H2.

1: The End of World War II and the emergence of the Cold War 1944-1950 (6 hours)

Theme 2: The Post-war Bipolar World and Challenges to Bi-polarization

Chapter 4 - The End of World War II and the emergence of the Cold War
1944-1950

Partial substitution

This chapter examines how the Cold War had its roots in the later stages of World War Two
and the subsequent tensions which developed between the US and the USSR up to the outbreak of the
Korean War in 1950. It sheds light on the parallel and contradictory developments in the immediate
post-war era: the desire to create a stable new world order at that same time as tensions are intensifying
between the two emerging superpowers – The US and the USSR.

Students will study the origins (1944-1945) and development of the early 1946-1950 Cold War
confrontation, and the consequences this had on efforts to establish a post-war order.

Key topics from World War Two for explaining the origins of the Cold War will include the
immediate aftermath of the war with the occupation and effective division of Europe (particularly
Germany) by the two emerging superpowers, the Bretton Woods Agreement, Yalta and Potsdam, the
American use of the Atomic bomb, the creation of the UN and War Crimes trials (Nuremberg and
Tokyo).

Key topics for explaining the development of the Cold War between 1945 and 1950 will
include:
- the Iron Curtain speech (1946)
- the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan and Containment policy (1947)
- the Berlin Blockade and Airlift (1948-49)
- the creation of NATO (1949)
- the outbreak of the Korean War (1950).

The Points de passage et d’ouverture

- Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan
- Berlin Airlift
- 38th Parallel and the outbreak of the Korean War

Key Questions
1. Why did wartime cooperation break down so quickly at the end of WWII?
2. To what extent did the US and the USSR contribute to establishing a stable postwar order up to
1950?
3. Why did the United States support the establishment of the United Nations?
4. Why did the Allies establish War Crimes Trials?
5. Why did the United States provide Marshall Plan assistance to Europe?

Exam questions:
1. Analyze the emergence and development of the Cold War between 1945 and 1950.
2. To what extent was the USA responsible for the emergence and development of the Cold
War between 1945 and 1950?
3. To what extent was the post-war world shaped by American ideology and priorities?
4. - How did the end of WWII lead to a new world order (1944-1955)?/ To what extent are the
origins of the Cold War to be found in WWII?
5. - What are the most significant factors that explain the origins and the development of the
Cold War from 1945 to 1950?

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H2.1: The End of World War II and the emergence of the Cold War 1944-1950 (6 hours)
Learning Objectives
 Understand the emergence of superpower rivalry (Stalin and Truman at Potsdam).
 Understand the significance of the war crime trials (Nuremberg and Tokyo).
 Analyze the importance of key doctrines and events in the early Cold War.
 Analyze the significance of the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950.
 Assess the significance of the Bretton Woods agreement and creation of the UN in identifying
US economic, diplomatic and military influence and power.

Key Terms

2
● Bretton Woods ● Berlin Blockade and ● Cominform
● Yalta and Potsdam Airlift ● COMECON
Conferences ● Containment ● NATO
● Iron Curtain ● Truman Doctrine ● Warsaw Pact
● Marshall Plan
Introduction - The immediate aftermath of the war; the material, human
and moral consequences of the conflict

“In less than six years Germany laid waste the moral structure of Western society, committing crimes
that nobody would have believed possible, while her conquerors buried in rubble the visible marks of more
than a thousand years of German history. Then into this devastated land, truncated by the Oder-Neisse
borderline and hardly able to sustain its demoralized and exhausted population, streamed millions of people
from the Eastern provinces, from the Balkans and from Eastern Europe, adding to the general picture of
catastrophe the peculiarly modern touches of physical homelessness, social rootlessness, and political
rightlessness.
The wisdom of Allied policy in expelling all German-speaking minorities from non-German countries
– as though there was not enough homelessness in the world already – may be doubted. But the fact is that
European peoples who had experienced the murderous demographic politics of Germany during the war were
seized with horror, even more than with wrath, at the very idea of having to live together with Germans of the
same territory. The sight of Germany’s destroyed cities and the knowledge of German concentration and
extermination camps have covered Europe with a cloud of melancholy.”

Source: Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule: A Report from Germany”, Commentary,
October 1950.

A) The human losses: 60 million casualties

The war was a demographic shock. Given the intensity of the fighting it went through, Europe was
the hardest-hit region. Out of the 60-million dead, 40 million were Europeans War casualties and
destruction imposed a heavy toll on Europe, especially in the East with Poland losing more than 15% of its
population (one out of six Poles had been killed), Germany (one out of eight, 7 million) while the USSR lost
25 million people, more than half of whom were civilians, but also in China with 13.5 million Chinese
WW2, compared to WW1, did not only kill soldiers, it affected also, and mainly civilians because of
the aerial attacks such as the Blitz (bombing of Great Britain), the bombing of Germany by American planes.
Urban areas were the main targets of the aerial attacks, as a way to put governments under pressure (=
Psychological war).
Hostages were massacred as in Oradour sur Glane, the concentration camps were the theater of the
mass killing of the main opponents and victims of the totalitarian regimes.
During the war, civilians faced an intense rationing (rationnement) which killed the weakest,
including millions of children and elderly people.
Finally, The Holocaust targeted massively the Jewish population who has been eradicated in many
countries, mainly in Eastern Europe, with a total of more than 6 million Jews killed (Ghettos, holocaust by
bullets, extermination camps). Around 250,000 Gypsies were also exterminated during WW2.

The racial dimension of the conflict and the destructive power of the weapons used
account for the equal number of civilian and military victims.

B) The material cost: a ruined world

The material consequences of the war were as tragic, with whole cities obliterated from the map,
like Stalingrad, Warsaw, Berlin, Le Havre or Coventry because of the aerial bombing and strategic bombing.
In Germany, 70% of the towns are destroyed. As a consequence, the housing problem was acute everywhere.
In France, all the communication routes had been destroyed, all the harbors, 8,000 km of
watercourses/canal over 9,000, half of the railroads were damaged, only ¼ of the trains were safe and usable. 1
house over 22 was destroyed, leading to huge housing problem for the survivors.
 Half the destruction took place in the USSR. In that region, the Nazis’ racialist policy, the Red
Army’s advance and countless border revisions resulted in making 1945 a record year in terms of refugees.
30 million displaced people hit the road between 1944 and 1946, among whom 11 million expelled
Germans.

The most affected countries were the USSR, then China, Germany and Poland. But there were a lot of
restrictions and famines (such as in 1945 when it killed more than 20,000 people in the Netherlands).
Supplying difficulties and rationing persisted long after the war ended. Bombings (The Blitz, D.
Day landings in Provence and in Normandy) affected the economies of many countries. Air raids disrupted
means of transportation and destroyed ports and factories.

Because of the destructions of factories, fields and productive areas, but also because of the large-
scale looting (pillage) of the Nazis and of the Japanese in the territories they had conquered, Europe, Japan,
China and part of South-East Asia faced an economic crisis.
Some factories had been taken to pieces, dismantled. Conquerors imposed levy (=prelevement),
requisition (= commandeering) of coal, potatoes, wheat, animals… Requisition of food had been estimated at
about 126 billion of francs in France for the entire war.
Europe and Japan faced the destruction of their main economical installations: Rhineland and
Northern part of France were the some of the most industrialized areas in Europe.

1945 in Germany is called « Year zero » because of the huge destructions all around the
country, combined with the economic collapse, a very high inflation, a high number of casualties, the
housing crisis only worsened by the massive afflux of refugees back to Germany.
The name comes from Germany Year Zero, a 1948 film directed by Roberto Rossellini. He intended to
convey the reality in Germany the year after its near total destruction in World War II. It contains
dramatic images of bombed out Berlin and of the human struggle for survival following the destruction
of the Third Reich. When explaining his ideas about realism in an interview, he said, "realism is nothing
other than the artistic form of the truth"

As a consequence, the industrial and agricultural production decreased between 30 to

70% from 1939 to 1945. The GDP also decreased everywhere (Italy = -40%, France = -46%, Japan and
Germany = -70%)

Countries had to spend their economic and monetary resources to finance the war leading to a huge
inflation after the war, and a massive public debt/deficit: multiplied by 3 in England, by 4 in France and
by 6 in the USA.
Foreign debts toward the USA skyrocketed, so after the war, the USA owned 66% of gold in the
world. After the war, many economies depended from the United States, the only country not affected by
heavy destructions on his own soil (apart from the naval base of Pearl Harbor, in December 1941).
The USA was standing alone in a destructed world, their industrial production had doubled since
1940: became the world’s creditors. WW2 symbolized the beginning of their SUPERPOWER.

C) The moral shock

WW2 represented all around the world a massive trauma at that time. The brutalization of the
war had been terrible: no respect for the prisoners by the Japanese or by the Germans, no respect of the
international treaties, human rights had been flouted (=bafouer), slaughtering of prisoners (example of the
Katyn massacre)

Trauma was also the result of the horror, of the magnitude of the Holocaust, of the mass
murders, of the industrial execution of the Jews, Gypsies and other groups. When the US and USSR
armies arrived in Poland and Germany, they discovered the horrors of the extermination camps, medical
experimentation on the prisoners by the SS or Japanese doctors in Manchuria: killing twins, spreading
viruses…

Another consequence of the Holocaust was the fact that Jews left Europe in great number after the
conflict (example of the Exodus aiming at Israel). Americans and Europeans, because of a massive feeling of
culpability, tried to find a solution in order to help them and lobbied for the creation of the State of Israel.

The unprecedented trauma was also caused by the use and the short- and long-term consequences of
the atomic bomb against cities in Japan (on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9, 1945), spreading the
fear of the atomic war, of the destruction of the entire humanity because life could be destroyed by a
bomb as big as a soccer ball and kill as many as a huge traditional attack. Mankind had now the capacity
of self-destruction.

As a consequence, many people stared to question the value of human life, the reality of human
values shared by the whole world, of human life. What does that mean “respect”, humanity, freedom…?
A strong feeling of absurdity developed among the population because of the discovery of the
concentration camps and the magnitude of the genocide = unprecedented trauma.
Such trauma was translated in theater by Ionesco, Beckett (theme of absurdity) or in philosophy by
Sartre defining an engagement philosophy (philosophie de l’engagement) in order to fight the feeling of
absurdity.

Such traumas are still alive today because of the tensions between countries such as
Serbs and Croats, the difficult acknowledgment of war crimes by Japanese in Asia,
geopolitical tensions between Chinese and Japanese after the Rape of Nanking…

Victorious nations decided to rebuild a different world and attempted to establish new
international relations.

I- Rebuilding the world after 1945; The desire to create a stable

new world order
KEY QUESTION:
- To what extent did the US and the USSR contribute to establishing a stable
postwar order up to 1950?
- How did the end of WWII lead to a new world order (1944-1955)? / To what
extent are the origins of the Cold War to be found in WWII?

