Superpower Relations 1945-90

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A6. Superpower Relations 1945-90

Why were the USA and USSR called ‘Superpowers’?

  • The USA and USSR dominated world affairs from the 1940s onwards, and had a very strong influence over other countries.
  • They possessed the economic power and technology to compete with each other in a nuclear arms race.
  • Their power was based on an ideology: a fixed set of ideas about how society should be organised. USSR – Communism. USA – Capitalism.

What are the main differences between Communism and Capitalism?

Why did the superpowers distrust each other?

Differences of ideology were at the heart of the West’s distrust of the USSR.

  • Communism threatened the basic freedoms valued by the West: the rights to own property, religion, speech, etc.
  • Western leaders knew that Stalin was a cruel dictator; hardly better than the dictator they had just defeated, Hitler.  
  • Before WW2, the USSR encouraged the spread of communism in the West, as well as in colonies controlled by European Powers e.g. India and Vietnam.
  • Stalin’s non-aggression pact with Hitler in August 1939 gave Hitler a free hand to invade Poland, starting World War 2.

Western leaders saw the Soviet regime and its leader as an evil and corrupting influence.


The way western leaders had acted towards the Soviet Union from the very beginning gave Stalin good reason to distrust the West.

  • In 1918-19 westerners fought alongside White Russians to get rid of the Communists;
  • During the 1930s, the western powers ignored Stalin’s offers to form an anti-fascist Front.
  • Stalin became convinced that the western powers saw Hitler as a useful buffer against communist Russia. This explains why they allowed Hitler to break the Treaty of Versailles, and expand Germany eastwards.
  • After Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the USSR had to bear greater hardships than the other Allies:
  • 26,000,000 died – far more than all the western Allies put together;
  • Stalin kept urging the West to invade France to relieve the burden on Russia. They didn’t invade until 1944;

Stalin was convinced that the West wanted to see the Soviet Union destroyed.

What happened at Yalta?

In February, 1945, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met at the Soviet resort of Yalta to plan the end of the Second World War.

The Allies agreed that

  • Germany would be divided into four zones, each zone occupied by one of the Western Allies. Berlin would also be divided into four zones.
  • Austria and its capital, Vienna, would also be divided between the allies.
  • Nazi leaders would be brought to trial for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
  • Stalin would declare war on Japan after the defeat of Germany.
  • Stalin would support the proposed United Nations to be established after the war.
  • Countries occupied by the Nazis were to be allowed to have free democratic elections, and decide their future government without outside interference.

They did not reach agree about

  • How much control USSR should have over Eastern Europe.
  • The most the Western Allies could do was to get Stalin to agree that free elections would take place in those countries formerly occupied by the Nazis. This became known as the ‘Yalta Declaration’.
  • Whether Germany should be helped to recover
  • USSR (and France) wanted to keep Germany weak.

What happened at Potsdam?

With Germany defeated, the leaders of the USA, USSR and Britain met again at Potsdam in July 1945. Roosevelt had died and been replaced by Truman, Churchill lost the election and was replaced by Clement Attlee.

Why was the Potsdam conference ‘angry’?

  • On the day before the conference started, the USA tested the A bomb. Stalin realised that the USA had the most powerful weapon in the world.
  • Truman was determined to take a tough line with Stalin
  • The West felt threatened because
  • the Soviet Red Army was now occupying most of Eastern Europe
  • Stalin was trying to force in a Communist government in Poland

What was agreed to at Potsdam?

  • Germany and Austria were divided as agreed at Yalta. A Kommandatura or joint council of Allies would coordinate the running of Berlin, while the Allied Control Commission would take decisions affecting the whole of Germany.
  • Leading Nazis were to be put on trial, and Germany would be ‘denazified’ (remove anyone from public office who had cooperated with the Nazis).
  • USSR would keep territory taken during the war: the Baltic states; parts of Finland, East Prussia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Rumania.

They did not agree on

  • a peace treaty with Germany
  • taking reparations from Germany, although the West couldn’t stop Stalin from doing so in the Soviet zones
  • Stalin refused to say if he would abide by the Yalta Declaration.

How did active rivalry between the superpowers develop between 1945 & 1948?

Stalin grew more suspicious and fearful of the USA because of its nuclear advantage.

  • On 16 July, the USA tested the first Atomic bomb in New Mexico.
  • On the 6th and 9th August, atom bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 150,000 people. The Japanese surrendered.
  • Stalin knew about the Manhattan Project from soviet spies.

It was inevitable that Russia would begin its own nuclear research. This made the nuclear arms race inevitable.

The West became even more convinced that Stalin was intent on spreading communism because of his actions in Eastern Europe, 1946-8:

Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, given in Fulton, Missouri (March 1946), helped convince many Americans that the US had to help Europe halt the spread of communism.

