As they had two opposing political systems. It was unlikely that they could co-operation in peacetime. Their temporary co-operation came to an end as soon as their common enemy was defeated. After the war, one side always thought that the other side wanted to attack their way of life. As both of them wanted to get more countries to support them in order to spread their idea to everywhere. This was linked to the Marshall Plan later by USA.The ideological difference made them distrust each other. This built up the root of the cold war.
USSR fears of future invasion from the west
First of all, USSR was being attacked by the western side in both the First World War and the Second World War. In between, before the Second World War on 29 September 1938, Britain, France and Germany held the Munich conference and signed the Munich agreement which was agreed that Germany should have the Sudetenland. This was Chamberlain’s Appeasement policy but this let USSR to think that the western side was directing Germany to attack the Eastern Europe including USSR. This was strongly proved when Britain and France failed to make an agreement with USSR in 1939 and forced to sign the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Hitler.
East-West disagreements also developed when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1949. A great number of Soviet civilians and soldiers were killed. Millions of scares of land were destroyed and many cities were ruins in the war. Stalin complained that the western Allies had not helped relieve the sufferings of his people. The Soviets were left to fight the German alone on the Eastern Front. The Soviet government was bitter that a Western Front was not opened until 1944, and this made Soviets suffer the highest casualties among the Allies. By the end of the war, therefore, Stalin’s main aims were to make Soviet Union safe from invasion and to rebuild his country. He was also very suspicious of the West and had deep hatred and fear to Germany. This explained why he wanted to cripple Germany permanently with heavy reparations. However, such a desire clashed with that of the Western allies who wanted Germany to be reconstructed on a democratic and peaceful basis.
The wartime conference between 1943-45 helped to lay the seeds for what developed into the cold war. At the Teheran Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to leave the Soviets to liberate Eastern Europe. At the Yalta Conference, it was agreed that Germany was to be spilt into four zone occupied by USSR, Britain, USA and France and free elections for new government would be held in countries previously occupied in Eastern Europe. Soviet influence was further tolerated in Eastern Europe. Although Churchill and Roosevelt became more worried about the future of the area, they had to accept Soviet demands in return for Stalin’s support against Japan. The allies were now suspicious with each other as Stalin wanted to control the Eastern Europe so he did not want free elections to be held and free election is against the ideas of communism. USSR wanted Germany to become a buffer zone, this was against Britain and USA’s wishes and thoughts. These wartime agreement enabled the Soviet government to gain dominance over the countries in Eastern Europe in the post-war period. The distrust between the Soviet Union and her allies had also developed in the wartime conferences.
After the surrender of Germany, the Allies met again at Potsdam in mid-1945. Relations between the Allies continued to worsen. Stalin was told about the atomic bomb, which increased his suspicion and fear of the West. This links to USSR tried to gained more land to spread the communist ideas. At the same time, the Allies were worried about his takeover of Eastern Europe. By the time, the Soviets boundary had been extended into Polish territory. The Soviets also gained land from Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czechoslovakia and Romania. By 1945, Soviet territory had expanded 300 miles westwards and over 22 million people were added to the Soviet population. The Soviet advance into Eastern Europe further damaged Soviet-Western relations.
