Cold War

Postwar Treaties and Negotiations

The Yalta Conference

• Feb 4-11 1945• High point wartime cooperation• Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin + France

occupy Germany• Soviets demanded heavy reparations• US and Britain wanted economic recovery• Result = Germany pay reparations,

amount later

Agreements

• All leaders agreed Poland to take territory from Germany

• Roosevelt and Churchill agreed support Soviet-supported provisional Polish govt.

• Declaration of Liberated Europe = pledged to help liberated nations solve problems by democratic means

• Extended wartime alliance through creation of United Nations Organisation

Interpretations

• Later criticised for ceding Eastern Europe to Soviet control

• However, reflected balance of power:– Soviets controlled most of Eastern Europe, eastern

third of Germany– Western forces still recovering from December 1944

counterattack of Hitler’s forces

• Diane Shaver Clemens - ‘the spirit of Yalta’ = atmosphere of conciliation and cooperation

• Based on mutual need – West depended on the Red Army, Soviet Union needed economic and military aid from the US

The Potsdam Conference

• July 1945• Postwar rivalry replacing wartime cooperation• 3 allies reached agreement on dividing

Germany• German boundaries = forfeited conquests, lost

territory to Poland and SU• Three leaders – Harry S. Truman, Clement

Attlee, Stalin – decided main source reparations for each power would be own occupation zone

Changes in attitude

• Lost main incentive cooperation and compromise• US leaders drawing on ‘lessons’ of 1930s • Desire create international economic

environment open to US trade and investment• US should maintain monopoly of atomic weapons• “…designed not only to protect physical security

of the US and its allies, but to preserve a broadly defined “American way of life” by constructing an international order that would be open to and compatible with US interested and ideals.”

David S Painter, The Cold War: An International History, p.14

• Roosevelt died April 1945, Truman successor

Soviet perceptions

• Political vacuum seemed to offer ideal environment for Soviet ideology to extend power and influence

• Despite opened archives still limited material on Soviet motives

• Soviet security objectives at end of WWII included– creating strong safeguards against future German

aggression– secure borders, buffer zone in Eastern Europe– reconstructing SU war-damaged base– maintenance strong military (development atomic weapons)

• Sought cooperation with US to achieve these goals – only nation which could provide economic assistance desired

• SUs main objective ran against Western ideals

Soviet gains

• Inability gain harsh reparations from Germany or US aid

• Severe programme within Soviet sphere• By end of war SU has reabsorbed Estonia, Latvia,

Lithuania, and annexed small portions of Czechoslovakia, Romania and Germany

• Installed subservient regimes in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and their occupation zone in Germany

• Local communist parties gained positions influence in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Albania

Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’• Response to urgent request by US State Department for

clarification Soviet conduct• Famous for both length and content – recommended policy

of containment – dominated US thinking throughout much of the Cold War period

• “At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity.”

• “It was no coincidence that Marxism, which had smoldered ineffectively for half a century in Western Europe, caught hold and blazed for first time in Russia. Only in this land which had never known a friendly neighbor or indeed any tolerant equilibrium of separate powers, either internal or international, could a doctrine thrive which viewed economic conflicts of society as insoluble by peaceful means.”

The ‘Long Telegram’• “In this dogma [Marxism-Leninism], with its basic altruism of

purpose, they found justification for their instinctive fear of outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule… In the name of Marxism they sacrificed every single ethical value in their methods and tactics. Today they cannot dispense with it. It is fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability.”

• “Soviet leaders are driven [by?] necessities of their own past and present position to put forward which [apparent omission] outside world as evil, hostile and menacing… This thesis provides justification for that increase of military and police power of Russian state, for that isolation of Russian population from outside world, and for that fluid and constant pressure to extend limits of Russian police power which are together the natural and instinctive urges of Russian rulers. Basically this is only the steady advance of uneasy Russian nationalism, a centuries old movement in which conceptions of offense and defense are inextricably confused. But in new guise of international Marxism, with its honeyed promises to a desperate and war torn outside world, it is more dangerous and insidious than ever before.”

Finally…

• “Soviet power is… [i]mpervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force.”

Truman Doctrine

• March 1947• Called for global containment of communism• Gained political support• Reinforced shift to more activist foreign policy• National Security Act 1947

– est. the National Security Council to advise the president on foreign affairs and defence policy

– created the Central Intelligence Agency to gather and analyse foreign intelligence and conduct covert operations

– created Department of Defence to coordinate the activities of the branches of the US armed forces

Truman Doctrine

• Provided a framework• Definition focused on communism’s denial of

political and civil rights rather than limits on economic freedom

• Became guiding principle of US foreign policy and significant force in US domestic politics

• As well as calling for global containment of communism, Truman requested military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey– helped with resistance to communist parties within those

countries (and maintained access to Middle Eastern oil and gave US bases from which to launch aerial assaults on the SU)

Marshall Plan• Economic distress = support for communist parties• Secretary of State, George C. Marshall called for a

European recovery programme, June 1947• Aim = provide billions of dollars in economic assistance• Paid for vital imports, allowing countries to obtain raw

materials, fuel, foodstuffs needed for construction• Political as well as economic

– Aid directed towards centrist govts., focused on reconstruction and expanding exports

• US supported European-wide planning strategies– E.g. the European Payments Union, the Economic

Cooperations Administration, the Organisation of European Economic Cooperation

• US made Germany eligible for Marshall Plan aid, led to uniting three Western occupation zones and moving them towards self-governance

Marshall Plan and division

• Solidified division in Europe• Despite control in Eastern Europe SU had

followed cautious policy– allowed relatively free elections in Hungary and

Czechsolvakia in 1945, discouraged communist parties from taking revolutionary action in France, Italy, Greece and Spain…

• US offer to include Eastern Europe in Marshall Plan

• SU prohibited Eastern European countries from participating in Marshall Plan created the Cominform

North Atlantic Treaty

• Remove Western European anxieties over the revival of Germany power and danger of pre-emptive moves by SU

• US and Britain + 10 other nations forged the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949 (created by Lester B. Pearson!)

• US, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Great Britain

• February 1952 Turkey and Greece joined• Military alliance

• www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/nato/large/index.php

North Atlantic Treaty

• "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them...will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking...such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

Article 5

North Atlantic Treaty

• "In this pact we hope to create a shield against aggression and the fear of aggression--a bulwark which will permit us to get on with the real business of government and society, the business of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens.“

Truman 1949

Cominform• New organisation = “Communist Information

Bureau” (Cominform), September 1947• Newspaper: For Lasting Peace, for People's

Democracy!• Unity Eastern bloc under Soviet control• Member parties:

– Bulgarian Communist Party– Communist Party of Czechoslovakia– French Communist Party– Hungarian Workers Party– Communist Party of Italy– Polish United Workers’ Party– Romanian Workers’ Party– Communist Party of the Soviet Union– Communist Party of Yugoslavia (expelled June 1948)

Molotov Plan and COMECON

• Trade agreements in Eastern Europe• Equivalent of Marshall Plan, created 1947• 1949 replaced by COMECON – Council for

Mutual Economic Assistance• Maintains Soviet sphere influence• Compared to the European Economic

Community• Military extension of COMECON was the

Warsaw Pact…

The Warsaw Pact

• Equivalent of NATO• Also known as:

– Warsaw Treaty Organisation– Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual

Assistance

• Created 1955• Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East

Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union

• This related to US economic strength and technology, but also to developments in Germany…