Cold War Beginnings-1

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Life After World War II

Plans for the Postwar World

In February 1945 the Allies were close to victory in Europe. In the Soviet town of

Yalta, a meeting took place between the "Big Three." President Franklin D. Rooseveltmet with Winston Churchill of Great Britain and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union. Atthe Yalta Conference they made plans for the postwar world. The resulting agreementcalled for the creation of a world peacekeeping organization. It also supported freeelections and democratic governments in the nations being freed from the Axis Powers.In addition, Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan after Germany surrendered. Theagreement seemed to solve many problems. One of Roosevelt's advisers recalled, "Wereally believed in our hearts that this was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for and talking about for so many years."

Stalin did not honor all of the agreements he made at Yalta. For example, Stalinsaw Poland as a buffer between Germany and his own country. He did not want a

democratic Polish government. After the Soviets freed Poland from Germany, theyformed a pro-communist Polish government in June 1945, which later refused to allowfree elections.

President Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Harry S Truman became president.Germany surrendered in May. At the time, Soviet armies occupied most of EasternEurope. In July Truman traveled to Potsdam, Germany, to meet with Churchill andStalin. At the Potsdam Conference the three leaders agreed to divide Germany into four zones of occupation to be controlled by Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and theUnited States. The former German capital, Berlin, located within the Soviet zone, wasitself divided into four sections. Meanwhile in the Pacific the Allies continued the fightagainst Japan, demanding unconditional surrender. Truman approved the use of thenewly developed atomic bomb against Japan. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan formally surrendered in September 1945.

The United Nations

With the war over, political leaders looked for ways to prevent future conflicts.The solution seemed to be an international organization that could resolve conflicts peacefully. In 1944, British, Chinese, Soviet, and U.S. representatives had met inWashington, D.C. They wrote a plan for a new organization to promote world peace—theUnited Nations (UN). The following year, representatives from 50 countries cametogether in San Francisco, California, to write the UN charter. It was unanimouslyapproved and signed in June 1945. The first official UN session took place in January

1946. The UN charter created the Security Council and the General Assembly. TheSecurity Council decides what diplomatic, economic, and military actions are needed tosettle disputes. China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union (now Russia), and theUnited States all hold permanent seats on the council. Ten other countries are elected tothe council for two-year terms. All UN member states belong to the General Assembly,which meets each year to talk about policy, vote on membership, and pass the budget.

The UN charter also created the International Court of Justice, based in TheHague, the Netherlands.



Seeking Justice

To discourage future acts of aggression, the Allies also decided to hold war crimes trials. These are trials of people accused of committing crimes against humanityand violating the international laws of warfare. Starting in November 1945, theInternational Military Tribunal tried high-ranking Nazi officers in Nuremberg, Germany.

The court at Nuremberg found 19 Nazi leaders guilty of crimes against humanityand sentenced 12 of them to death. The court also found thousands of lesser officialsguilty. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East held similar war crimes trialsin Japan. Former prime minister Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese leaders wereexecuted for their crimes. The court also convicted some 4,200 other Japanese as war criminals of a lesser degree. During the trials, soldiers could not use the defense that theyhad simply been following orders. These trials established that there is no defense for committing crimes against humanity. The trials also showed that nations could cooperateto put war criminals on trial.

Many of the ex-Nazis convicted at Nuremberg were found guilty of helping to runconcentration camps. As greater horrors of the Holocaust came to light, support for a

Jewish homeland increased. In 1947 the UN General Assembly divided Palestine, whichBritain had occupied since World War I, into two states. One state was Arab, and theother Jewish. In May 1948 the independent Jewish state of Israel was created.

The United States immediately recognized Israel's independence, but neighboringArab states did not. Their armies attacked the new nation, but Israeli forces drove them back and captured Arab land. After a bitter fight, the two sides signed a peace treaty inthe spring of 1949. Jews had a homeland, but the war had left as many as 1 millionPalestinian Arabs as refugees. Israel joined the United Nations in 1949.

Despite efforts to establish peace after World War II, tensions in Europe remainedhigh. The United States and the Soviet Union disagreed strongly about the political futureof Central and Eastern Europe. Germany was a major issue. The United States wanted

Germany to be a united, independent country again. The Soviets disagreed. They fearedthat a united Germany might once again invade the Soviet Union.

A Divided Europe

The Soviet armies of occupation stayed in Eastern Europe, helping to createcommunist "satellite states" loyal to the Soviet Union. The Soviets said that they weresimply protecting their borders, but western diplomats saw Soviet actions differently.British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned Americans of the threat the Soviets posed in Europe.

British and U.S. leaders feared that the Soviet Union's influence would continueto grow until it threatened the democracies of Western Europe. Many observers were also

troubled by stories of Stalin's use of terror and violence against Soviet citizens. They believed that these brutal acts meant that Stalin would stop at nothing to protect andincrease his power.



Cold War Beginnings

From Allies to Enemies

The Soviet Union and the United States had joined together to fight Germany in

World War II. After the war they were the two most powerful nations in the world, buttheir alliance quickly turned into a bitter competition for world influence. The so-calledsuperpowers had little in common economically or politically. The United States was based on free enterprise and democracy. American leaders supported free markets andfree elections. The Soviet Union was a communist country. The central government planned the economy, and the Communist Party was the only choice for voters.

Both countries wanted to spread their political and economic systems. As a result,they became increasingly involved in the affairs of other nations. For example, the SovietUnion supported independence movements in many colonized regions. Fearing thespread of communism, the United States often worked to stop these efforts. U.S. presidential adviser Bernard Baruch declared, "We are today in the midst of a cold war."

