Origins of the Cold War
The Cold War an overview
At the end of the Second World War the alliance between East and West, which had been so
successful against the Nazis, began to break down. Fears and suspicions surfaced creating a
climate of mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. The imposition of communist
governments on Eastern European states made the Americans fear for the freedom and security of
Western Europe. As this would affect their trade and security, a policy of Containment was
established. The United States would aim to halt the spread of communism throughout the world.
The Soviets saw this as unnecessarily aggressive. World War Two had cost the Soviet Union as
many as 27 million lives: they were determined that they would not be attacked again from the
West, and to ensure their protection they established friendly communist governments on their
borders.
But this fear and hostility was not simply a product of events at the end of the war, the two
superpowers had conflicting ideologies and world views, and both concluded in the late 1940s that
the two ideologies could not live side by side. The next forty-five years would be a struggle to ‘win’
this conflict. But in an age of nuclear weapons conflict could not be allowed to become a war.
Occasionally the Cold War would turn ‘hot’ in some parts of the world, but the Soviets and
Americans never faced one another over a battlefield.
In 1947 President Truman set the tone for the Cold War with the Truman Doctrine and the
Marshall Plan, which established the policy of Containment in Europe. The following year when
the Soviets blockaded Berlin in an attempt to get the Allies to withdraw from the city, Truman
successfully enacted his policy forcing the Soviet Union to back down. Containment was tried and
succeeded again, though somewhat less successfully, two years later and 5,000 miles away in
Korea where a Soviet-backed North Korean force invaded South Korea and was turned back by an
American-led UN army. Korea remained, as it is today, two separate countries with opposing
ideologies.
When Eisenhower entered the White House in 1953 containment continued, but the Americans
took on a more aggressive tone, talking about ‘rolling back’ the borders of communism and
liberating people from its grasp. However, in a world that now had the hydrogen bomb the stakes
in the Cold War had been raised. The death of Stalin in 1953 allowed relations between East and
West to be improved under his replacement Khrushchev. The Soviets and Americans talked about
‘peaceful co-existence’ and meetings’.
End of the Cold War and Fall of the USSR 1985-1991
at Geneva and Camp David went a long way to improving relations. However, the bloody crushing
of the Hungarian Uprising by the Red Army in 1956 and the shooting down of an American spy
plane in 1960 soured relations once again and when Kennedy became president in 1963 the Cold
War was very tense.
,Kennedy was determined to stand up to the Soviet Union as Truman had done, and he did so by
embarking on a massive arms build-up. Yet he also wished to continue the work begun by
Eisenhower, and he too travelled to Vienna to meet the Soviet leader Khrushchev, face to face in
Vienna. However, they failed to reach agreements, leading to the building of the Berlin Wall in
1961
Under Kennedy, however, the Cold War moved increasingly outside Europe. The failed American
invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 showed a continued hostility towards communism. The
Missile Crisis of 1963 took the world closer than it has ever been to nuclear war.
For Lyndon Johnson, involvement in Vietnam was seen as part of the worldwide struggle against
communism. The war did a great deal of damage to America’s image abroad.
By the time Nixon came to office the danger of war in Europe seemed to be a thing of the past.
The Cold War was by no means over, but the two sides had long had two alliance systems, NATO
and the Warsaw Pact, protecting their interest and making war unlikely. And behind these two
systems had been a massive build-up of arms. While in no way abandoning their hostility to
communism, the American government launched a policy of Détente. This looked back to
Eisenhower’s policy of peaceful co-existence, but this time was centred on talks to reduce nuclear
weapons. Khruschev’s replacement Brezhnev was cautious but also willing to negotiate as he
wanted to reduce Soviet weapons spending to help the declining Soviet economy. It was a
successful policy in that in the 1970s it produced SALT I and SALT II, the first agreements by the
superpowers to limit nuclear weapons. Many Americans though remained deeply suspicious. Old
fears of Soviet expansion were revived when they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. America’s
President Carter tried to take a firm stance, but there was little he could do beyond boycotting
trade and the Moscow Olympics.
