Some historians believe that the Cold War began before 1939 and that the Second World War was simply an interlude when Stalin had to work with the West. There was also no actual “alliance” as such between the allies. Although they met on a number of occasions, the leaders of the Big Three never signed any formal treaty to fight the Axis.
What was the Soviet view?
In 1945, Stalin was determined to build a buffer zone against further German attacks. Germany had invaded Russia twice during the 20th Century, in 1914 and 1941. In the Second World War, the Soviet people suffered terribly and 28 million people died. Stalin was determined that this should never happen again.
Stalin did not trust the West. He remembered that the Western Allies had intervened in the Russian Civil War in 1918-1919, and he suspected that they had encouraged Hitler in the 1930s. Britain and France had not taken up an offer of alliance with the Soviet Union in 1938.
The Allies had ignored all of Stalin’s appeals for a Second Front in 1942 and 1943, and had delayed invading France until 1944. This made Stalin very suspicious. He believed that they had wanted the Soviet Union to destroy itself fighting Germany on its own.
What was the Allies’ view?
The Allies had spent nearly six years fighting against Hitler; they did not want to see another dictator take his place. Winston Churchill had urged Roosevelt to “shake hands with the Russians as far East as possible”.
Churchill believed that the Allied armies should advance as far East as possible and liberate as many countries as they could from Nazi control. He was afraid that the Red Army would not leave the countries of Eastern Europe that it had liberated from the Nazis.
Churchill based his fears on the Soviet treatment of Poland. In 1944, the Red Army had not helped the Poles during the Warsaw uprising, and the Soviet Union seemed only too pleased to have a weakened Poland to deal with. When Poland was occupied, Stalin set up a pro-communist government, which had fled to London at the outbreak of the war. Churchill was also suspicious because Stalin had not declared war on Japan until the very last moment.
Why did rivalry develop between the superpowers after the Second World War
The Yalta conference
In February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta in the southern Soviet Union in a plan to end the Second World War. In the West, Allied forces were about to cross the Rhine and invade Germany, in the East the Red Army was poised to invade Eastern Germany and Hungary; it was obvious that the German armed forces would not be able to hold out much longer. The Allies needed to decide hw the final onslaught on Germany was to be organised and what needed to be done with Germany after the final surrender.
The Allies were determined to avoid a repetition of the situation that had occurred after the First World War, when the Nazi Party had been allowed to develop and take advantage of resentment of the Treaty of Versailles. This time, they wanted to occupy Germany and keep the country under firm country. The question was: how was Germany to be divided? Eventually, the Allies decided that each would take responsibility for the area in which their armed forces were fighting when the German armed forces finally surrendered.
This decision created one problem. Berlin would be in the Soviet Union. Stalin agreed that Berlin would be occupied jointly by four allies.
- They agreed to divide Germany into four zones; each one would be occupied by one of the four allies.
- Stalin agreed to accept France as one of the powers and the USA agreed to give France part of its zone.
- Berlin would also be divided into four sectors.
- The boundaries of Poland would be altered. Poland would be given land in the West, which would be taken from Germany, and would lose land in the East to the Soviet Union.
- The Soviet Union would declare war on Japan three months after the war with Germany.
- Stalin promised to allow free elections in the countries of Eastern Europe that had been occupied by the Soviet Army.
The actual details of the agreements made at Yalta were left to be decided later. This meant that a second conference had to be held to work out the areas to be occupied by each four Allies.
The Allies met for a second time in Potsdam (outside Berlin) in July 1945. By then relations between the East and West had begun to worsen. It was becoming clear that Stalin was going back on his promises to allow free elections in Eastern Europe.
Another reason was the change of leadership. President Roosevelt had always been inclined to trust Stalin; he believed Stalin would keep his promises. In addition, he believed that the Soviet Army would be needed in the final attack on Japan, so he was prepared to leave the Soviet Union in control of Eastern Europe. Churchill did not think that this was a good idea. By the time of the Potsdam conference in July, it was clear that Churchill had been right.
The new President, Harry Truman, who took over after Roosevelt’s death on 12th April, took a much tougher line with Stalin. He announced that he was going to “get tough with the Russians”. When Truman met Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Secretary, in April 1945, he immediately told him off for failing to keep the agreements made by Yalta. Molotov is reported to have said: “I have never been talked to like that in my life”. And this was a Soviet politician who had survived all of Stalin’s progress.
Finally, at Potsdam, Harry Truman knew that he no longer needed the Red Army for an invasion of Japan. He could afford to be much “tougher”.
What happened at Potsdam
The Potsdam conference was the last of the conferences between the leaders of the Allies during the Second World War.
There are some of the agreements that were reached a Potsdam.
- Germany was divided into four zones and Berlin was divided into four sectors.
- Each zone would be occupied by one of the four Allies, Britain, France, USA and the USSR.
- Decisions on the government of Germany would be taken jointly and, at some time in the future, the country would be reunited.
- The Nazi Party would be dissolved and was criminals tried and punished.
- There would be free elections in Germany, freedom of speech and a free press.
- Germany would pay reparations for the damage caused by the war. Most of this would go to the Soviet Union.
- The Soviet Union agreed to hand back to the West food to a value of 25% of the reparations.
- All three Allies agreed to take part in the United Nations.
But there were also disagreements at Potsdam. The new US President, Harry Truman, tried to force the USSR to allow free elections in the countries of Eastern Europe that had been occupied after the end of the war. He said that he wanted to “get tough with Russia”. But when Britain and the USA referred to Poland, Stalin simply referred to Greece. Here Britain was supporting the Greek government against communist influence. This led to a civil war, which dragged on for several years. Eventually the British government was forced to withdraw support when it ran out of money in February 1947. This proved to be a turning point in East-West relations and led directly to Truman Doctrine.
Stalin was angry that Truman had not told him about the development of the atomic bomb until the very last minute and did not consult him about using it against Japan. Truman also refused to share atomic secrets with the Soviet Union. This created a belief in the Soviet Union that the bombs had been dropped as a warning. In fact, Stalin knew all about the bomb; his spies had passed on the information, but he distrusted Truman’s secrecy.
It was now clear that there were very serious differences between the two sides.
What were the differences between East and West?
Clearly, Stalin believed that Europe had been divided into two spheres of influence at Yalta and Potsdam. Britain and the USA could not do as they liked in the West, but, at the same time, the Soviet Union could do as it liked in the East.
A major difference occurred over Germany. Stalin wanted Germany to be kept weak, to avoid a possibility of a third war. The West wanted Germany to be allowed to recover economically. Britain and the USA remembered the impact that the Treaty of Versailles had in the 1920s and 1930s, and did not want that to happen again. This meant that the zones of Germany and the sectors of Berlin received very different treatment from the occupying forces. The Soviet sector was stripped of machinery and equipment, which was taken to the Soviet Union to help rebuild the country after the appalling damage inflicted by the war. The Western Allies wanted to rebuild their sectors and quickly began to reorganise industry and trade unions. To the West, Stalin appeared to be little more than a merciless predator; to Stalin, the West appeared to be laying the foundations for a strong Germany – something he feared more than anything else.
In December 1946, Britain and the USA agreed to unite their zones in Germany for economic purposes. In January 1947 Bizonia was created. This was the first step on the road to the recovery of Germany. But in the Soviet Union it was greeted with fury. Not only were the Western Allies acting without the agreement of the Soviet Union, but also they appeared to be planning to rebuild Germany, when Stalin wanted to keep it as weak as possible.