The spread of Communist control in the East and the Iron Curtain
By the early1946, the Soviet Union had tightened her control over Eastern European Countries. Stalin had started to promote communism in the region and tried to consolidate the communist rule in Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. During the elections, communism lost most of them. However, Stalin forced the countries to be ruled by a communist government and one party dictatorship was set up in these countries. They became the Soviet satellites. This made the western side felt suspicious. At first, Yugoslavia was also on of the satellites, however, in 1948, she left the Soviet bloc. Marshal Tito was able to maintain a communist government in Yugoslavia which was independent on Moscow. The spread of communist control in the east made the capitalist in the west thought that their democratic policy was being threatened. This Soviet expansion in East Europe also worried the U.S. So the U.S. took action to stop Soviet expansion. They did this by carry out the Truman Doctrine in 1947. At that time, British could no longer afford to help the anti-communist forces in Greece. The American President Truman stepped in with the Truman Doctrine. His policy was made clear in his speech to the American Congress in March 1947. He was determined to check the spread of communism. The Unites States would help any country threatened by communism so that communism could not advance further. The American help would be mainly in terms of economic and military aid. This made the Greek government was able to defeat the communists. The civil war was finally ended in 1949. The success of Greece in resisting the communist threat was seen by the West s a victory of the capitalist bloc over the communist bloc. Then Truman felt that communism was particularly attractive to poor and discontented people. It could best be resisted by economic prosperity. Therefore, he thought that a prosperous Europe with close commercial links to the United States was less likely to fall under communist influence. It was under this consideration that in 1947, the United States offered a massive package of economic aid to Europe. This was the Marshall announced by George Marshall, the American Secretary of State. The plan was intended to bring the economic recovery off Europe so that she could resist communist expansion. It was offered to Western as well as Eastern Europe. However, the Soviet Union thought that the Marshall Plan was plot of the capitalist to dominate Europe economically and politically. She prevents her satellites in Eastern Europe from accepting the Marshall by setting up the Communist Information Bureau. It was formed to co-ordinate the activities of the communist parties of the Soviet Union and her satellites.
The speech made by Winston Churchill the wartime British Prime Minister on the ‘Iron Curtain’ increased the tension of Europe and was also a very important cause of the cold war. The term ‘Iron Curtain’ was first used by Churchill, when he made his famous speech on 4 March 1946 in the United State. He used it to describe the political barrier set up by the Soviet Union along the borders of her satellites in the Eastern Europe. It stretched from the Soviet zone of Germany in the north to Trieste on the Adriatic. To cut off the Satellites from any Western influence, the Soviet Union stopped all free communication between Eastern and Western Europe. The boundaries of the satellites were wired and all trading relations with the west were forbidden. The iron curtain, in Churchill’s words, referred to the strong barrier separating the Soviet world in Eastern Europe from other countries. The lowering of the iron curtain only increased the suspicion and hostility between the two blocs. They became involved in the cold war.
USA control of the atomic bomb
At the end of the Second World War, American dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945. This weapon has terrifying power enough to destroy the world. The powerful atomic bomb gave the Russian a great shock, yet the United States refused to share the secret of this weapon with Soviet ally. So the Russian tried to develop and accumulate more advanced nuclear weapon. As both of them wanted to back down each other, so the Nuclear Arms Race started and this became part of the cold war. Throughout the whole, USA has developed the nuclear weapon much more faster than USSR, she has used the atom bombs in 1945, developed the hydrogen bombs in 1952 which is more powerful than the atom bombs by 2500 times and also the neutron bombs in 1977. USA got 7,000 tactical nuclear warheads while the USSR had only got 3,000, but on the other hand, USSR had got more ‘simple’ weapons e.g. fleets, air forces, missiles etc than the USA. Also, whenever USA has developed a new nuclear weapon, USSR would develop it very quickly just after the USA. This competing of nuclear weapons even made the Cold War colder.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, USA, USSR and even Churchill had their fault.
USA was wrong, as USSR was her allies during the war, she should not keep the secret of the atomic bombs out of her, and USSR had got the right to know about her ally’s power. If USA did not keep that secret, then the Armed Race might not be happened.
USA, Britain and other western countries were to blame because they offered help so late during the Second World War and left USSR had to fight alone with Germany until 1944, this made Soviets suffer the highest casualties among the Allies. This made USSR hatred the Western side and wanted to take revenge through the Cold War.
USSR has got the fault because she needed to think USA had their right to keep the secret of the Atomic bombs because she did not really want to use it if the situation was not too worse. USSR needed to understand this and should not hatred the Western side and started the Armed Race.
Lastly, Churchill got the fault because his speech of the ‘Iron Curtain’ increased the tension of the Cold War which made the situation between the Western and Eastern Europe even more badly.
By Agnes Lau