A- The creation of the U.N. under the US influence

Why did the U.S. support the establishment of the United Nations?

Learning objective: assess the significance of the creation of the U.N. in identifying US
diplomatic and military influence and power.

The Second World War was incredibly destructive and expensive. World leaders were determined
that there must NEVER be another war like it.
By May 1945, the Allies had defeated Germany, though not yet Japan. They had demanded-
successfully – that Germany should surrender unconditionally and they had made a number of arrangements
among themselves at their wartime conferences – notably at Yalta, in the Crimea, in February 1945.
Among these arrangements were that a new international organization, the United Nations
organization with headquarters in New York city should replace the League of Nations.
So, on June 26, 1945 they signed the United Nation Charter at the San Francisco
Conference, and set up the United Nations Organization, which they hoped would help to keep the
peace. They tried to make it stronger than the League of Nations had been (multiple failures and incapacity to
act).

As with the League, there was to be a General Assembly representing all the Nations (Meets
every year. Every member country has one vote. Discusses problems. Makes recommendations, appoints
committees. Is based on the one-state-one-vote principle).

There was as well going to be a guiding body – the Security Council of eleven members (later
increased to fifteen). On this, Britain, China, France, the USSR and the USA would occupy permanent
places. As the task of restraining an aggressor would fall mainly on the great powers, they were given the
dominant voice. Nearly all the real authority was concentrated in the Security Council; and no important
decision could be taken unless the five permanent members of this were all agreed (Five great powers are
permanent members. They can veto decisions. Other countries are selected by the General Assembly for two
years. Job is to preserve peace. Can order members to provide troops to keep the peace).

Within the framework of the United Nations the Allies had agreed to create various subsidiary
organizations for dealing with the relief and rehabilitation of war-torn Europe. These got to work from
1943 onwards as Axis-occupied territory was liberated. By 1947 they had saved millions of lives from the
effects of famine, disease, the destructions of homes and the general economic breakdown in many of the
defeated countries.
There was going to be a Central Organization with a Secretariat (Administers UN under the control
of the Secretary General, who can raise issues and suggest policies to the assembly and the Security Council).
Today, the Secretary-General of the UNO is António Guterres (since January 2017)

The future United Nations organization was founded in San Francisco on June 26, 1945 and
was assigned the mission of preserving peace, guaranteeing the application of the 1948 Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and fostering economic development through special institutions.

B- The idea of an international justice: War Crimes trials (Nuremberg

and Tokyo)

Why did the Allies establish War Crimes trials?

Learning objective: understand the significance of the war crimes trials (Nuremberg and Tokyo).

Another decision on which the Allies were agreed was that “War criminals” should be
tried and punished. Judging the leaders of the Nazi regime was important to keep accountable
the Nazi leaders of the crimes they had committed. Justice in the Post-WW2 world was a
stronger value than the Totalitarian ones, and the victims expected a trial.

a) The Nuremberg Trials (November 1945-october 1946)

The Allies faced the problem of how to legally respond to the Holocaust and grave crimes committed by
the Nazi regime, so they organized a notable series of trials of the surviving Nazi leaders at Nuremberg
before an International Military tribunal.

Nuremberg was chosen as the site for two reasons, the first being decisive:
  The Palace of Justice was spacious and largely undamaged (one of the few buildings that had
remained largely intact through extensive Allied bombing of Germany), and a large prison was also
part of the complex.
 Nuremberg was considered the ceremonial birthplace of the Nazi Party. It had hosted the Party's
annual propaganda rallies and the Reichstag session that passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935.
Thus, it was considered a fitting place to mark the Party's symbolic demise.

The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals held after World War II by
the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war by an International Military
Tribunal (IMT).
The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military,
judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in
the Holocaust and other war crimes. The decisions taken marked a turning point between classical and
contemporary international law.

The first and best known of the trials was that of the major war criminals before the
International Military Tribunal (IMT). It was described as "the greatest trial in history" by Sir Norman
Birkett, one of the British judges present throughout.

The Tribunal was given the task of judging 24 of the most important political and military
leaders of the Third Reich including Goering (second-in-command of Hitler, suicide before his execution)
and Von Ribbentrop (Secretary of State).
Further trials of lesser war criminals were conducted at the U.S. Nuremberg Military Tribunal
(NMT), which included the Doctors' trial and the Judges' Trial.

The categorization of the crimes and the constitution of the court represented a juridical advance that
would be followed afterward by the United Nations for the development of an international jurisprudence
in matters of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and wars of aggression, and led to the
creation of the International Criminal Court.

These charges (=chefs d’accusation) answered to the horror of the genocide and of WW2.
 War crimes: Violation of international treaties and traditional way to make war: murder of prisoners,
of hostages, looting and voluntary and useless destruction of villages and cities

 Crimes against peace: A crime against peace refers to "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging
of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation
in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing" => concept of aggression as
a crime against peace in international law.
This definition of crimes against peace was first incorporated into the Nuremberg Principles and later
included in the United Nations Charter.

 Crime against humanity: International law term defined as «murder, extermination, enslavement,
deportation and other inhuman acts committed against any civilian population before or during the war, or
persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds (motifs)”

For the first time in international law, the Nuremberg indictments also mention genocide ("the
extermination of racial and national groups, against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories to
destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial, or religious groups, particularly Jews,
Poles, and Gypsies and others.")

RESULT: Twelve of the accused were sentenced to death, seven received prison sentences (ranging from
10 years to life sentence), three were acquitted, and two were not charged.
 Of the 12 defendants sentenced to death by hanging, two were not hanged: Martin Bormann was
convicted in absentia (he had, unknown to the Allies, died while trying to escape from Berlin in May 1945),
and Hermann Göring committed suicide the night before the execution. The remaining 10 defendants
sentenced to death were hanged.

To go further:
 http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/ A lot of interesting pictures
 Movie “Germany, Year Zero”, Roberto Mussolini, 1948.

b) The Tokyo Trials (May 1946 – November 1948)

On the other side of the world was the need to settle terms for Japan.
A tribunal was organized in Tokyo to try Japanese war criminals, from May 1946 to November
1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East

It had been decided beforehand by the Allies that Japan should be reduced to its four main “home”
islands and that it should be “demilitarized” and “democratized”. The U.S. was already occupying Japan
at that time and they organized the whole process, under MacArthur command.

The main defendant was Hideki Tojo (1884-1948). After Japan's unconditional surrender in 1945,
U.S. General Douglas MacArthur ordered the arrest of forty alleged war criminals, including Tojo who was
the Prime Minister until July 1944.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Hideki TOJO (1884-1948), former Prime Minister of Japan.

Tojo was tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East for war crimes and
found guilty of, among other actions, waging wars of aggression; war in violation of international law;
unprovoked or aggressive war against various nations; and ordering, authorizing, and permitting
inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.

Crimes committed by Imperial Japan were responsible for the deaths of millions (some estimate
between 3 million and 14 million) of civilians and prisoners of war through massacre, human
experimentation, starvation, and forced labor that was either directly perpetrated or condoned by the
Japanese military and government with a significant portion of them occurring during Tojo's rule of the
military. One source attributes 5 million civilian deaths to Tojo's rule of the military.

Hideki Tojo accepted full responsibility for his actions during the war, and made this speech: “It is
natural that I should bear entire responsibility for the war in general, and, needless to say, I am prepared to
do so. Consequently, now that the war has been lost, it is presumably necessary that I be judged so that the
circumstances of the time can be clarified and the future peace of the world be assured. Therefore, with
respect to my trial, it is my intention to speak frankly, according to my recollection, even though when the
vanquished stands before the victor, who has over him the power of life and death, he may be apt to today and
flatter. I mean to pay considerable attention to this in my actions, and say to the end that what is true is true
and what is false is false. To shade one's words in flattery to the point of untruthfulness would falsify the trial
and do incalculable harm to the nation, and great care must be taken to avoid this.”

Tojo was sentenced to death on November 12, 1948, and executed by hanging 41 days later on
December 23, 1948, a week before his 64th birthday. Before his execution, he gave his military ribbons to one
of his guards; they are on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida. In his
final statement, he apologized for the atrocities committed by the Japanese military and urged the
American military to show compassion toward the Japanese people, who had suffered devastating air
attacks and the two atomic bombings. He recognized the same in his poems, which were discovered much
later.
 American historians later criticized the work done by General MacArthur and his staff
to exonerate Emperor Hirohito and all members of the imperial family from criminal
prosecutions. According to them, MacArthur and Brigadier General Bonner Fellers worked to protect the
Emperor and shift ultimate responsibility to Tojo.
According to the written report of Shūichi Mizota, interpreter for Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, Fellers
met the two men at his office on March 6, 1946, and told Yonai: "It would be most convenient if the Japanese
side could prove to us that the Emperor is completely blameless. I think the forthcoming trials offer the best
opportunity to do that. Tojo, in particular, should be made to bear all responsibility at this trial."

The sustained intensity of this campaign to protect the Emperor was revealed when, in testifying
before the tribunal on December 31, 1947, Tojo momentarily strayed from the agreed-upon line concerning
imperial innocence and referred to the Emperor's ultimate authority.
The American-led prosecution immediately arranged that he be secretly coached to recant this
testimony. Ryūkichi Tanaka, a former general who testified at the trial and had close connections with chief
prosecutor Joseph B. Keenan, was used as an intermediary to persuade Tojo to revise his testimony.

Everywhere: political purges after the Liberation of each territory.

Difference between
 savage purges, without any trial (7 to 10,000 death in France), with women shaved in public because
of real or not sexual relationships with German soldiers.
 legal purges with trial and official condemnations = 120,000 condemnations in France.

However, in France, most of the official leaders of the Vichy regime were not condemned and
remained in power after 1945.

C- New economic ideologies with the Bretton Woods Agreement and

the Welfare State

Learning objective: assess the significance of the Bretton Woods agreement in identifying
US economic influence and power.

CONTEXT:
The world economic crisis of 1929 and the Great Depression accentuated competition between
states because most of them devaluated the value of their national currency in order to be more
competitive with their exportations. Countries also reinforced protectionism to protect their national
industries. Consequently, these interwar policies led to the collapse of the world trade, to geopolitical
tensions during the Interwar period and to WW2.

So as early as 1941, American and British leaders understood that peace and security would not
last for long without a world economic cooperation, without a shared prosperity (c.f. the Atlantic Charter,
1941, promoting free trade, free access to natural resources, economic cooperation …).

