Exploring International Relations ()
Chapter 1 Co-operation ends and the Cold War begins
Chapter 2 Emerging superpower rivalry and its consequences, 1945–49
Chapter 3 Flashpoints in Europe and the impact on international relations
Chapter 4 Flashpoints outside Europe and the impact on inter...
Year 12: History – International Relations (1945-
2003)
CO-OPERATION ENDS AND THE COLD WAR BEGINS
Overview
The USA entered World War Two against Germany and
Japan in 1941, creating the Grand Alliance of the USA,
Britain and the USSR.
This alliance brought together great powers that had
fundamentally different views of the world, but who had to
co-operate for four years against the threat from Germany
and Japan.
The Grand Alliance would ultimately fail and break down,
leading to the Cold War.
The wartime alliance between the USA and the USSR in
1945
Capitalism v communism
The alliance of the USA and the USSR brought together two sides that were divided
by their political and economic ideas. The USA and Britain were capitalist countries,
while the USSR had been communist.
The alliance between the USA and the USSR was purely strategic; the main objective
was to defeat Germany.
The differences between the USA and the USSR started to re-emerge even before
the end of the war.
Both countries were worried about the other nation’s aims and this worry led to an
increase in fear and suspicion.
This would lead to the breakdown of the wartime alliance and eventually turned into
outright hostility.
Fight against communism
The USA emerged more powerful from World War Two than the USSR.
It was concerned by the spread of communism in Eastern Europe and the Far East.
The USA believed that the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, wanted to convert the rest of
the world to communism, and as they had fought to destroy the evils
of dictatorship in Germany, Italy and Japan, now it was prepared to fight the
communist ideology of the USSR.
Buffer zone
Stalin’s fear of the USA led him to believe that the USSR needed a buffer zone to
protect the Soviet Union from attack by anti-communist countries.
The new president of the USA, Harry Truman, saw Soviet domination of Eastern
Europe not as an act of defence on Stalin’s part, but as an act of aggression and he
was worried that this meant communism would spread into Western Europe.
,The Yalta Conference
While the war with Germany continued, the wartime allies (USA, USSR and Britain) met to
discuss the post-war future of Europe.
The most significant meetings between the allied leaders were at Yalta in February
1945 and Potsdam in July 1945.
In February 1945, ‘the Big Three’ – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea
region of the USSR.
With an Allied victory looking likely, the aim of the Yalta Conference was to decide what to
do with Germany once it had been defeated.
The Yalta Conference: Outcomes
1. Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation; the USSR, Britain, France
and the USA would each control a zone.
2. The German capital, Berlin, was deep inside the Soviet zone and it too was to be
divided into four zones, each controlled by one of the Allied powers. Berlin would be
a source of tension in international relations throughout the Cold War.
3. Stalin promised to join the war against Japan, once Germany was defeated.
4. All the leaders made a commitment to hunt down Nazi war criminals.
5. The Allies agreed to the setting up of the United Nations, an organisation with the
objective of ensuring international cooperation and preventing future wars.
,The Potsdam Conference
The next meeting of the Big Three took place in August 1945 at Potsdam, just outside Berlin.
The main objective of the Potsdam Conference was to finalise a post-war settlement
and put into action all the things agreed at Yalta.
While the meeting at Yalta had been reasonably friendly, there was a lot of
disagreement at Potsdam which was the result of some significant changes that had
taken place since the Yalta Conference.
Germany had been defeated, Roosevelt had died and had been replaced by Harry
Truman while Clement Attlee had defeated Churchill to become Prime Minister of
Britain.
The allies agreed to divide Germany into zones and to claim reparations for war
losses.
However, the USA did not want a weakened Germany in central Europe as they
believed it would encourage support in Germany for communism.
Truman wanted to rebuild Germany, while Stalin wanted to weaken it further by
taking equipment and materials as reparations.
The pattern for future conflict between the USA and the USSR had begun
, Yalta and Potsdam compared
The main points of the two conferences are summarised in the table below.
You can use the acronym PEER – People, Elections, Europe, and Reparations to remember
the main points.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and The Start of the Cold War
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