The origins of the Cold War, 1943-49

A group work: The Conferences 1943-45

A. Teheran 1943
B. Yalta 1945
C. Potsdam 1945

1) The context: Describe shortly the international situation during the congress.
2) The agenda: What were the main issues discussed on the conference?
3) The leaders: The main figures and their role and mutual relations?
4) The results: Analyse successess and failures from different perspectives.
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Years 1946-47: Documents (On textbook pages 31 - 33)

A source based task: Kennan's ’Long telegram’ (22 Feb 1946)

1a) According to pgs 2 - 3 of the source, how fair is it to say that 'the Soviet analysis on international relations based mainly on ideological factors'.
1b) Find out the origin of the content of these two pages. Then, analyse the value and limitations of the content for US diplomat trying to interprete and understand Soviet foreign policy in 1946.
2) According to the page 5 of the source, to what factors was the Soviet party line (or the Soviet view of world affairs) in reality based?
3) Assess the methods (the ‘far-flung apparatus’) of the USSR for strengthen its influence (as described on pgs 13 – 14).
4) ‘How to deal with Russia’? Summarize the views introduced on pgs 16 – 17.
5) Consider how the source could have been interpreted and utilized a) by the US Department of State and b) by Stalin (after the translation of it was delivered to him by the Soviet intelligence).
6) With reference to its origin, purpose and content, analyse the value and limitations of the source for an historian studying the beginning of the Cold War.
>> READ PAGES 30 - 32 ON TEXTBOOK!
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How significant was Kennan’s ’long telegram’ for the creation of American Cold War strategy?

John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War. Penguin Books 2005, 29:
"-- To say that it made an impact in Washington would be to put it mildly: Kennan's 'long telegram' became basis for the United States strategy toward the Soviet Union throughout the rest of the Cold War. Moscow's intransigence, Kennan insisted, resulted from nothing the west had done: instead it reflected the internal necessities of the Stalinist regime, and nothing the West could do within the foreseeable future would alter that fact. Soviet leaders had to treat the outside world as hostile because this provided the only excuse 'for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for sacrifices they felt bound to demand.' To expect concessions to be reciprocated was to be naïve: there would be no change in the Soviet Union's strategy until it encountered a sufficiently long string of failures to convince some future Kremlin leader - Kennan held out little hope that Stalin would ever see this - that nation's behavior was not advancing its interests. War would not be necessary to produce this result. What would be needed, as Kennan put it in a published version1 of this argument the following year, was a 'long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.'"

1 "X" [George F. Kennan], ”The Sources of Soviet Conduct", Foreign Affairs, 25 (July 1947).
> Kennan and Containment

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

President Truman in address to the US Congress on 12 March 1947:
'At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.'

TASK 1
Read the document above and discuss with a pair about these:
1.1. What justification does Truman give for his Doctrine?
1.2. Identify the key words that Truman uses to describe the West and key words he uses to describe countries under Soviet control. Why do you think he uses this type of language?
1.3. How important is this document for explaining the development of the Cold War?

TASK 2
Study pages 33 - 35 on textbook and answer to the following questions to your notebook.
2.1. How fair is it to argue that 'the interest that the Czechoslovakian government expressed in participating the Marshall Plan was the starting point to the communists accession to power'?
2.2. Assess how succesful the Marshall Plan was from the US point of view.
2.3. Examine the motives and results of the establishment of the COMECON.
2.4. Study the table on page 35. What kind of conclusions can you make on the allocation of the Marshall Plan assistance?

The Berlin Blockade (1948-49)

1) Read pages 38 - 42 and find out the content for each of the following. Consider their significance of as steps of the crisis. 
a) Contents of the de-Nazification policies and the mission of the Allied Control Council (ACC)?
b) Principles for the establishment of the four occupation zones (1945)?
c) Germany and the security interesses of the USSR?
d) Living conditions in the Soviet sector?
e) The confistication of German industry by the Allied?
f) German workers as a form of reparations?
g) The establishment of 'Bizonia'?
h) Arguments for proposals given by some Soviet officials to keep Germany permanently divided by sovietizing the eastern sector?
i) Why Stalin rejected these proposals?
j) A new four-power currency proposed in Febr 1948 and the Soviet reaction on it?
k) The plans of the West announced at the final meeting of the ACC in London (March 1948)?
l) Soviet response for the western announcement?
m) The currency conflict?
n) What were the other reasons for the blockade?
o) Arguments for the blame: 'The western powers had violated both Yalta and Potsdam agreements'?
p) 'No official treaty between the four powers about transportation through Soviet sector existed', so from the Soviet point of view...?
q) Why were the aides concern about the blockade but Stalin not?
r) The Soviet Union lifted the blockade on 12 May 1949. Why?
2) What were the main reasons for the crisis?
3) What is the message of the cartoon? 
4) Read page 43 and create a spider diagram/ mind map about the consequences of the Berlin blockade. Send the completed diagram to the dropbox below (take a photo or use a mind map-programme).
https://peda.net/id/8aa8b82a8b3
(A cartoon drawn by E.H. Shepard and published on Punch Magazine in 1948.)

Documentaries on early Cold War