After World War II, the US emerged as the leading economic power on the
international scene.
The US position in 1944/45 enabled Americans to redesign the world political and economic
systems according to their own specifications (to ensure peace, financial stability, economic prosperity and
social progress).
Americans ended the Great Depression thanks to the war industry, selling weapons to the Allies and
granting loans (Cash and Carry Act, Lend-Lease Act, …). In 1944, the American industry was flourishing
and they owned 66% of the world gold.
 So, in order to help the reconstruction of the Europe and of the world and to avoid the spread of
communism, Allies leaders of 44 states decided to gather in Bretton Woods, USA and to create a new
“world organization of the economy”, a new international monetary system = the Bretton Wood
system (July 1944)
The goal was to maintain the stability of the currencies of the main European countries

The BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE:

The Bretton Woods Conference, formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial
Conference, was the gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations in Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, United States, to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the
conclusion of World War II.

The conference was held from July 1 to 22, 1944. Agreements were signed (and ratified in 1945)
that, after legislative ratification by member governments, established two regular institutions:
- the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, later part of the World
Bank group), created after the Conference in 1944
- the International Monetary Fund (The IMF), created in 1947, at the origin of a new
international monetary system.

This led to what was called the Bretton Woods system for international commercial and
financial relations.
The three key elements of this new monetary order dominated by the Americans were:
 Currencies would be tied up (gager sur, liées à) to gold or to currencies convertible in gold
 Each currency would have a fixed parity (=parité fixe): the value of a currency must stay the same
compared to other currencies/no changes in their parity, no devaluation.
 Central banks of each country would have to intercede in order to limit the variations of values
between the currencies.

The US took the initiative. Though ostensibly international and neutral, both institutions were
actually subjected to US influence (Headquarters in Washington, DC).
The USA thus could preserve its national interests and impose its economic domination
over the Western world.
The US owned 2/3 of the world’s gold reserve while all the currencies had lost face value. Thus, the
US dollar appeared as the only reliable currency that could finance reconstruction and stimulate
trade. The dollar was declared “as good as gold”. It became the only currency convertible into gold (35
US$ the once of gold) and able to guarantee a stable international monetary system (other currencies have
fixed parities with the US dollar). The dollar was the “world reserve currency,” the world Standard.

From 1944 to the 1970s, the system set up by the United States at the Bretton Woods
Conference has organized the world economy while providing leadership to the US.

In the meantime, a new model re-emerged with the idea of the “Welfare State” (State
interventionism) such as in the United Kingdom with figures of Sir William Beveridge and John Maynard
Keynes.

D- A new world organization, through War-time conferences and peace

treaties, leading to a new map of Europe

a) The Yalta Conference to organize the fate of Germany (February 1945)

 The destiny (=le sort) of the defeated/vanquished countries in Europe had been decided by three men
“The Big Three” in Wartime conferences before the end of the war

The first one was the Conference of YALTA located along the Black Sea coast of the Crimean
Peninsula. In February 1945, before the end of the war, with Winston Churchill for the UK (Prime minister
from 1940 to 1945), Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the USA (President from 1933 to 1945) and Joseph
Stalin of the USSR (main leader from 1928 to 1953): the Big Three.

The three leaders agreed about the end of the war and the destiny of Germany. At that time, the war
was going well and it was clear that the Allies were going to win. The three leaders met to plan what to do
about Germany and Europe once the war ended.

But they were uneasy allies: The USSR had signed a pact with Hitler in 1939. Britain had wanted
to help Finland against the USSR. Stalin had been suspicious of Allied failure to open the Second Front in
France in 1942 and 1943.

The three leaders mainly discussed about Germany and reached several important agreements:
- They agreed to divide Germany, Berlin and Austria into four zones – British,
French, American and Soviet.
- De-militarization: Germany would have to pay for the reparations and be de-armed. The
European conferees wanted to ensure that Germany would be unable to make a rapid return to economic
and military power like it did following WWI.
- De-Nazification: The country would also be de-Nazify (denazification to rid German
society, culture and press of any remnants (= reste vestige) of Nazi ideology). The Nazis leaders would be
judged in the Nuremberg Trial.
- They agreed that Eastern Europe would be regarded as a Soviet “sphere of
influence”: The Soviets promised to allow free elections in all territories in Eastern Europe liberated
from Nazi occupation, including Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. In return, the United States
and Britain agreed that future governments in Eastern European nations bordering Soviet Union should
be “friendly” to the Soviet regime, satisfying Stalin’s desire for a zone of influence to provide a buffer
against future conflicts in Europe.
- Stalin agreed to Soviet participation in the United Nations, the international peacekeeping
organization that Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed to form in 1941 as part of the Atlantic Charter

The Allies also organized peace in Asia:

 Japan and South Korea were under USA military rules, occupation.
 The USSR occupied Manchuria and North Korea.
 The new Japanese constitution was very close to the US Constitution.

b) Peace treaties signed with minor defeated nations

The Allies also at a fairly early stage agreed that their foreign ministers should prepare peace
treaties with the “minor” defeated opponents – Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland.
Despite fierce wrangling prolonged over two years they actually managed to do this.
 By treaties signed in 1947 Italy, as a power which had helped the Allies in the later stages of the war,
was treated lightly; her main punishments were some mild reparations, the detachment of Trieste, and the loss
of her former North African colonies.
 Among the provisions of the other treaties, Rumania got back Transylvania from Hungary – to make
up for the fact that Russia had to take over Bessarabia and other former Rumanian territory.
 By the treaty with Finland, Russia recovered nearly all that she had taken in 1939-40 and later lost
during the German invasion.

c) Emergence of a new map of Europe after WW2:

After WW2 and the Conference of Yalta, a new map of Europe was set off in order to put into practice
the Yalta decisions about the new borders of Poland
 Extensions of the USSR to the west (annexation of 750,000 square kilometers (including the Baltic
States) until the Curzon line
 Poland moved 300 km on its west, on the Oder-Neisse Line (rivers)
 Germany, Berlin and Austria were occupied and divided in 4 occupied zones (USSR, the USA,
the UK and France)
 Eastern Europe was occupied by the Red Army

These decisions led to an unprecedented displacement of population: an exodus with 30 million refugees:
 2.5 million Soviets moved west
 5 million Pols moved west also
 11 million Germans from Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania went back to Germany

II- 1945 to 1947: Toward a bipolar world: new tensions

intensifying between the two emerging superpowers (the
US and the USSR): the first steps of the Cold War.

KEY QUESTION: Why did wartime cooperation break down so quickly at the end of WWII?

As early as 1941, the Allies expressed their common concern regarding post-war reconstruction. Yet
conflicting or even antagonistic interests rapidly arose and led to increasing mutual distrust.

The COLD WAR, a REMINDER

For nearly half a century – from 1945 to 1989 – the world’s most powerful countries opposed
each other in what they called “the Cold War”. On one side was the United States and its allies, often
known as “the West”. On the other was the Soviet Union and its allies, often known as “the East”.
There was no declaration of war between the USA and the USSR.

This war between East and West was unusual in one respect: the two most powerful countries on
either side – the USA and the USSR – never fought each other.
For 45 years they threatened to go to war but never fired a single shot directly at each other. Instead,
the two sides used other countries and other people to do their fighting for them (proxy-wars by satellite
countries).
For example, they fought each other’s allies; they helped their allies to fight each other; They
gave financial, economic, military… help to opposing sides in civil wars; they used armed force to get
rid of pro-Soviet governments in countries close to the USA or to stop rebellions against pro-Soviet
governments in nearby countries.

But these were not the only ways in which the Superpowers fought each other. They also fought
a propaganda war, trying to damage each other’s reputation and to improve their own.
They competed in an arms race to develop more and more powerful weapons, and a space race
to reach the moon before the other one. They tried to outdo each other in science and technology.
Even in sport they competed with each other, for example to get gold medals in the Olympic
Games. In all of these areas of conflict, they used espionage to find out each other’s plans.

A- 1945: From friends to foes; the end of the “Great Alliance”

a) From the Great Alliance to worldwide enemies: two different countries and ideologies
 From 1939 to 1945, the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain forged the “ Great
Alliance”. The Great Alliance is often called the "Strange Alliance" because it united the world's greatest
capitalist state, the greatest Communist state and the greatest colonial power.
It was essentially an alliance of necessity as all three needed to join together in order to defeat the
threat of Nazi Germany.

By the end of the Second World War, the USA and the USSR were the world’s two superpowers.
This means they were stronger, better armed and more successful than all other countries. They were
clearly in a different league from other powers, such as Britain and France.

The good news for world peace was that in 1945 these two superpowers were allies – working
together in the battle against Hitler. In May 1945, they met each other in Berlin.

But the bad news for world peace was that

- within one year, the Soviet and American leaders were accusing each other of breaking the
promises they had made during war-time
- within two years, the American President was promising his help to anyone who would stand
up to the USSR (Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan).
- within four years, it looked very likely that the two war-time allies would declare war on each
other.

The conflict never came to war, but for almost 50 years it was a Cold War. The two sides never
fought, but they spied on each other, criticized each other in the media and helped anyone who opposed the
other side. So why did these former friends fall out?

The main reason of the Cold War was that they had different beliefs, ideologies. In the
past, the USA and the USSR had always been very suspicious of each other. They had totally different
beliefs about how a country should be run. They were allies during the war only because they had the same
enemy – Hitler’s Germany.

Graph about the main differences between the USA and the USSR in terms of ideology,
politics, social, the economy and culture.

>>> The US vs. The USSR.

Ideology Capitalism Communism
Politics and A democratic state. Political pluralism. A one-party state. Only the Communist
Government Party is allowed. In theory, the country is
run by elected councils called Soviets. But
as most members of the Soviets are
Communists, the country is really run by
the party.
Human Rights Few limits on human and civil rights and Strict limits on many human and civil
some rights are guaranteed by law (but rights e.g. limits on free speech, travel,
until the 1960s many rights were denied worship etc. Dissidents (i.e. people who
to African Americans). try to break those limits) risk
imprisonment.
Social Average living standards higher than in Average living standards lower than in
the East. Wealth distributed unevenly, the West. Wealth more evenly
so there are more poor people than in distributed, so fewer people are either
the East. rich or poor.
Economic A free-market economy: farms, A government-run economy: factories,
factories, mines, shops etc. are privately farms, mines, shops etc. are publicly
owned. Profits go to the company. owned. Profits are used for the public
 good.
Cultural The media are owned by private The media are owned and run by the
companies and individuals. government. Newspapers, books, radio,
Newspapers, books, radio, TV and films films TV are strictly censored.
are rarely censored.

b) Growing tensions and mistrusts: from Yalta (Feb 1945) to Potsdam (August 1945)

CONTEXT: The USA and the USSR agreed at Yalta but developed many disagreements at Potsdam.

REMINDER: YALTA: In February 1945, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met at Yalta. The three
leaders met to plan what to do about Germany and Europe once the war ended.

Personal tensions and mistrusts:

President Roosevelt got on reasonably well with Stalin but he wanted to see the breakup of the
British Empire. Roosevelt also made concessions to Stalin – and angered Churchill.
However, Churchill and Stalin got on badly. Churchill was suspicious of everything Stalin did.
Stalin said that “Churchill would pick your pocket for a kopek” (a very low value Soviet coin).
Stalin did not enter the war against Japan until his spies told him that the Atomic bomb was to be
dropped.

