How did the Cold War begin? The build up to the events of 1947

• Agreed that Germany would be divided into 4 zones of occupation, one American, one British, one French and one Soviet
• Berlin (Soviet zone) would similarly be divided into 4 zones
• Stalin promised at Yalta to hold free elections in post war Poland signing the Declaration of Liberated Europe. However, elections were not free & communism was imposed. The Soviet Union's new western border also remained in place

Impact or significance

• Roosevelt started to doubt the possibility of geniuine post war cooperation 

• Succeeded by Harry Truman, his VP
• Before Roosevelt died, Truman said "We can't do business with Stalin, he has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta."

Impact or significance

• Truman becomes even more frustrated with Stalin

• Protesting about the movement of his troops into Trieste from Yugoslavia. Tito withdraws troops

Impact or significance 

• US are fearful of the communist controlled Yugoslavia and fear the spread of communsim into Greece 

• The US cannot do anything about Stalin's broken promises

Impact or significance 

• An atmosphere of mistrust is established. In Washington, policy makers start to fear Soviet intentions

• The atomic bomb was successfully exploded in the desert in New Mexico
• Truman announced to Stalin at the Potsdam meeting an atomic bomb had been successfully detonated
• The bomb cost $2billion to develop

Impact or significance 

• Stalin pretended to be unconcerned but was deeply worried about the shift in the balance of world power and authorised an accelerated weapons development programme in the USSR

• At Potsdam it was agreed that each occupying power would take reparations from its own zone.
• It was also agreed that the USSR would be given additional reparations from the other zones.
• It was also agreed that goods would move freely between all the zones, treating them as a single economic area. 
• Truman didn't tell Stalin about the plans to drop atomic bombs on Japan - the first bomb therefore denies the USSR a place at any negotiations over Japan's future.

Impact or significance

• However, the Soviets treated their zone as a spearate economic entity and even removed German factories from it and rebuilt them in the USSR.
• The Soviets also complained they were receiving insufficient reparations from the other zones & so in turn refused to allow movement of goods from their zone. 

• Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan by the USA

Impact or significance

• Japan surrenders

• Stalin intervenes in the Chinese civil war.
• Shows support for Chinese communists in Manchuria recognising them as the legitimate government of China.

Impact or significance 

• US responds in September 1945 by sending 50,000 US marines to support the Chinese nationalists 

• Soviet troops remain in Iran post WW2
• They were reminded of the agreed date for withdrawal which was 1st March 1946

• George Kennan was an official in the US embassy in Moscow
• He sent a telegram to the US state department offering a historical explanation for USSR foreign policy
• He suggested the Soviets were inspired by Marxian theory of capitalist states being taken over by communist states
• He suggested the USSR was irrevocably expansionist and hostile to the West
• The US must resist

Impact or significance

• His ideas that the USSR was aggressive & inspired by communist ideology appealed enormously to Truman
• It prompted him to create a tougher policy towards the USSR. A get tough policy. This later becomes containment

• In Fulton, Missouri 
• He said an Iron Curtain had descended across Europe
• In 1946, opinion polls showed only 35% of the American public thought the Soviets could be trusted. In 1945, the figure had been 55%

Impact or significance

• Churchill's speech helped to harden public opinion in the US

• The US get the UN to tell Stalin he has missed the deadline for troop removal from Iran
• In March 1946, USSR troops were only 40 miles from Tehran & had not observed the 1st March deadline

Impact or significance

• Stalin is cross that the US went to the UN but does withdraw his troops
• The US helps Iranian troops to establish a grip in its northern provinces

• The plan laid down proposals for the control of atomic weapons throigh inspections in UN member states

Impact or significance 

• US refuses to destroy its existing atomic weapon stock pile until the USSR submit to inspections of its atomic weapons facilities
• The USSR argues the opposite. 
• Increase in tension

• The US attaches more stringent conditions to their loans to the USSR
• E.g. the Soviets must drop trade barriers in Eastern Europe
• Known as dollar diplomacy

Impact or significance

• In June 1946, all loan negotiations cease as the USSR was not interested in US loans on such terms 

• Britain announces it is withdrawing its troops from Greece
• Truman paid for British troops to remain in Greece propping up a royalist government against the communists

Impact or significance

• Greece did not become communist
• Truman is effectively practising containment