The term Cold War came to describe the competition between the United States and theSoviet Union for world power.One of the first troubled spots was Greece. In August 1946, communist rebels

rose up against Greece's corrupt monarchy. The rebels were supported by the independentcommunist government of Yugoslavia. President Truman, however, believed the Sovietswere behind the revolt. He decided to stop more Soviet expansion in Europe. In March1947 Truman announced that the United States would give economic aid to helpcountries fighting communism. This policy became known as the Truman Doctrine.Congress gave $400 million in aid to Greece and its neighbor Turkey, which helped theGreek army defeat the rebels. The Truman Doctrine had successfully protected theanticommunist governments of Greece and Turkey. However, it greatly angered Sovietleaders.

Economic Assistance

Some Europeans thought that communism would solve their economic troubles.The European economy had been badly damaged by World War II. Millions of peoplewere unemployed and major industries were in ruins. Many people were homeless.Countless others were in danger of starvation. General George C. Marshall, who hadhelped plan the D-Day invasion in World War II, became the U.S. secretary of state in1947. He argued that Europe's economic recovery was necessary for world peace. Thisrecovery would also help the U.S. economy, which depended upon trade with Europe.

The United States began to carry out the Marshall Plan, which offered "friendly

aid" to help the nations of Europe rebuild. Some members of Congress thought theMarshall Plan would be too expensive. Others argued in favor of the Marshall Plan, believing that Communists might gain control of Western European nations if their economies did not recover. This argument convinced many officials. Between 1948 and1951 Congress approved more than $13 billion for Marshall Plan aid.

Marshall insisted that his plan was not directed "against any country or doctrine[belief system] but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos [disorder]." TheUnited States even offered to assist the Soviet Union, but the Soviets refused the offer.Their foreign minister called the plan a plot to enslave Europe by making it dependent onU.S. aid. Soviet leaders also kept their Eastern European satellites from joining the



Marshall Plan or accepting U.S. aid.The Marshall Plan helped Western Europe recover from the war. "We grabbed the

lifeline with both hands," remembered a British minister. The plan also created a hugemarket for American exports. However, the Marshall Plan widened the split between theSoviet Union and the United States.

Trouble in Berlin

At the beginning of the Cold War, the United States adopted a new foreign policycalled containment. American diplomat George F. Kennan helped form this policy, whichfocused on containing communism, or keeping it from spreading. As part of thecontainment policy, the United States would react quickly to any Soviet-backedaggression.

U.S. officials saw containment as a defensive strategy. Soviet leaders, however,saw the American position as an offensive strategy aimed at them. The United Stateswould follow the containment policy for more than 30 years.

In the late 1940s a crisis in occupied Germany tested the containment policy.

Great Britain, France, and the United States wanted the occupied and divided Germany to become an independent nation. In June 1948 they proposed joining their areas of controlto create the country of West Germany. Their zones in Berlin would also become part of West Germany even though the city was located in Soviet-controlled eastern Germany.

Angry Soviet leaders feared that an independent Germany would once againthreaten the Soviet Union. On June 24 the Soviets suddenly blocked all highway and railtraffic between West Berlin and Western Europe. This blockade effectively cut off WestBerlin from all sources of supplies. Left with less than 40 days' worth of food, people inWest Berlin feared a communist takeover.

U.S. officials knew that West Berlin needed help quickly. However, they wantedto avoid war. They decided to fly food, fuel, and other goods into the city. In June 1948,

U.S. and British planes began the Berlin Airlift. For weeks, planes landed in Berlin everyminute. These planes brought thousands of tons of supplies each day to the more than 2million people in West Berlin. The city became a symbol of liberty.

The Berlin Airlift lasted 321 days. The Soviets did not want to risk a war bytrying to stop the airlift, so on May 12, 1949, they finally lifted the blockade. In October Germany was divided into two nations. The Federal Republic of Germany, known asWest Germany, sided with Western Europe. In response, the Soviets set up the GermanDemocratic Republic, known as East Germany.

Choosing Sides

Many countries were becoming more concerned over the Soviet Union's growing

military strength. These concerns led the United States, Canada, Iceland, and nineWestern European nations to form a military alliance in April 1949. Each member of this North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) promised to defend the others. The treatythen went to the U.S. Senate for approval. Some senators worried that NATO might forcethe United States to go to war without the agreement of Congress. Similar concerns hadstopped the United States from joining the League of Nations after World War I. Yet thethreat of Soviet military expansion convinced the Senate to approve NATO. In 1955 theSoviet Union created its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union andthe Eastern European nations that it controlled joined the new alliance.



Another concern for U.S. leaders was the rise of a Soviet nuclear threat. In August1949 the Soviets shocked U.S. military experts by exploding their own atomic bomb. TheCold War grew more intense. Some U.S. leaders argued that the Soviet Union wanted tocontrol Europe and the entire world. These people stated that U.S. leaders had to be prepared to oppose Soviet-backed Communists worldwide. The United States might even

have to use force in small or faraway countries to protect its interests. Not all military and political officials agreed with this viewpoint. Some criticsargued that fighting communism everywhere would stretch the resources of the UnitedStates too thin. Critics also worried that the United States might even be tempted to helpundemocratic governments that were anticommunist. Despite such concerns, globalcontainment won strong support among many American politicians and military leaders.In addition, the American people generally supported the fight against communism.

The United States moved to strengthen its alliances. It also quadrupled defensespending. President Truman approved the development of even more powerful nuclear weapons for national defense. Just a few years after the end of World War II, a newstruggle had begun. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was

spreading around the world.

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Cold War Beginnings-1