Despite these personality clashes, they reached several important agreements (cf earlier in the
lesson)

POTSDAM: The last War-Time conference was after the defeat of Germany, in July and August 1945,
in Potsdam, Germany with leaders of the “New” Big Three = Harry Truman (US president from 1945 to
1952), Clement Atlee (UK Prime Minister) and Stalin.

This conference did not go nearly so well as Yalta, for the following reasons.
- The war in Europe was over – so the “glue” that held the alliance together was no longer
there.
- The USA had a new leader –Harry Truman had replaced Roosevelt after his death as
President. Truman was much more anti-Communist than Roosevelt. Truman and Stalin found it very
hard to understand each other.
- The Americans had developed an Atomic Bomb and they had a nuclear monopoly (until
1949) – this worried the Soviet Union.
- Soviet troops were occupying most of Eastern Europe – this worried the USA.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972).

He was the 33rd president of the United States from 1945 to 1953, succeeding upon the death of
Franklin D. Roosevelt after serving as the 34 th vice president. He implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild
the economy of Western Europe, and established the Truman Doctrine and NATO.
Truman grew up in Independence, Missouri, and during World War I, he was sent to France as a
captain in the Field Artillery. Returning home, he opened a haberdashery in Kansas City, Missouri and was
later elected as a Jackson County official in 1922.
Truman was elected to the United States Senate from Missouri in 1934 and gained national
prominence as chairman of the Truman Committee aimed at reducing waste and inefficiency in wartime
contracts. Soon after succeeding to the presidency he authorized the first and only use of nuclear weapons
in war.
Truman's administration engaged in an internationalist foreign policy and renounced isolationism.
He rallied his New Deal coalition during the 1948 presidential election and won a surprise victory
that secured his own presidential term. After the onset of the Cold War, Truman oversaw the Berlin Airlift
and Marshall Plan in 1948. When North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, he gained United Nations
approval to intervene in what became known as the Korean War.

On domestic issues, bills endorsed by Truman faced opposition from a conservative Congress, but his
administration successfully guided the U.S. economy through the post-war economic challenges. In 1948,
he submitted the first comprehensive civil rights legislation and issued Executive Order 9981 to start racial
integration in the military and federal agencies.

Corruption in the Truman administration became a central campaign issue in the 1952 presidential
election. After Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower's electoral victory against Democrat Adlai Stevenson
II, Truman went into a financially difficult retirement, marked by the founding of his presidential library
and the publication of his memoirs.
When he left office, Truman's presidency was criticized, though critical reassessment of his tenure
has been favorable.

A first major disagreement involved the future status of Germany. The issue caused big
tensions at Potsdam.
Stalin said he wanted to make Germany pay huge compensation ($10 billion) to the
USSR.
This was a new demand. He had not asked for this at Yalta. Stalin felt that this demand was perfectly
justified. He did not care if compensation crippled Germany. The Soviets had lost 30 million people in the
war. The Germans had flattened villages, towns and whole cities. Stalin would not admit it to Truman, but
the war had left the USSR with almost no money or resources.

Truman opposed Stalin’s demand for compensation. He did not understand that Stalin
still felt threatened by Germany. Truman wanted Germany to recover and become a stable, democratic
state.
He did not want to repeat the mistakes made by the Treaty of Versailles when attempts to cripple
Germany helped cause another war. Truman also felt that Germany would not be able to pay any
compensation to the USSR if it was crippled.
Stalin couldn’t understand Truman’s attitude. He wondered why the USA was so keen to rebuild
Germany.

A second disagreement regarded Eastern Europe. The biggest political disputes between the
USA and the USSR were about Eastern Europe. In 1945 the Allies had agreed that Eastern Europe would
be “a Soviet sphere of influence”.
To the Americans, this meant that Eastern European countries should be friendly towards the USSR.
However, they should also be free to elect their own governments in democratic elections.
That was just not good enough for Stalin. He did not trust any government unless he was in charge of
it. His Red Army troops helped Communists to take power in each of the Eastern European states. Then he set
up an organization called Cominform to control these new governments.
He told them how to run their countries and how to deal with the Americans. The Americans protested
against Soviet actions, but it did little good.

To Stalin, control of Eastern Europe made sense. In the twentieth century, the USSR had twice
been invaded through Eastern European countries. If he controlled the region, nobody would be able to invade
through it, it could be a buffer zone.
To Truman, Stalin’s control of Eastern Europe was evidence that Stalin was building an empire. He
clearly wanted to take over the rest of Europe as well. A “sovietization” of Eastern Europe was out of
question.
 So, the two former allies were already facing important tensions at the Potsdam
Conference.

B- Late 1945- early 1946: Mistrust and tensions rose between the two
main winners of the war, the USA and the USSR

CONTEXT:
 The USA did not accept the soviet domination of Eastern and Central Europe, because it recalled
the way of doing of Hitler (expansionism, domination)

 The USSR mistrusted the USA because they were the only power to have the nuclear weapon
(Nuclear monopoly until 1949). It also blamed the Westerners for preparing the economic recovery of the
areas they were occupying in Eastern Europe, for intervening into the political life of Balkans and Eastern
Europe because they were asking for free election, as written in the Yalta decisions.
The Soviets argued that their security required "friendly" regimes along their border (= buffer zone),
and that Western-style democratic elections were unlikely to produce pro-Soviet governments.

a) Stalin took over Eastern Europe against the principles of Yalta: The Salami Tactic

At Yalta, the Big Three issued a "Declaration of Liberated Europe," in which they pledged "to
form interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the
population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of Governments
responsive to the will of the people."
BUT as soon as autumn 1944, Stalin organized “elections” and purges (epurations) in Romania and
Bulgaria: Stalin did not have the same conception of Self-determination than Westerners.

In 1945-46, Stalin made sure that Communist governments “communist puppet states” came into
power in all the countries of Eastern Europe apparently ignoring his promises to allow democratic
elections there (the countries which Russia had conquered in 1945 such as Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia,
Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and East Germany).

The pattern was very similar. At first, East European countries were ruled by governmental
coalition, in which the Communist Party played an influential and dominant part. Then the Communist Part
marginalized and outrighted repression of the opponent parties and splinter groups (groupe dissident)
which remained outside the coalition.
Finally, elections took place, giving communists 89 per cent in Poland, 98 per cent in Romania (up in
1948 from 91 per cent in 1946!) and 79 per cent in Bulgaria, creating a monolithic government (only ruled
by the Communists, under Moscow’s orders)
By 1947-8, this process had succeeded in crushing the agrarian and socialist parties which were
the most serious threat in a democratic setting to communist hegemony; some of their leaders had been
executed or forced to flee.

 Main goal = opportunistic creation of strategic political and military buffer zone at the periphery
of the USSR to protect the USSR against any attempt to invade the country from the West. Best way to do =
to install some government in favor of the USSR.

The Hungarian Communist Rakosi described this process as ‘slicing salami’ – gradually getting rid
of all opposition, bit-by-bit.
Situation at the beginning of 1946: Stalin had a complete political and military control over
the entire eastern Europe with a ring of satellite Communist states because Westerners had
been very slow to understand that Stalin was more interested in areas of influence than in
respecting Yalta’s principles

b) “An iron Curtain has descended across the continent,” Churchill

At the same time = the Fulton speech: Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech = main speech of Churchill,
March 5th, 1946.

On March 5, 1946, at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri, former British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill made this speech with President Truman’s support. The speech was also called "Sinews of
Peace" address (sinew = muscle, tendons)
Churchill warned that the Soviets were cutting off Eastern European countries and an
Anglo-American partnership to resist the Soviets was necessary.

Context of the speech = 1 year after Yalta.

 No more union between the USA and the USSR (first political person to say that loud) in order to
fight and win against Nazism.
 Still occupation of Eastern Europe by the Red Army, no withdrawing such as the American Army
in Western Europe.
 Recall (évocation) Greece: civil war from 1946 to 1949 between Communist and pro-Westerners
(helped by England then by the USA in February 1947). Tito and the Communist Yugoslavia helped the
Greek communists. Division in 1949 between Tito and Stalin, so Tito stopped helping the Greek. Victory of
the pro-Westerners (only country in the Balkans to stay as a democracy).

Denunciation of the evolution/changes:

 Unlimited expansion of the soviet power and the Russia doctrine
 Churchill spoke about in «Iron curtain» descended through the European continent

Quote to learn: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended
across the continent.”

The Iron Curtain stood for an ideological and military barrier between the countries (almost all of
the states in Central and Eastern Europe), which were under the dependence of the Soviet Union and the
non-communist, politically free countries in the West.
One of the wall’s main tasks was to restrict people inhabiting the communist area from traveling
outside and to restrict the information flow in it, from the non-communist world => Physical and
material border between Eastern and Western Europe

It created difficulties of communication between 2 different Europes, divided by a 2,000-km

line of barbed wire, look-out posts and road blocks.

 Moscow controlled the Eastern Europe countries by setting up communist governments, even if
communist were the minority in those countries.

For Churchill, there was a fundamental opposition, contradiction between the Yalta principles of
freedom and democracy and the Soviet behavior in Eastern Europe: Churchill’s Fulton speech did not
cause the Cold War, but he was the first person to stop pretending to be friends with Russia.
It could be considered as the beginning of the Cold War
 Russian historians date the beginning of the Cold War from this speech onward. For many in
Britain, the United States, France, and West Germany, Churchill’s speech was not a lightning rod of
controversy, but only gave voice to a belief already held by many in the West.
This loose, but commonly held belief was centered around the idea that aggressive Soviet territorial
expansion in Eastern Europe was the blame for the advent of the Cold War (traditional perspective).

C-1947, decisive year: opposition between two doctrines

Clearly, in mid-1946, the Great Alliance was done and the world was going toward a Cold War. But
both superpowers were responsible for creating tensions:

The USSR because of the

 The non-respect of the Yalta principles (freedom, democracy, self-determination by people) in
Eastern Europe and of the civil war in Greece.
 The creation of Communist puppet states in Eastern Europe freed by the Red Army, with the
organization of communist governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. Stalin
structured Strategic buffer zone, with “friendly countries” to protect the USSR against a capitalist
aggression
 Participation of communists in Western European governments such as Belgium, France, Italy.

But in the same time, the Russians were worried by some acts and events done by Americans:
 The end by Truman of the financial help to the Soviets just after the end of the war in Europe
 The fact that the US owned an atomic bomb: at the Potsdam Conference, Truman informed Stalin
that the United States now possessed a bomb of exceptional power.

