How did the Cold War develop after 1945

President Truman’s response to Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, in 1947, was to propose containment in order to stop communisms spread. There were two be two aspects to this containment idea; the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. In the Marshall Plan the USA would offer economic aid to countries; communism benefits the poorer people within society, the working and lower classes, so by lending money to poorer countries the USA hoped to stop them from voting communist. The Truman Doctrine was the more active of the two, taking upon itself to stop the communist spread by force. Containment, however, did not work in Eastern Europe, where communism had already taken hold; it had been under the control of the USSR since the end of WWII, with it’s elections rigged and supplies monitored by Stalin, resulting in terrible living and working conditions. In fact, by the end of 1947 almost every country within Eastern Europe had a communist government, taking its orders from Stalin. Containment had worked in both Greece and South Korea though. In Greece, Britain had sent troops to support the royalists in a civil war between the royalists and communists, the former emerging victorious. When South Korea was invaded by communists from the North in 1950, the United Nations provided official aid, though they were mainly American troops, to the non-communist South, resulting in it winning back its freedom in 1953.

The first great test of containment was the Berlin Blockade and Airlift when, 1948-49, the Russians shut West Berlin off from the rest of the outside, non-communist world – even those travelling in from East Berlin had to have a thingy inspection at the border, and then were often known never to return. The Soviet blockade had been ordered by Stalin and by Stalin’s fear when, after combining their own sectors of Berlin, making it stronger economically and bringing in new currency, Britain and the USA announced that they were planning a ‘West German State’ – Stalin’s worst nightmare. Stalin dreaded the idea of Germany regaining its power and another Hitler rising to attack the USSR again – it was for this reason that ‘buffer zones’ were created in Eastern Europe; these zones meant that if an attack was launched at the USSR, the fighting would, at least initially, take place outside of the actual USSR. Stalin was frightened because it seemed his fears were falling into place much quicker than expected, and also he suspected that this new West Germany would have America’s support. In February 1945, Yalta, Germany had been divided into 4 zones, Berlin into 4 sectors - Berlin itself was situated in the middle of the Soviet zone, the sectors belonging to the Western Allies were together like a small capitalist island afloat amid a communist sea. Yet, at great embarrassment to Stalin, many Germans chose to leave the Soviet controlled areas, instead favouring the richer living standards of Western Berlin. When Stalin ordered the blockade he hoped to put a stop to this, and more importantly, to starve West Berlin to the point of surrender – he wanted the Western Allies to withdraw from it so that the USSR could control all of Berlin. When the blockade settled, the Western Allies began to fear that if they were to leave West Berlin the USSR would move to invade the Western zones; they quickly decided that their patch of the city should be kept supplied with food and oil. Since the blockade meant that all road, rail and canal links between West Berlin and the western zones were cut off, the Western Allies had to come up with another way of supplying their chunk of the city – and they did; an Airlift. Several ‘air corridors’ connected West Berlin with the rest of the Western world, allowing airplanes to travel along these designated areas in order to reach their sectors of land. This worked to carry supplies through to West Berlin as the communists shooting down the supply planes would have been considered an act of war, and at that time only America had developed nuclear weapons. For the following ten months planes flew to supply West Berlin around the clock, keeping over 2 ½ million West Berliners alive. In May 1949 the Russians called off the blockade and admitted defeat.

Overall, this admittance of defeat gave the Western Allies a ‘psychological boost’, and they optimistically decided to create a new military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or N.A.T.O., in April 1949, joining Europe, the USA and Canada. Like the old League of Nations, the group’s motto would be one of collective security – if one member was attacked, it would be seen as an attack against all of them. Unlike the League of Nations, however, N.A.T.O. would stick to it.

Stalin died in 1953. Followed by more moderate Soviet leaders, this event triggered a ‘thaw’ in the cold war – the tension strung so tight in the past began to lax. Now that both America and the USSR (1949, nuclear weapon developed) had armed nuclear weapons, the risk of a nuclear war actually breaking out slackened too – neither wished to risk starting a nuclear war and destroying the entire world. In 1955 the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact, a military organization to support Soviet military interests for the Eastern European countries and basically counter the threat from N.A.T.O. By 1953, the world was divided into ‘spheres of influence’, and was still a very dangerous place, with the threat of nuclear war constantly looming in the backdrop.