious of the Soviet
presence in the region, which appeared to become repressive and dogmatic

Problems of the Bomb

● Churchill had hoped for a quick ‘Big Three’ meeting after war ended in Europe but the
meeting was delayed since Truman waited for the bomb to be tested in New Mexico
● Learning that the bomb was more destructive than anticipated, Truman became more
hardlined since they no longer needed Soviet support in Japan and expected to place
pressure through the bomb
● Stalin, however, refused to betray intimidation and became even more tough in negotiations
 Pay close attention to these two sources. They outline the
climate during the postwar conferences, marking a palpable
shift in attitude.

What do they suggest was the major cause behind this

change of heart (on all sides)?
A Dark Cloud Descends - Japan, the Bomb, and the Future
A Tense Victory - Using the Bomb, Defeating Japan
● During the war, the USA and Britain had undertaken a secret project to build an atomic
bomb known as the Manhattan Project
● The bomb was successfully tested on 16th July 1945, just a day before the Potsdam
Conference began
● Truman had delayed the start of the conference so that he could have the results before he
went
● Just four days after the end of the Potsdam Conference, on August 6th, the USA used an
Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima
● Truman made a public broadcast informing American people about the formidable new
weapon that the USA had developed and calling on Japan to surrender unconditionally
● He warned of more atomic bombings to come
● Stalin suspected that the USA wanted Japan to surrender only to the USA so that they
could occupy Japan and dictate its political future without Soviet interference
The USA’s Tense Victory - A Revisionist Perspective
● In 1965 the historian Gar Alperovitz argued that the US administration had decided to use
the bomb primarily as a demonstration and a warning to the USSR
● He referred to this use of the Atomic Bomb as a diplomatic tactic, aka ‘atomic diplomacy’
● James Byrnes had indeed made remarks that using the atomic bomb “might put us in a
position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war”
● Up to August 1945, the Japanese had been using the USSR as an intermediary in putting
forward conditions for an armistice
● But on August 8th, the USSR declared war on Japan and invaded Japanese occupied
Manchuria
● On August 9th, the USA dropped another bomb on the city of Nagasaki
● Some historians have argued that while the first bomb was dropped for the stated reasons
for trying to get Japan to surrender without having to stage a costly and bloody invasion of
the Japanese mainland, Truman decided to drop the second bomb so quickly after the first
because he wanted to forestall greater Soviet involvement in Asia.