But until the end of 1946, the USA did not try to increase the tensions because of their
military superiority (atomic bomb, huge army economic power): they were certain to be able to push back
communist if they wanted to move out of their buffer zone. But in 1947…

In 1947, the USA became the leader of the free world. Because of some attempts by the USSR to
threaten the sharing of Europe (incapacity of the Europeans- power vacuum- to contain the Soviet
pressure), the USA believed/feared that the Soviets wanted to extend their domination worldwide.

As a consequence, it led in the USA to the creation of a messianic and Manichean/ dualistic
viewpoint of the relations between the two main countries. USA leaders believed they had a religious
mission (linked with history- Manifest Destiny- and the Chosen People- by God) to protect freedom all
around the world because of their power. This superpower gave them a responsibility toward the rest of
the Free world.

This religious crusade at first, this fight against the absolute Evil- communism- led to eventually,
the creation of an American Empire in the Free World based on relations of domination: financial
investments, exportation of raw materials at a very low cost for the American industries, will to have some
very broad markets for the US industries, support for the “friendly” and the elite ready to accept the unequal
system, destabilization of the opponents, Americanization of the ideas, behaviors, consumptions, military
interventions when the dollar diplomacy is not efficient to maintain the “pax Americana.”

P.P.O. #1. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

a) Defining the US policy of containment: the doctrine Truman, March 1947
 In the eyes of many Americans, members of the Truman administration as well as average citizens in
1947, the Soviets seemed bent on dominating much of the European continent in a manner reminiscent
of that of Nazi Germany.
Truman worried about Communism spreading to democratic countries in Europe. Bombing and
fighting had destroyed roads, water supplies and other essential services. Truman feared that Communists
would play on people’s misery by making promises to improve their lives. This would gain them support.
In 1947-1948, it looked as if Communists might also take power in Italy and France.

The main question for U.S. policymakers was HOW to respond to Soviet aggression. With the
recent experience of the late 1930s very much in mind, President Truman concluded that the Soviet Union
was behaving like a bully (= tyran) and that the best way of dealing with a bully (= tyran) was to stand up
to him.
Truman believed that the proper means of responding to an international bully was a credible threat
of force.

In February 1947, the British announced that they were withdrawing their soldiers from Greece
because they could no longer support it financially.
As a consequence, President Truman [President from 1945 to 1953, elected after the death of FD
Roosevelt, much more anti-communist than FDR] sought to prepare Americans for their new international
role (interventionism) by announcing the so-called "TRUMAN DOCTRINE" in March 12, 1947. Speech
in front of the Congress.

Truman said, “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.”
Truman warned Congress that, without help, Greece would fall to Communism – and that Turkey
and other countries would follow because they were in a similar situation (it will later be called the Domino
Theory)

Key idea of the TRUMAN DOCTRINE: The United States should take responsibility for
defending "free peoples" throughout the world from communist aggression, to recreate hope. The USA had
the DUTY to abandon their decision not to get involved in European affairs (end of the Monroe Doctrine and
of isolationism between WW1 and WW2): policy of containment

Definition of the concept of CONTAINMENT: A principle of US foreign policy that sought to prevent
the expansion of Communist power and ideology => it did not try to destroy the USSR, but
containment wanted to stop it from growing any more. It recognized the principle of co-existence

The United States had to avoid any act which would be an excuse for the Soviets to begin a war
BUT the USA had to resist vigorously and successfully any efforts of the U.S.S.R. to expand into areas
vital to American security by giving a massive financial and economic help to keep their freedom and
independence.

ANALYSIS:
 Opposition between two civilizations, two worlds. One is freedom and the other is dictatorship. The
Cold War is presented as a choice between freedom and oppression
 Communism spread out through poverty and disorder (situation of Europe after WW2: deep
poverty and political chaos), with people without hope.
 Series of multilateral alliances against the USSR.

CONCLUSION: example of the new POLICY OF CONTAINMENT

As a consequence, because Greece was threatened in its existence by the communists, one of the main
measures of the “Truman doctrine” was to provide a substantial package of economic and military aid
to Greece and Turkey, to provide financial aid to foster economic recovery.
 So, Truman asked Congress to vote immediately to give 400 million $ to Greece and Turkey, and
Truman started straight away by sending money and equipment to help anti-Communist forces in a civil
war in Greece leading to the victory of the Greek monarchists (against the communists).
Only in Greece, which the Russians had recognized in 1945 to be within the British sphere of
influence rather than their own, were the local Communists beaten.
The decision of President Truman in March 1947 to support the Greek government financially in
its struggle against a Communist movement was one of the first clear landmarks in the “Cold War”.
It marked the return of the USA to an active foreign policy, now directed to preventing the
spread of Communism. Under the so-called “Truman Doctrine”, first announced in connection with Greece
and Turkey, American aid was to become available to any country threatened by external communist
aggression.

Containment of communism would, in fact, remain the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for the
next fifty years. As a consequence of the Truman Doctrine: stabilization of the positions in southern
Europe and in the Middle East with very strong American influence in Greece, Turkey and Iran.

It set a precedent for the principle of ‘collective security’ – building up a network of pacts with
allies and friendly states to which the US gave military aid free of charge – and NATO. In America, it
whipped up the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1950s.
In Russia, it convinced the Soviets that America was indeed attacking Soviet Communism.

b) Containing communism through financial help, the Marshall plan

After World War II, the US provided 1/3 of the seed money (= mise de fonds/capital de démarrage)
for both UN institutions, the World Bank and the IMF) and had 1/3 of the voting power. It soon shared
control with Western Europe.
But these institutions were unable to finance the reconstruction of Europe. Just as the Americans
had taken the foremost part in the immediate relief work in war-torn Europe from 1944 to 1947, so they now
proposed to go beyond relief to recovery. Truman decided to use the USA’s mighty economic
power.
In June 1947, the American general/ Secretary of State George Marshall went to Europe. He was
shocked by the human, political and economic situation of Europe.

In order to assist in Europe's recovery, the administration proposed the European Recovery Program
ERP, (official name) also called the MARSHALL PLAN—named for Secretary of State George C.
Marshall, who introduced the concept in June 5th 1947 in a speech at Harvard University.

He explained his idea in simple terms: the European economy had been destroyed because the
Nazis had reorganized it to support their own war efforts. Now, townspeople could not produce enough to
afford to buy food from the farmers; and farmers were unable to get from the towns the equipment they
needed to produce the food.
“The United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic
health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is
directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose
should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social
conditions in which free institutions can exist.”

Main reasons explaining the Marshall Plan:

 Humanitarian disaster: Postwar Europe remained economically devastated in 1947 + very cold
winter in 1947 = starvation in Europe.

 Economic reasons (fear of overproduction as in the late 1920s before the Great Depression)
Also, the Marshall Plan was not only humanitarian, but also allows the US companies to find
markets and to sell more products around Europe.
 In March 1946, more than 40% of the US exportation went to Western Europe, compared to 2%
for the rest of the continent. European economy had a dollar gap = they are unable to buy American products
because they don’t have enough dollars  Huge danger for the US economy where factories are working
at full blast/ throttle (tourner à plein régime) because of the reconversion from a war time economy to a
peacetime economy.

 Political reasons (fear of the growing political influence of communism in western Europe)
When he came back from Europe, Marshall said every country in Europe was so poor that it was in
danger of turning Communist! Europe was ‘a breeding ground of hate’.
Such poverty led the US to fear that very powerful communist parties might succeed in taking
power through legal means in places like France, Germany, and Italy unless the European economy could
be jump-started.
The US was also afraid of a communist revolution/of an internal destabilization in France and
Italy because communists were expelled from governments’ mid-1947 and they are organizing revolutionary
movements helped by the USSR.

Once the Plan was developed, Marshall challenged the countries of Europe to get together (no
help for one country individually but through an organism sharing the loans) and produce a plan for
regeneration, which the US would fund. Only countries which refused to co-operate with others would be
refused funding.
Forced by the US to cooperate, Western European countries put together a commune organization
in order to share the aid. 16 European countries will join the OEEC = Organization for European Economic
Cooperation in 1948. (FIRST STEP TOWARD THE EUROPE UNION)

The British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin called the Plan ‘a lifeline to sinking men, bringing hope
where there was none’ and by July 1947 he had organized a meeting of European nations in Paris, which
asked for $22 billion of aid.
The program was proposed to all the European countries which had been victims of the war. Most
of the western Europeans countries accepted it. Eastern-European countries including the USSR were
invited to join. Though behind it lay the supposition that communism may be bred out of poverty, and that if
the poverty were removed the communism might be obviated.

Stalin was invited to join the Plan. But he considered the Plan as a US plot, as a powerful tool to
undermine his influence in Eastern Europe, as a symbol of US imperialism. Stalin believed that the USA
was trying to dominate Europe by making it dependent on American handouts.
As a consequence, Stalin imposed to all communist countries in Eastern Europe to refuse the Marshall
plan. Czechoslovakia had to refuse the Marshall Plan in 1947 and withdraw from the IMF in 1954.

Truman asked Congress for $17 bn. At first, the American Congress did not want to give the
money for Marshall Aid. But then, in February 1948, the Communists took power in Czechoslovakia.
Congress was scared, and voted for Marshall Aid on March 31st, 1948 => $13 billion. (equivalent to $130
billion in 2019)

The program was officially launched in 1948 at the Paris Conference, and by the end of 1951
more than 13 billion dollars with 11 billion from American gift, donations, had been sent to Western Europe
 26% of the monetary assistance for UK, 23% for France

The Marshall Aid had a huge effect on Europe: It helped a lot for the recovery of Europe 
“breath of air” (bouffée d’oxygène) for the European economy allowing them to reduce the dollar gap, to
increase the intra-European trade and the industrial production in Western Europe.
Thanks to Marshall Aid, most of the states of Europe outside the Communist block – from
Britain and France through neutrals like Switzerland and Sweden to former enemies like Austria and Italy –
were given a good start in industrial re-equipment, with the result that the 1950s became a period of
unexpected economic prosperit, of massive economic growth.

It also stopped the spread of Communism in Western Europe. One of the hungry teenage boys in
Germany who was given soup by American trucks driving onto his schoolyard was Helmut Kohl: who grew
up to be the first Chancellor of a free and unified Germany => policy of containment

People reacted to Marshall Aid in different ways. Some saw it as a very generous gesture by the
American people. Some saw it as a mixture of generosity and American self-interest. The USA wanted
Europe to recover so that American industries could sell their goods there. Other saw it as a defense against
the spread of Communism. For example, Italy did not receive any Marshall Aid until a non-Communist
government took power in 1948. It has a little bit of each perspective on it.

c) The Soviet ripostes: the Zhdanov Doctrine (1947)

The Russia doctrine to oppose the American/Truman policy (March 1947) was developed in
September 1947 by Andrei Zhdanov in the Zhdanov doctrine (Major political speech of the Cold War)

ANALYSIS: the world was divided into two camps, into two antagonistic blocks: Manichean analysis of
the world situation in 1947
 the imperialistic and anti-democratic one, headed by the United States, with States owning colonies
in 1945 (France, UK, Belgium, Netherland) and countries which are politically and economically relying on
the USA, such as the Middle East, South America and China (until 1949 and Mao Zedong)
 the democratic one, headed by the Soviet Union with the support of the workers’ movements around
the world, of the communist parties, on the freedom fighters for a national liberation in Vietnam,
Indonesia.

