The Cold War developed from, at the most basic level, disputes and mutually incompatible aims of the two superpowers over whose sphere of influence the countries that had been occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. This contest of influence centred most prominently on Germany, whose role as the formerly most powerful of the occupied countries meant that there was most to lose by not exerting one’s influence in Germany. However, these territorial and diplomatic concerns were not the most influential feature in the development of the Cold War; instead the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union on more basic levels were to cause the Cold War. There was a history of tension between the later two superpowers before the disputes of 1945 to 1949 over Germany, the atomic bomb and the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe. The divergence between the authoritarian traditions of Russia before the October Revolution and the democratic traditions of the United States became increasingly obvious throughout the twentieth-century. The first departure was the United States’ alignment with Great Britain in support of Japan against the territorial expansionism of the Russia Empire in Manchuria in 1905. The difference between the two superpowers and their closely-held systems of government were further increased after the October Revolution when around 200,000 mostly intellectual immigrants fled Russia to the United States, exposing the realities of life in Russia, of which the American public had previously remained ignorant. More important in shifting American attitudes towards Russia were the writings of George Keenan with his exposes of the Siberian penal colonies.
The interwar period also marked a shift the ideologies of both the United States and the Soviet Union which would later bring them into conflict over Germany and the other European occupied countries, and later over much of the Third World as well. After the First World War, the ideologies were created that would later bring the United States and the Soviet Union into conflict, and it is perhaps these conflicting ideologies of the two superpowers that had the greatest impact on the development of the Cold War. The desire of President Wilson to change the structure of the post-war world in the aftermath of the First World War in order to establish a League of Nations that would which would encourage global self-determination, open markets and collective security marked an ideological shift in United States foreign policy. This shift in American foreign policy was accompanied by a shift in Russian foreign policy, albeit a somewhat more dramatic one. Although territorial expansion both eastwards and southwards in order to insure that the countries on Russia’s borders were secure was a feature of Russian foreign policy and diplomacy since before the October Revolution, the Bolshevik accession to power now meant that traditional Russian foreign policy aims were allied to the rhetoric of class war to be waged by the proletariat around the world. This ideology which was to be used by the party created by Lenin would, in the aftermath of the Second World War, be redrafted by Stalin into promoting the spread of Marxist-Leninism by force in the territories which the Red Army occupied. The basic contrast between the unilateralist approach to world security in the post-war world that Stalin sought to follow and the multi-lateralist approach that the Western democracies wanted to follow through organisations like the failed League of Nations and the United Nations was the most fundamental cause of the Cold War. This conflict between the desired approached of the two superpowers is encapsulated in the issue of Germany, thus it is the issues behind the tensions over Germany that contributed to the Cold War.
Despite the fact that the Cold War developed mostly out of the differences in approach to security and hegemonic spheres of influence in the post-war world, the German question can be seen as crucial to the development of the Cold War in 1945-47, as well as later on. The German question the confronted the war-time allies in 1945 was both an expression of the basic differences between the mindsets of the Soviet government and the United States, and a cause of tension which was important in the development of the Cold War from the basic differences between the two superpowers. The mutual suspicions of both sides, stemming from their conflicting ideologies and the accompanying rhetoric are clearly visible in the concerns that both sides expressed about the others intentions regarding Germany. Each superpower feared that its wartime enemy might align itself with its new adversary in order to produce a near-invincible coalition. This concern was voiced by Clark M. Clifford, a White House aide, and by the Soviet ambassador, who reported that “[a revived Germany would] use in a future war on its side.” The threat of a resurgent Germany was coupled with the threat of a newly assertive Germany in its own right to make German considerations a significant factor in the development of the Cold War.
The issues over how the German question was to be resolved crystallised the latent differences between the two sides in the Cold War, and forced the United States to adopt a more pragmatic approach to dealing with Soviet demands for the restructuring of Europe. The radically different foreign policy aims of the two superpowers meant that a mutual agreement over the fate of Germany was impossible, as Stalin wanted to see Soviet influence throughout Germany eventually, and the allies came to realise that an economically revived Germany was vital in the context of wider European economic reconstruction. Germany was critical to the development of the Cold War immediately after the Second World War because the impasse that had been reached caused the Allies to move to consolidate their three zones. The formation of the Allied Control Commission and the subsequent announcement of the introduction of a single currency in the Allied zones caused first the Soviets to become uneasy, then the Allies, as Stalin ordered the blockade of the western sector of Berlin. The Berlin Blockade, an expression of the two superpowers intractable views on Germany caused the significant development and escalation of the Cold War, as the climate created around Europe caused the formation of NATO in 1949, and the formation of clearly delineated military blocs formed around alliances marked a great development in the Cold War.
In a similar way that the initial crisis over the fate of Germany after the Second World War precipitated the dividing first of Germany, then the rest of Europe into two distinct armed camps, the erection of the Berlin Wall caused a change in the progress and nature of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall appeared to cause a crisis in relations between the two superpowers; after its erection, the Americans brought a notoriously anti-Soviet general, Lucius C. Clay (who had ensured the success of the Berlin Blockade) out of retirement and sent him back to Berlin, who ordered his troops to train storming over mock walls. On the Soviet part, Khrushchev responded by testing huge nuclear weapons. However, aside from this posturing, the Berlin Wall in fact constituted a stabilising of the German situation, and the with a sort of stalemate reached in Europe, the transfer of the Cold War increasingly to the Third World.
In conclusion, Germany was extremely important in the development of the Cold War throughout its course before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Although the Cold War developed initially from the basic incompatibility of the unilateral framework of the post-war world that Stalin understood and the multilateral world that the United States envisaged, this disparity was realised first in Germany with its partition, and eventual segregation into two distinct zones, which in turn caused the further dividing of Europe into two armed camps divided by armed treaties. Germany was also significant, as the stalemate reached in Cold War relations caused the transfer of hostilities to the Third World through a series of wars fought by proxy. Finally, Germany was debatably significant in causing détente in the 1970’s, as the efforts to reconcile the two Germanys, irrespective of Cold War politics precipitated a decline in tensions in a European context.
Word Count: 1948
Bibliography:
Gaddis, J L. Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An interpretive History (1990)
Gaddis, J L. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997)
Jensen, K M. The Noikov, Kennan and Roberts “Long Telegrams” of 1946 (1991)
LaFeber, W American, Russia and the Cold War (1945-1992)
Lunderstad, G American Non-policy towards Eastern Europe 1943-1992 (1978)
Gaddis, J L. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997) p.1
Gaddis, J L. Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States: An interpretive History (1990) p.14
Gaddis, J.L. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (1997) p 4.
LaFeber, W American, Russia and the Cold War (1945-1992) p.26
Jensen, K M. The Noikov, Kennan and Roberts “Long Telegrams” of 1946 (1991) p.15
Gaddis, J L We Know Know (1997) p.49