5.1 Onset of the Cold War

Following World War II, the US and the Soviet Union emerged as the world’s two remaining superpowers. Although they were allies during the war, following the war the distrust of capitalism by the Soviets and communism by the Americans, made them enemies. The defeat of Germany and Japan left no power in Europe or Asia to block the formidable Soviet army. Many Americans feared that desperate, war-weary peoples would find the appeal of communism irresistible.

Historians today still debate what Stalin’s intentions truly were because of the secrecy surrounding Stalin’s rule. At the time, it was widely assumed that Stalin intended to spread a sphere of influence around the world, eventually imposing communism worldwide. If Stalin intended to extend the Soviet Union’s dominion, only the United States had the economic and military might to block him. Coming out of World War II, the Soviet economy could not complete with that of the US. No matter what Soviet leaders said publicly, privately they knew that they couldn’t match the efficiency of American farms and factories, the quality of consumer goods, or the technological innovation in both the military and civilian sectors.

As early as the first months of 1946, it became apparent that relations between the Soviet Union and the West were irreparable. On February 22, 1946, the US chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Moscow, George Kennan sent a telegram back to Washington DC, warning that the Soviet Union had embarked on an aggressive trajectory of expansionism which must be met with a firm policy of “containment” at every point where they showed signs of encroaching upon interests of a “peaceful and stable world.”¹ This communique became known as the “Long Telegram” because it was 8000 words in length. This also became the basis for the policy of containment which would guide the early decades of Cold War policy for the US. Just two weeks later, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, delivered a rousing speech at Westminster College. The “Sinews of Peace” speech insisted that “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 Central and Eastern Europe . . .” under the Soviet sphere of influence.² Churchill continued by insisting that the only way to protect the world from being overrun by communist influence was for Western nations, particularly those “English-speaking Commonwealths,” to unite and protect the remainder of the world from encroachment.³

To add to Soviet anxieties, the United States immediately cut wartime economic aid when the war ended, and negotiations made it difficult for the Soviets to claim reparations from the Germans. How then could the Soviet Union rebuild? In many ways, Stalin had as much reason to fear his former allies as they had to fear him.

When combined with Marxist ideology that viewed capitalism as evil, perhaps it’s not too surprising that anxieties on both sides contributed to the rise of the Cold War. President Truman wholeheartedly accepted the doctrine of containment proposed by Kennan and advocated by Churchill.

The Cold War was a global political and ideological struggle between capitalist and communist countries, particularly between the two surviving superpowers of the postwar world: the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). “Cold” because it was never a “hot,” direct shooting war between the United States and the Soviet Union, the generations-long, multifaceted rivalry nevertheless bent the world to its whims. Tensions ran highest, perhaps, during the first Cold War, which lasted from the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s, after which followed a period of relaxed tensions and increased communication and cooperation, known by the French term détente, until the second Cold War interceded from roughly 1979 until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War reshaped the world and the generations of Americans that lived under its shadow.

Potsdam Conference

Tensions between the Allied Powers were apparent well before the war ended. The Big Three Allies – the US, the USSR, and Great Britain – met at Yalta and at Potsdam during the war in an effort to plan for the peace after the war. During the war itself, the Soviet Union had fought basically alone on the Eastern Front. As Germany advanced, the people and the land had been devastated. Then when the Soviet Union pushed back, eventually all the way into Germany itself, they caused further destruction. Millions of lives were lost. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin was insistent that the newly conquered territory be a Soviet sphere of influence. He argued, rightly so, that Eastern Europe was the only barrier between Germany and the Soviet Union; two world wars had proven that the geographic region must be strengthened to provide a buffer zone to protect the Soviet Union and its people. Roosevelt agreed in principle but did not agree that the Soviet Union had a right to control Eastern Europe. Then just a few days before the first meeting of the United Nations, President Roosevelt died in April 1945. It was his successor, President Truman, who attended the Potsdam Conference.

When word reached Truman about the successful testing of the atomic bomb in New Mexico while he was at the Potsdam Conference, his entire attitude appeared to change. Churchill will later observe that the president appeared “a changed man. He told the Russians just where they got off and generally bossed the whole meeting.”⁴ Then on July 24, “when Truman told Stalin about this “new weapon of unusual destructive force,” the Soviet leader simply nodded his acknowledgement and said that he hoped the Americans would make “good use” of it.”⁵

The end result of the Potsdam Conference, meant to establish a vision for permanent peace in the postwar world, was a deepening suspicion of motives and rising tensions between the remaining superpowers while the rest of the world sat on the periphery.

The Truman Doctrine

The first major test of US/Soviet relations following the end of World War II came in early 1947. As Europe reeled under severe winter storms and a depressed postwar economy, Great Britain announced that it could no longer afford to support its mandates from World War I – Greece and Turkey. Without British aid, the communist movements within these countries seemed destined to win. Truman decided that the United States should shore up Greek and Turkish resistance. He asked Congress to provide $400 million in military and economic aid.

The world was now divided into two hostile camps, the president warned. To preserve the American way of life, the United States must step forward and help “free people” threatened by “totalitarian regimes.”⁶ This rationale for aid to Greece and Turkey soon became known as the Truman Doctrine and it became to cornerstone of American containment policy. With the Truman Doctrine, President Truman had linked communism with rebel movements across the globe. Americans were now committed to a relatively open-ended struggle.

Complicating the binary paradigm presented through the Truman Doctrine was the President’s near-immediate recognition of the newly formed state of Israel. Palestine had most recently been under British mandate through World War II. As was often the case in British-controlled areas during the end of their imperial era, they opted for a “divide and rule” strategy making promises and compromises to different groups. The inconsistencies between the Balfour Declaration (1917), the Passerfield Paper, the 1939 White Papers, alongside other less formal agreements fueled already growing animosity between Palestinians and incoming Jewish settlers. The horrors of the Holocaust further prompted U.S. and U.K. leaders as well as the Jewish people themselves to more vociferously call for the creation of a Jewish state. Unfortunately, this came at the cost of the Palestinian people who also called the region home dating back to ancient times. Violence from both camps ultimately culminated when the U.S., under pressure from lobbying groups such as American Zionist Emergency Committee, provided munitions and economic support for the Plan Dalet which forced Palestinians, about 250,000, out of all the zones claimed by Israelis. On May 15th of 1948, the Jewish Agency for Palestine declared the independent state of Israel which was recognized that same day by the Truman Administration. Neighboring nations in the Middle East, either in support of Palestinians or weary of potential imperial designs of the U.S. through Israel, organized an invasion of the newly-formed state which, with U.S. support was defeated by the Israeli Defense Force. Decades of conflicts, varying in scale, ensued causing at least some of the instability within the Middle East that lingers to this day.⁷

1. George Kennan, “The Long Telegram,” February 22, 1946, at Wilson Center Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116178.pdf.
2. Winston Churchill, “Sinews of Peace,” March 5, 1946, at International Churchill Society, https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/.
3. Ibid.
4. Winston Churchill Quoted in Douglas T. Miller, “2. Cold War America,” Visions of America: Second World War to the Present (St. Paul: West Pub., 1988), 34.
5. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, eds., “Chapter 25,” The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018), II. Political, Economic, and Military Dimensions, at http://www.americanyawp.com/text/25-the-cold-war/.
6. Harry Truman, “President’s Message to Congress, March 12, 1947,” at Ourdocuments.gov, National Archives, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=81.
7. Michael Ottolenghi, “Harry Truman’s Recognition of Israel”, The Historical Journal, Vol. 47, No. 4, Dec., 2004, pp. 963-988