The USSR refused and opposed the Marshall Plan and proposed the Molotov Plan in 1947 and
Eastern countries had to accept it (Mandatory system of bilateral trade agreements with the USSR). It was
eventually expanded to become the COMECON.

=> 1947 is historically the beginning of the Cold War between two irreconcilable ideologies and
spheres of power.

On the other side of the world there was as well the need to settle terms for Japan. Owing to
America’s massive part in the victory, president Truman was able to claim a similar American
predominance in occupying and administering the defeated country.
It became the task of the powerful Supreme Commander in the Far East, the American General
MacArthur, to supervise the process, which included rechanneling Japanese industry to peaceful ends and
reducing the semi-divine position of the Emperor to that of a constitutional monarch.
Japan was given a new system of democracy and trade-unions, western-style, and soon – to boost
its flagging economy – strong injections of American financial aid.
By the time a formal peace treaty was at length signed in 1951 – against the opposition of the USSR,
which wanted harsher terms – Japan was entering a period of great industrial growth.

III- A strengthening of the bipolarization of Europe (1948-

1953): from the Berlin crisis and the Korean War to the
structuration of two blocs.
 A- The Berlin Blockade and Airlift: the first Berlin crisis
Why did the superpowers clash over Berlin in 1948-49?

P.P.O. #2. 1948-1949. The Berlin Blockade and Airlift

CONTEXT: The Cold War in Europe was to reach its first major crisis with the Berlin Blockade of 1948-
9.

a) Long-term and short-term causes of the Berlin Blockade

The greatest difficulty of the Allies in concluding a post-war settlement centred on Germany and
to a lesser extent to Austria.
Certain broad principles had already been decided before the end of the war. Among the territorial
changes:
- Austria was to be detached from Germany.
- The USSR was to acquire part of East Prussia.
- Poland was to be given a western frontier incorporating much former German land – the
German inhabitants were expelled – up to the line of the rivers Oder and Neisse. These Polish gains at
German expense were to apply until a permanent settlement could be made, and were regarded as
compensating Poland for the loss of the eastern regions the USSR had taken in September 1939 and now
kept.

Besides suffering these losses, Germany was to be “demilitarized”, “denazified” and purged of
its war criminals.
According to the Potsdam Conference, the country had to be occupied for an indefinite time by
the four main Allies which had defeated it – The USA, the USSR, Britain and (a late admission) France.
Each was to occupy and administer a defined zone; and Berlin, the center of the Allied Control
Commission, was to be similarly divided into sectors, but administered as a whole. All this, broadly
speaking, was duly put into effect when the war ended.

After the war, Berlin was in ruins. When Germany and the city of Berlin were divided into four
occupation zones, everyone took it for granted that a peace treaty would soon be signed and the
occupation would end. But by 1948 the four former allies were on such bad terms that there was no
chance of a treaty.

The Allies faced two major problems:

1- Political problem: Organization of Germany

The war left Germany devastated, Food and fuel were scare and thousands of people were homeless.
The main difficulty came in agreeing on the future organization of Germany as a whole
 By the end of 1947, the United States had implemented a strategy of containing the Soviet Union,
and part of this strategy involved moving forward with the creation of a prosper, democratic and
independent Germany.
Basically, the USA, Britain and France, occupying western Germany, were prepared, once a new
liberal democracy had been successfully established, to retire from the scene and leave the Germans to
run their own country.

 However, the Soviet Union refused to consider any plan that would involve a restored Germany
aligned with the West: feared that a united and democratic Germany would be hostile and anti-communist.
Occupying eastern Germany as far as the Elbe, the Soviet power extended farther into Europe than
ever before. They were not prepared to retire until they were sure that this power in some form would
endure. They intended, in other words, to ensure that their zone remained dominated, if not by Russian
Communists, then by German Communists under Russian control.
 2- Economic problem: Reparations
There had been particular disagreement about reparations at the Potsdam Conference:
 Britain and America had wanted Germany to recover economically, and the western zones
benefited from an influx of Marshall Aid. The USA did not fear a revived Germany and considered it as
essential to US financial interests.
 But the Russians had gained the right to take 10% of the industrial equipment of western
Germany, and as whatever they wanted from their own zone in eastern Germany. Stalin refused to allow the
Soviet Zone to trade with the other zones. He feared a German revival that would lead to a repetition of the
suffers of the war

As a consequence, the living conditions in East Germany remained low and were slow to recover. By
1948 the difference in living standards between West and East Germany had become embarrassingly
obvious. It was in Berlin that this difference was brought into sharp focus.
West Berlin was an island of prosperous capitalism in a sea of communism.

SHOR-TERM CAUSE:
In January 1948, the American, French and British leaders decided it was time rebuilding
Germany. The British and American governments began to unite their zones (the “Bizone”).
In February 1948, they tried to persuade the USSR to agree that the two zones could use the
same currency, the new Deutsche Mark. it was hoped, provide economic stability and faster the economical
recover of Germany
The Russians refused. The British and Americans went ahead anyway.

American General Lucius Clay reorganized the currency and got German industries working again.
Germans began going back to work and earning money. To Stalin, it seemed that the Americans were
rebuilding this old enemy. He could not stop the Allies, but he thought he could make a point by forcing
them out of Berlin.
His problem was that within the USSR’s occupation zone was the city of Berlin, under four-power
control. Allies had only access to Berlin through road, rail and canal corridor.
How, short of war, could he get the other three powers out?

b) The blockade and the Airlift (June 1948 to May 1949)

On June 24th 1948, the USSR closed the road, rail and canal links between West
Germany and West Berlin. They had blockaded the city. They also disrupted water and power
supplies. It was a clever scheme. If the Allies stayed in Berlin, the people of Berlin would suffer. This left a
civilian population of two million, as well as substantial numbers of British, French, and American troops,
cut off from any source of food or fuel.

Truman considered several options for meeting the challenge.

 withdrawing from Berlin: very dangerous because they would abandon 2 million Berliners over to
communist rule, they would lose their only base behind the Iron Curtain and they would open the way for a
Soviet domination of West Germany
 sending an armored train to force its way through the blockade: dangerous because it would mean
war with the USSR

Truman, however, responded with a brave and imaginative plan. They organized what came to
be called “the Berlin air lift”. The allies supplied West Berlin by air.

Large numbers of British and American planes, service and civilian, made 275,000 flights carrying
in 1½ million tons of supplies, with an average of 4.000 tons of supplies per day.
 They flew by night and day over eleven months to maintain supplies to the western sectors – and the
Russians, desiring success but not war, made no attempt to shoot them down. The blockade lasted 318 days
(11 months).
A cargo plane landed on average every two minutes. For almost a year, they supplied Berlin by air
with coal, food and medicine, along with other goods. In the winter of 1948–49 Berliners lived on dried
potatoes, powdered eggs and cans of meat. They had 4 hours of electricity a day.

Some pilots dropped also chocolates and sweets for the population, and the American and
British pilots were regarded as heroes. The Western media praised the courage and endurance of the air
crews. The USA stationed B-29 bombers (which could carry an atomic bomb) in Britain (pressure on Stalin).
The Soviet media criticized the constant flights as unsafe. The western Powers clung to their position
in Berlin and Stalin eventually gave up and on 12 May, 1949. The Russians reopened the road, railway
and canal links.

c) Military and diplomatic consequences of the Berlin Blockade

The Berlin Blockade was an important political dispute. It showed how stubborn each side could
be. Stalin thought he was making a stand because the Americans were threatening him. The Americans
suspected Stalin was getting ready to invade West Berlin.

Creation of the NATO, 1949

The following year (in 1949) the gulf between Soviet Russia and its former wartime allies opened
still wider.
Already in1948 a group of the western European countries – Britain, France, Holland, Belgium and
Luxembourg – had signed a treaty in Brussels, the Brussels Pact of March 1948, pledging mutual support
in the event of armed attack in Europe, mainly from Germany.

However, in the wake of the Berlin blockade, the Soviet Union seemed far more menacing than
Germany, and the signers of the Brussels Pact knew full well that even their combined armed forces would be
no match for the military might of the Red Army, which at the time was the largest in the world. A more
coordinated approach by the West of its defense against the USSR was needed.

In 1949, the Brussels Pact was extended by a further defensive alliance embracing not only these and a
number of other European states – Italy, Portugal, Norway and Iceland – but also the USA and Canada.
The agreement, for mutual help against aggression in the whole European and North Atlantic area,
was termed the North Atlantic treaty. Its distinctive feature was that it soon became not merely an
arrangement to operate in time of war but also an institution – The North Atlantic treaty
Organization (NATO) – existing in peace, with a military headquarters in Paris under a Supreme
Commander Europe (a post first held by General Eisenhower).

One of the main mottos of the NATO was “one attack on one of its members would be seen
as an attack on all” (NATO principles, article 5) highlighting the idea of a collective protection, defense
against the Russians.

Truman then followed up in July 1949 by asking Congress for $1.45 billion in military aid for Western
Europe. For the first time in its history, the United States had formally committed itself during
peacetime to the defense of other nations. Such decision was a strong warming to Stalin there would be
no return to isolationism.

On the other side it was paralleled by the various defensive arrangements which the USSR
already had with its satellites – Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Rumania – and
which took more systematic form later as the Warsaw Treaty organization (1955).
 Stalin also answered the end of by breaking the US nuclear monopoly: explosion of the first Soviet
atomic bomb in August 1949. Truman responded by giving the go-head for the USA to produce the
hydrogen bomb many times more powerful than the atomic bomb.

The widening gulf between the two camps was also seen in 1949 in their treatment of Germany.
Tired of repeated efforts to reach some kind of agreement with the USSR about the unification or
long-term future of that country, Britain, France and the USA decided to sponsor a new German political
organization within their occupation zones.

In May 1949 the federal republic of Germany (FRG) was set up, with a capital at Bonn.
Konrad Adenauer became the first Chancellor of FRG. Though confined in practice to west Germany and
west Berlin, it claimed the whole of Germany as its rightful sphere.

The Russians soon made an answering move. In October 1949 they established in east
Germany the so-called German Democratic republic.

In due course the Federal Republic took its place in the NATO alliance, and the Democratic
Republic in the Warsaw Pact Organization.
Germany and Berlin became the symbol of the Cold War, of the division of Europe between two
antagonistic blocs: concept of bipolarization.