  • In 1945 there were 12m Soviet soldiers in Eastern Europe.
  • Despite the Yalta Declaration, Stalin used cunning methods to make sure that communist governments took control of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and Albania.

In some places, elections were rigged, in others non-communists were overthrown and replaced with communists loyal to Stalin. (In Czechoslovakia the leaders were murdered.)

For example, in Poland, Stalin arrested many members of the popular Peasant Party, and stopped candidates standing for election. Its leader fled the country. Poles were anti-communist and anti-soviet, yet the communists won a landslide in the elections of 1947. A communist one-party state was set up under Beirut, a communist who had spent most of the war in Moscow.

  • By 1948, six of the seven countries were under Stalin’s influence. The ‘iron curtain’ had become a reality: a 1000m fence, protected in places by razor wire, guard dogs, photo-electric beams, remote-controlled weapons and guard towers, separated the countries of Eastern Europe from the non-Communist West.

Yugoslavia was communist, but its leader, Tito, remained independent of Moscow.  

Stalin argued that he was justified in controlling Eastern Europe, since he needed protection – a buffer zone – against possible German aggression in the future. Western leaders saw it differently, but did not have the power or will to aid the countries of Eastern Europe.

The USA was determined to prevent Communism spreading in the West.

  • When Britain announced it could no longer support the Greek in its war against communists, Truman agreed to intervene. In March 1947, Truman promised that the USA would help any country that was threatened by ‘armed minorities or by outside pressures’ : in other words, by communism. This became known as the Truman Doctrine.
  • Some countries in Western Europe were in serious poverty after WW2. America feared that these countries might turn to communism unless they were helped to recover quickly. In 1947, Secretary of State George C Marshall announced a 4-year aid plan for the whole of Europe, amounting to $17 billion. This became known as the Marshall Plan.
  • The Marshall Plan had the added advantage of helping American business: the sooner Europe recovered, the sooner it could become a market for US goods.

By offering aid to all the countries of Europe, the USA hoped to discredit communism in the eyes of the Eastern Europeans, as well as those in the West since the USSR didn’t have the resources to provide financial aid to the countries of Eastern Europe.

Stalin saw the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan as part of an America plan for world domination.

  • He ordered the Eastern European countries not to accept Marshall Aid.
  • If they accepted, it would give the US a degree of control over them.
  • It would show weakness: communism supposed to be a superior way of running society; it must not be seen to be failing.
  • He set up COMECON in 1949 to link the economies of Eastern Europe together in a type of EU. (see page 21 for more on COMECON)
  • He tightened his grip on East European countries by setting up Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) in 1947. Its job was to co-ordinate the activities of the communist parties in Europe.

America’s response to the threat of communism in 1947 had been bold and decisive: Stalin had been out-manoeuvred.


How and why did the superpowers come into conflict over Germany 1948-9?

The USSR (and France) wanted to keep Germany weak to prevent her ever causing another war in Europe. The USA and Britain wanted to avoid punishing Germany too harshly (as had occurred after WW1). They also saw a strong Germany as a useful buffer against the spread of Communism.

These differences were reflected in the way the Allies governed their zones of Germany and Berlin. [At Potsdam, the Allies had agreed to establish an Allied Control Commission which would make decisions that affected Germany as a whole, and a Kommandatura to coordinate the four zones of Berlin.] 

  • The Soviets took large amounts of industrial equipment and raw materials from their zone.
  • The Western Allies took pride in helping their zones recover from the war. In 1947 they introduced Marshall Aid, and joined their zones together.
  • Early in 1948, the French zone was added to form single Western Allied zone, and they announced a new currency would be introduced in this zone. The Soviets were furious because it hadn’t been agreed by the Allied Control Commission.
  • Communists in Berlin were using strong-arm tactics to try and get the support of popular socialist parties. Their aim was to take control of the city.

As a result of all these developments, Germans in the soviet zone increasingly tried to escape to the west. This was a serious embarrassment for Stalin.

Why did Stalin blockade Berlin?

As the Western Allies took action to strengthen their sectors, Stalin grew determined to force them out of Berlin.

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  • For Stalin it was intolerable that the West could keep hold of territory deep within the Soviet zone, and use it to embarrass and undermine the communist system. The new currency in the West would certainly do this.
  • If Stalin failed to tighten his grip on Berlin, he could, in the long run, lose control over the Soviet zone of Germany, as well as the rest of Eastern Europe.
  • In March, Berlin’s socialist leaders Ernst Reuter and Louise Schroder appealed to the West for help.
  • Stalin needed to prevent any possibility of such help.

In May 1948, ...

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