Ronald Reagan, who took office in 1981, took a much firmer stance and embarked on the biggest
arms build-up yet. Relations between East and West seemed worse than at any time since the
1940s. But things were different as the Soviet economy was in trouble and a run of aged and
short-lived Soviet leaders (Chernenko and Andropov) failed to deal with the problems. But in 1985
the Soviet Union’s new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev knew that his country simply could not afford to
compete against the Americans in another arms race; their economy would collapse. He also
wanted to bring real change and openness to the Soviet Union, so improving relations with the
United States was part of his policy. Although determined to be strong, Reagan and his successor
Bush were also willing to talk to the Soviets and the 1987 INF treaty was the first arms agreement
that dismantled some weapons rather than just limiting build-up.
These policies led to demands for change throughout Eastern Europe. By 1989 these demands had
become so strong that in 1989 the Berlin Wall was torn down and communism throughout Eastern
Europe collapsed. The Americans, it was claimed, had won the Cold War.
Historiography
▪ The Traditional or Liberal School, 1940s-1950s was when historians were writing about
events they had lived through in the very recent past. US Historians tended to blame the
Russians arguing that the USSR was a Marxist-Leninist state that believed in spreading
world revolution. Therefore, the West had to stand up to the Russians and Truman was
right to take a hard line. Marxist historians however used economics to blame capitalist
countries for the Cold War.
, ▪ Revisionist historians started to look again at American behaviour and concluded that
Truman acted aggressively and started the Cold War to advance capitalism and avoid
another Depression.
▪ Post-revisionists see misunderstanding as crucial in explaining the Cold War. The USSR was
rational in its attitude to Eastern Europe given its history, and the USA was equally rational
in seeing it as aggression. Given these differences conflict was unavoidable.
More recently historians are looking at the Cold War in the wider international context, for
example increasing the importance of the role played by China and other non-Western leaders
USSR Leaders
USA Leaders
● Harry Truman ( D ) 1945-1952.
● Dwight D. Eisenhower ( R ) 1952-1960.
● John F. Kennedy ( D ) 1960-1963.
● Lyndon B. Johnson ( D ) 1963-1968 (Vietnam covered in Vietnam Unit)
● Richard M. Nixon ( R ) 1968-1974.
● Gerald Ford ( R ) 1974-1977
● Jimmy Carter ( D ) 1977-1981
● Ronald Regan ( R ) 1981-1989
● George H. W. Bush ( R )1989-1993
Ideology
The Cold War an overview
At the end of the Second World War the alliance between East and West, which had been so
successful against the Nazis, began to break down. Fears and suspicions surfaced creating a
climate of mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. The imposition of communist
governments on Eastern European states made the Americans fear for the freedom and security of
Western Europe. As this would affect their trade and security, a policy of Containment was
established. The United States would aim to halt the spread of communism throughout the world.
The Soviets saw this as unnecessarily aggressive. World War Two had cost the Soviet Union as
many as 27 million lives: they were determined that they would not be attacked again from the
West, and to ensure their protection they established friendly communist governments on their
borders.
But this fear and hostility was not simply a product of events at the end of the war, the two
superpowers had conflicting ideologies and world views, and both concluded in the late 1940s that
the two ideologies could not live side by side. The next forty-five years would be a struggle to ‘win’
this conflict. But in an age of nuclear weapons conflict could not be allowed to become a war.
Occasionally the Cold War would turn ‘hot’ in some parts of the world, but the Soviets and
Americans never faced one another over a battlefield.
In 1947 President Truman set the tone for the Cold War with the Truman Doctrine and the
Marshall Plan, which established the policy of Containment in Europe. The following year when
the Soviets blockaded Berlin in an attempt to get the Allies to withdraw from the city, Truman
successfully enacted his policy forcing the Soviet Union to back down. Containment was tried and
succeeded again, though somewhat less successfully, two years later and 5,000 miles away in
Korea where a Soviet-backed North Korean force invaded South Korea and was turned back by an
American-led UN army. Korea remained, as it is today, two separate countries with opposing
ideologies.
When Eisenhower entered the White House in 1953 containment continued, but the Americans
took on a more aggressive tone, talking about ‘rolling back’ the borders of communism and
liberating people from its grasp. However, in a world that now had the hydrogen bomb the stakes
in the Cold War had been raised. The death of Stalin in 1953 allowed relations between East and
West to be improved under his replacement Khrushchev. The Soviets and Americans talked about
‘peaceful co-existence’ and meetings’.