B- The outbreak of the Korean War, an example of a direct military action

We need to analyze the significance of the outbreak of the Korean war in June 1950.

P.P.O. #3. 1948. The 38th Parallel and the outbreak of the Korean War.

The Cold War was a war of threats and propaganda, but there was also quite a lot of hot war (real
war) as well. The Americans and Soviets never fought each other face to face, but they fought each other
indirectly in proxy wars, through satellite countries.
From 1950 to 1953, the war in Korea was an example of a direct military action but the
USA did so under “assumed” titles (under the UN). In 1950,

a) Multiple causes of the Korean War: East Asia after WW2

=> KOREA after WW2

Ever since the late 19th century Korea was under Japanese rule (annexation). In 1943 at the Cairo
Conference, it was agreed that independence should be restored to Korea after the war.
Korea was liberated in 1945 by U.S. and Soviet troops. To avoid conflict between the two wartime
Allies, they agreed to a temporary division of the country along the 38th Parallel (Same situation as
Germany): Soviet forces in the Industrial North, and American troops occupying the agrarian South.
Korea was split at the 38th parallel because, when they were discussing what to do with Korea, the
Americans could only find a small-scale map.

Situation in the SOUTH:

With the encouragement of the United States the South held elections in the spring of 1948. The
Soviets objected, but the result was a resounding victory for Syngman Rhee, a dedicated anti-Communist
who had been educated in the United States. His regime quickly became a very strong and repressive
dictatorship. Because of the fight against communism, the regime put in jail thousands of opponents, but
with the support of Washington.

Situation in the NORTH:

 In retaliation, the Soviets announced the formation of People’s Republic of Korea (recognized by
the USSR and other communist regimes) and a communist government in North Korea, under the
leadership of Kim Il-Sung.

In 1948 the UN tried to organize national elections but failed. By the mid-1949 both halves of Korea
had been recognized as independent countries, and all U.S. and Soviet troops had been withdrawn from
the Korean peninsula but a series of border clashes took place. Only 500 US troops in the South

=> CHINA after WW2: a strong communist power

As soon as WW2 ended, a civil war renewed between the nationalists and the Chinese
communists who successfully appealed to the poor landless farmers and Mao won the Civil War.
So, on October 1st, 1949, China became Communist under the leadership of Mao Ze-dong, with
the support of the USSR. After the defeat of the nationalist Chiang Kai-chek in China (massively helped
during WW2 by the USA from being conquered by Japan), the USA refused to recognize Mao Ze-dong ‘s
regime in Beijing (until 1979).
By 1949, all of mainland China had fallen to the Communist hands. The only refuge for Chiang and
the nationalists was the island of Formosa (Taiwan). Chiang established his own government, supported by
the USA and with a seat at the UN Security Council.
Cold war had now split East Asia in two parts. Some talked about the “bamboo curtain”

=> The USA went to war in Korea for two main reasons.

 The first reason was the ‘DOMINO THEORY’

Republicans in the USA were alarmed by the loss of China and blamed the Democrats as wholly
responsible for the disaster. Truman was considered as “soft on communism” and Americans feared that
the “Domino Theory” was becoming a reality in Asia.

The domino theory was a US foreign policy theory during the 1950s to 1980s that
speculated that if one land in a region came under the influence of communism then the
surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.

President Truman and the rest of the West were worried that, if Korea fell, the next ‘domino’
would be Japan, which was very important for American trade and American foreign policy of control of
Eastern Asia. This was probably the most important reason for America’s involvement in the war. fear of
the entire Asia turning communist.

Increasing the American worries about Asia, in 1950, the two communist dictators Stalin and
Mao signed a Sino-Soviet pact providing in the USA a further proof of a worldwide communist
conspiracy.
China was the most powerful country in the Far East and it had the largest population in the world.
The USA now faced another huge Communist power.

Communist China was already a member of the UN, but its leader Mao Ze-dong wanted China to
be on the UN Security Council, which was the part of the UN that made most of the decisions. The Security
Council was dominated by Capitalist countries.
The USSR was the only Communist country on the council. Stalin wanted China to be on the
Security Council, but he was outvoted. Stalin was furious, and he pulled out of the UN in protest.

In this context, Korea became the new “hotspot” of the “Cold War”.

 The second reason was that Truman realized the USA was in a competition with the USSR not
only for the domination of Europe but also for a worldwide domination competition.
 Supporting South Korea was a way to fight communism without having a “hot war”, to undermine
Communism and protect the American way of life.

In order to win such confrontation, Truman agreed in a MAJOR CHANGE IN THE USA
FOREIGN POLICY: in April 1950 the American National Security Council issued a report (NSC 68)
recommending that America should abandon 'containment' as in Eastern Europe and start 'rolling back'
Communism. ROLLING BACK = repousser.

DEF°: to rollback is the policy of totally annihilating an enemy army and occupying its
country, as was done in the American Civil War to the Confederacy.
“Rollback” emerged in the late 1940s and was proposed by US strategists. It must be considered as the
Republican Party’s direct counterpart to the Democrats' containment model.

Behind the new strategy stood the idea of taking the offensive to push Communism back
rather than just defensively containing it. Much debated was the question whether the U.S. should
pursue a rollback strategy against Communism in Eastern Europe in 1953-56; the decision was not to:
Only containment in Europe because of the risk of a third World War.

The crucial initiator of the policy of rollback was John Foster Dulles. When Dwight Eisenhower
(Republican) became President in January, 1953, he appointed Dulles as his Secretary of State
In the Korean War, the United States and the United Nations officially endorsed a policy of
rollback - the destruction of the North Korean government.

Dulles' rollback policy was later implemented by the Reagan Administration during the 1980s and it
is sometimes credited with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe as
well as the Soviet Union itself.

NSC-68 recommended policies that emphasized military (“rolling back”) over diplomatic action
(cf Kennan’s telegram and the policy of containment). In NSC-68, US foreign policy towards the Soviets can
be defined as "a policy of calculated and gradual coercion (=contrainte)."
The NSC-68 called for significant peacetime military spending, in order to build a military power
able to overthrow the Soviets.

The beginning of the Korean War led Truman to consider the NSC 68 in a good way and
he decided to drive the Communists out of North Korea.

b) The steps of the Korean War (1950 to 1953)

REMINDER: THE DATES OF THIS CHAPTER ARE 1944 TO 1950 (REST = QUICK
OVERVIEW)

=> Diplomatic organization of the communist offensive

Kim Il-Sung repeatedly asked Stalin for permission to launch an invasion of the South. In 1949,
the Northern leader of Korea persuaded Stalin that he could conquer South Korea. Eventually, Stalin gave his
agreement.

Why did Stalin give his agreement to Kim Il-Sung?

Stalin saw a chance to continue the Cold War and discomfort America, but ‘at arm’s length’ (à
distance), without directly confronting the Americans
 A few months (January 1950) before the invasion, the US secretary of State Dean Acheson declared
that the area defended by the US went up to Formosa and Japan, excluding Korea => such statement was
considered by Stalin as a tacit recognition of the Soviet influence over Korea.
  Stalin though that neither America nor the UN would get involved, that it had a minor risk of an
enlargement of the conflict to the US => underestimation of the US policy and motivation as in Berlin two
years before.

 Stalin considered also that the period and the situation were very in favor of the communists =>
diplomatic interests mainly
o Defeat of the Soviets in Berlin (containment’s policy) but victory of the communists in
China, Indochina and Indonesia: euphoria in the Soviet block
o The Southern regime seemed to be so corrupted and not any more in contact with the
population that it would be very easy to conquer the South
o Invading South Korea would be a strategic victory because it would increase the communist
influence over Asia, it would threaten the US presence in Japan and it would contain the
growing influence of China (ally but…)

According to recently released archival documents, Stalin agreed to allow a North Korean attack,
but warned Kim that while the Soviet Union would continue to provide military and economic aid to the
North, the country would not become directly involved.
Stalin’s said: “If you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for
all the help”.

Kim Il Sung also went to see Mao Zedong, the leader of China, to get his agreement. Mao agreed
also.

=> Situation in Korea during the spring 1950:

Military incidents multiplied between Northern and Southern Korean soldiers along the border. In
1950, Syngman Rhee threatened to attack North Korea. It was an excuse, an alibi, the trigger (gachette,
déclencheur) for war.

KOREAN OPERATIONS:

=> 1st PART: North Korean offensive and American response

The North Korean invasion began on June 25, 1950. In fact, the northern leader of Kim Il-Sung
claimed that the Southern leader was responsible for the war because of his aggression and that the North was
only responding to imperialist threats.
It’s inaccurate because several northern divisions attacked at the same time, according to a very strict
plan, while the South was unable to respond, disorganized and fighting under improvisation => it quickly
became apparent that South Korea's armed forces were not up to the task of defending their country.
Northern troops captured quickly most of the country.

Problem for the USSR and for North Korea: the US decided to consider this war as a major
confrontation, as a test about their ability to contain and rollback communism in Asia.
The day after the beginning of the offensive in Korea, the US called for a meeting of the UN and the
United Nations called upon its members to help South Korea resist (the resolution only managed to win
approval from the U.N. Security Council because the Soviet delegation was boycotting its proceedings at the
time because of the opposition of the USA to admit China in the UN).
UN members noticed the Northern aggression and gave to the US a mandate to the US (the only
military power able to over there) to help South Korea

In his autobiography, President Truman acknowledged that fighting the invasion was essential to
the American goal of the global containment of communism:
President Truman: "Communism was acting in Korea, just as Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had
ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier. I felt certain that if South Korea was allowed to fall, Communist leaders
would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores. If the Communists were permitted to
force their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition from the free world, no small nation would
have the courage to resist threat and aggression by stronger Communist neighbors.” "

Truman ordered the bombing of North Korea and he ask General Douglas MacArthur, hero of
the Pacific Theater in World War II, to take command of a multinational force (“UN force”) to assist in
the defense of South Korea. A lot of US soldiers were still in Japan so they moved quickly to South Korea.
Out of the 300,000 UN troops, 260,000 were Americans.

At first, the US-Un troops helped South Korea around Pusan in the South, securing the area. Then
on 15 September 1950, the American General MacArthur led a UN amphibious landing at Inchon (near
Seoul) behind the NKPA (North Korean people’s Army) lines. They freed Seoul at the end of September
The North Koreans simply began to withdraw toward their own borders.

In September 1950, what had once been simply an effort to defend South Korea now
became an effort to punish the North (Roll back policy).
The president Truman authorized MacArthur to lead his forces across the 38th Parallel. If the
Chinese did intervene, MacArthur assured, their army would quickly be crushed.

On 7 October 1950 MacArthur invaded North Korea. He advanced as far as the Chinese border
(Yalou river) and mid-October the UN forces took Pyongyang, the North Korea Capital.
The General boasted that the Americans would be 'home by Christmas'.