End of the Cold War and Fall of the USSR 1985-1991
at Geneva and Camp David went a long way to improving relations. However, the bloody crushing
of the Hungarian Uprising by the Red Army in 1956 and the shooting down of an American spy
plane in 1960 soured relations once again and when Kennedy became president in 1963 the Cold
War was very tense.
,Kennedy was determined to stand up to the Soviet Union as Truman had done, and he did so by
embarking on a massive arms build-up. Yet he also wished to continue the work begun by
Eisenhower, and he too travelled to Vienna to meet the Soviet leader Khrushchev, face to face in
Vienna. However, they failed to reach agreements, leading to the building of the Berlin Wall in
1961
Under Kennedy, however, the Cold War moved increasingly outside Europe. The failed American
invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 showed a continued hostility towards communism. The
Missile Crisis of 1963 took the world closer than it has ever been to nuclear war.
For Lyndon Johnson, involvement in Vietnam was seen as part of the worldwide struggle against
communism. The war did a great deal of damage to America’s image abroad.
By the time Nixon came to office the danger of war in Europe seemed to be a thing of the past.
The Cold War was by no means over, but the two sides had long had two alliance systems, NATO
and the Warsaw Pact, protecting their interest and making war unlikely. And behind these two
systems had been a massive build-up of arms. While in no way abandoning their hostility to
communism, the American government launched a policy of Détente. This looked back to
Eisenhower’s policy of peaceful co-existence, but this time was centred on talks to reduce nuclear
weapons. Khruschev’s replacement Brezhnev was cautious but also willing to negotiate as he
wanted to reduce Soviet weapons spending to help the declining Soviet economy. It was a
successful policy in that in the 1970s it produced SALT I and SALT II, the first agreements by the
superpowers to limit nuclear weapons. Many Americans though remained deeply suspicious. Old
fears of Soviet expansion were revived when they invaded Afghanistan in 1979. America’s
President Carter tried to take a firm stance, but there was little he could do beyond boycotting
trade and the Moscow Olympics.
Ronald Reagan, who took office in 1981, took a much firmer stance and embarked on the biggest
arms build-up yet. Relations between East and West seemed worse than at any time since the
1940s. But things were different as the Soviet economy was in trouble and a run of aged and
short-lived Soviet leaders (Chernenko and Andropov) failed to deal with the problems. But in 1985
the Soviet Union’s new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev knew that his country simply could not afford to
compete against the Americans in another arms race; their economy would collapse. He also
wanted to bring real change and openness to the Soviet Union, so improving relations with the
United States was part of his policy. Although determined to be strong, Reagan and his successor
Bush were also willing to talk to the Soviets and the 1987 INF treaty was the first arms agreement
that dismantled some weapons rather than just limiting build-up.
These policies led to demands for change throughout Eastern Europe. By 1989 these demands had
become so strong that in 1989 the Berlin Wall was torn down and communism throughout Eastern
Europe collapsed. The Americans, it was claimed, had won the Cold War.
Historiography
▪ The Traditional or Liberal School, 1940s-1950s was when historians were writing about
events they had lived through in the very recent past. US Historians tended to blame the
Russians arguing that the USSR was a Marxist-Leninist state that believed in spreading
world revolution. Therefore, the West had to stand up to the Russians and Truman was
right to take a hard line. Marxist historians however used economics to blame capitalist
countries for the Cold War.
, ▪ Revisionist historians started to look again at American behaviour and concluded that
Truman acted aggressively and started the Cold War to advance capitalism and avoid
another Depression.
▪ Post-revisionists see misunderstanding as crucial in explaining the Cold War. The USSR was
rational in its attitude to Eastern Europe given its history, and the USA was equally rational
in seeing it as aggression. Given these differences conflict was unavoidable.
More recently historians are looking at the Cold War in the wider international context, for
example increasing the importance of the role played by China and other non-Western leaders
USSR Leaders
USA Leaders
● Harry Truman ( D ) 1945-1952.
● Dwight D. Eisenhower ( R ) 1952-1960.
● John F. Kennedy ( D ) 1960-1963.
● Lyndon B. Johnson ( D ) 1963-1968 (Vietnam covered in Vietnam Unit)
● Richard M. Nixon ( R ) 1968-1974.
● Gerald Ford ( R ) 1974-1977
● Jimmy Carter ( D ) 1977-1981
● Ronald Regan ( R ) 1981-1989
● George H. W. Bush ( R )1989-1993
Ideology