=> 2nd PART: Chinese intervention in the Korean War.

MacArthur was wrong: On 25 November 1950, the Chinese sent a massive army across the Yalu
River into North Korea: 200,000 Chinese troops ('People's Volunteers') attacked MacArthur. They had
modern weapons and equipment heavily supplied by Russia (weapons, planes, military advisors), and a
fanatical hatred of the Americans.
Then, on 31 December, half a million more Chinese troops entered the war and overwhelmed the
Americans.
They drove the Americans back: they recaptured North Korea, and advanced into South Korea:
conquest of Pyongyang and Seoul during the winter 1950-1.

CSQ = The Americans landed more troops and used bombers. The Americans drove the Chinese back, but lost
54,000 American soldiers dead doing so. MacArthur reached back the 38th parallel in March 1951 and
there they would remain for the duration of the conflict as the two sides were fairly evenly matched.

But tensions between Truman and Mac Arthur about how to manage the Chinese push:
 General MacArthur repeatedly and publicly wanted to push back the Chinese even after the Yalou,
by bombing Chinese cities and Manchuria, by using the atomic bomb against China, with a blockade of the
Chinese coast, and the "unleashing" (=lacher, déchainer) of anti-communist Chinese forces from
Taiwan.
 Truman totally disagreed because of the risk of a third World War. The President wanted to avoid
turning the Korean conflict into an all-out war against the Soviet Union and its allies, with the real risk that
nuclear weapons might be used: strategy of "limited war,"

The tension between the two men, particularly MacArthur's tendency to publicize his criticism of
administration policy, led to the general's firing early in 1951 (MacArthur remained very popular in the US
and received a huge ovation when he came back from Korea). The new general in Korea was General
Ridgway

=> 3rd PART: US presidential campaign of 1952 and the stalemate then the end of the war
 As the conflict grew into a stalemate (=statu quo), the popularity of Truman's decision to
intervene plummeted. The Republican Party, which had not seen one of its own elected president since
1928, made Korea the centerpiece of their campaign for the White House in 1952. The party's candidate in that
year, Dwight D. Eisenhower, pledged that if elected he would go to Korea personally in an effort to bring
an end to the fighting.
He kept this promise while still President-elect.

The Americans threatened to use the atomic bomb if China did not stop fighting. The Chinese
agreed to a truce (=trêve) and an armistice (ceasefire) was finally concluded in July 1953 during the first
year of Eisenhower’s presidency.
Korea was permanently divided between two states over the 38th parallel, and it is still the case
today.

c) Consequences of the Korean War

=> Human toll of the Korean War:
– 1.4 million military and civilian casualties, including 33,600 American, 16,000 UN allies, 415,000
South Korean, and 520,000 North Korean dead.
– There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties.
– Half of Korea's industry was destroyed and a third of all homes.

=> Diplomatic and military consequences = hardening (raidissement) of the blocs

Truman’s policy of containment worked in Korea because it stopped the communist aggression
without allowing the conflict to develop into a world war.

THE COLD WAR BECAME A GLOBAL WAR, EVEN IN FAR EAST: it increased tensions
between the two leaders.

The Korean War (1950–53) was the first major proxy war in the Cold War, the prototype of the
following sphere-of-influence wars such as the Vietnam War (1959–75). The Korean War established proxy
war as one way that the nuclear superpowers indirectly conducted their rivalry in third-party
countries.

For Socialist countries:

For the young Republic of China, the Korean War was a major source of proud as they had
been able to keep the most powerful army to a stalemate, but also of frustration:
 China became even more dependent on the USSR (Chinese communists had to pay the USSR in
order to have some weapons and tanks, at the difference of the North Korean soldiers): human and financial
burden for the Chinese.
 Also, China lost all chance to get Formosa because the US decided to strongly protect the island as
soon as the beginning of the conflict
 Neutral countries became more worried too. China had become an important new power. The
USA was worried by this but the USSR was also worried. The Soviets wanted to be the leading Communist
state, and wanted China simply to support their policies.
 However, it was clear that the Chinese leaders had their own ideas. The economic dependency led
some Chinese leaders to feel a growing resentment against the USSR (but no official complaints). It had
some major consequences in the 1960s with the Sino-Soviet Break.

 The nuclear threat made the USSR more determined to develop powerful nuclear weapons of its
own (Atomic bomb in 1949 and the hydrogen bomb in 1953)

On the eastern bloc: spectacular hardening of the Soviet bloc with some negative consequences
for Eastern populations
 Stalin was afraid of the US military superiority and afraid of an invasion to crush, annihilate the
USSR. So, he imposed a very strict regime to the “friendly states” => A purge of their political regime.
In three years, ¼ of the communist leaders in the People’s Republic (les Républiques Populaires)
were arrested, judged and killed: mainly, former Bolsheviks, replaced by young communist that were
totally under Stalin control (cf 1936-8 Great Purges before WW2).

For the USA:

International consequence: Changes of the US policy toward Japan.
Until the beginning of the war, the US and the proconsul Mac Arthur were very strict with Japanese,
with a strong policy of de-militarization, democratization and de-cartelization of the main Japanese
companies. Japan had to give up its right to fight, also to own military forces. The US gave Japan a political
system based on the West and the emperor had to stay quiet.
But, because of the Korean War, Washington had to review its policy, leading to the signature in
September 1951 of the Treaty of San Francisco.
The Treaty ended officially the war and Japan recovered its total political sovereignty => end of
the US occupation but maintain of US military and naval bases, mainly on the archipelago of Okinawa, at
half an hour of the Chinese territory.

Domestic consequences: Economic boost and Second Red Scare

1st consequence: The war in Korea helped the boost to the US economy, mainly the war
industries and mainly in the West Coast.
It increased the American rearmament, already boosted by the Truman policy of containment.
The NSC 68 recommended the increase of the military spending up to 20% of the GDP (only 6% in the
USA at that time and around 13% in the USSR) => implementation of the NSC-68 (Roll Back Policy)
Congress and Truman were not really in favor of such increase, but the intervention of the Chinese
created the opportunity in order to convince the Congress.
As a consequence, the military budget reached 13% of the GDP (the highest % in the US history during the
Cold War): the defense budget increased to 50 billion $ a year. The Truman administration also used the
Korean war as a justification for the creation of a new jet bomber as well as stationing even more troops in
overseas bases.

Also, the number of soliders expanded from 1.4M at the beginning the war to 3.5 million soldiers.
Real revolution because it was not an American tradition to keep a strong army during a peacetime

2nd consequence: the war in Korea reinforced the communist fear/anti-communism in the USA.
The USA was the rise of McCarthyism in the USA: denunciation of communists in the USA by the
senator of Wisconsin, McCarthy, leading a “witch hunt” against thousands of politicians, journalists, public
workers, intellectuals, celebrity such as Charlie Chaplin
In 1953, McCarthyism send to the electric chair a couple accused of being spies and of delivering
the secrets of the atomic bomb, the Rosenberg’s (nicknamed the “Atom spies”). People were waiting for
their execution in front of the Sing Sing jail screaming “Burn all reds”.

Such great fear of the communist led Eisenhower into presidency in 1952 with Dulles as secretary of
States. Both organized the massive implementation of the Rolling back policy
Dulles was also at the center of the PACTOMANIA, with the signature of several regional pacts
with countries in Asia and Latin America in order to surround the communists: ANZUS (Australia and
New Zealand), Baghdad Pact (with Middle East countries), NATO (with Western Europe countries),
SEATO (with South-eastern countries in 1954).
Korea finished to convince the American leaders that the only way to deal with the
Communists was to be tough.

3rd consequence: reaffirmation of the US domination of the Western world

 The USA had taken over the UN. In fact, at one stage it seemed as if General MacArthur alone was
acting as if he was the UN.

CONCLUSION:
The Korean War started as a local dispute, which then drew in the superpowers. The USA was
directly involved (Americans made up most of the UN forces) and the USSR was indirectly involved
(supplying weapons). It grew into a major war with the threat of nuclear warfare.

C-Creation of two blocs: bipolarization of Europe (1948-1949)

REMINDER: THE DATES OF THIS CHAPTER ARE 1944 TO 1950 (REST = QUICK
OVERVIEW)

From July 1947, the Western bloc is organized economically and military. At the same time, a
socialist block is structured, led by the USSR and Stalin.

=> Definition of bloc.

A group of countries which belong to the same economic and military organization. They are
linked by a similar ideology and the common recognition of a leader.

a) Military and political organization

=> WESTERN BLOC: military alliances as part of the containment policy

March 1948: signature of the Brussels Pact between Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, and
Luxembourg = collective defense alliance. Mutual assistance in case of soviet attacks (Prague coup d’état
by the communist in Czechoslovakia in February-march 1948)

The Berlin Blockade (June 1948- May 1949) increased anxiety over a Russian invasion among the
Western European countries. They had the desire to strengthen the Brussels treaty by adding other
European countries and the two main industrial countries: USA and Canada
In 1949, the U.S. and Canada agreed to join their European allies in an enlarged alliance called the
Atlantic Alliance => huge change in the US foreign policy (being part of an alliance during
peace time)

1949: signature of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by 12 countries: USA, Canada, UK,
Fr, It, Belg, Lux, Netherlands, Portugal, Island, Norway, Denmark.
The main goal of the Treaty was to organize a collective defense, an intergovernmental military
alliance to defend Western Europe against a possible Soviet invasion.

The NATO headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium. Admission of Greece and Turkey in 1952,
Admission of West Germany (GDR created 1949: The German Democratic Republic) in 1955. France
withdrew from its military participation in 1966 (De Gaulle)
Since NATO ground forces were smaller than those of the Warsaw Pact, the balance of power was
maintained by superior weaponry, including intermediate-range nuclear weapon.
It gave a very clear message to Stalin and to Moscow after his failure in the Balkans and in Berlin:
the United States would fight to defend Western Europe. Will of Westerners to stop the USSR
expansion in Europe (policy of containment)
Ultimately it led to war in Korea.
 The USA signed many other military alliances: Regional security Pacts during the Presidency
of Dwight D. Eisenhower, mainly through the efforts of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: signature of
alliances with 42 separate nations: “Pactomania”
The goal was to avoid the spreading of communism by creating a bulwark (rampart, fortification)
of states pro-westerners around the USSR with collective security agreements.

 1951: Washington Treaty with Japan

 1951: ANZUS= Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty: against a new threat of Japan
then against spreading of communism in Asia
 1954: SEATO: Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) signed in Bangkok to bloc
communism in Southeast Asia. Included Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Pakistan, Philippines, France,
USA and UK. SEATO was dissolved on June 30, 1977.
 1955: The Central Treaty Organization also referred to as CENTO, original name was Middle East
Treaty Organization, also known as the Baghdad Pact (by Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Britain) to
create a bulwark (= rampart, fortification) to contain the Soviet Union (USSR) by having a line of strong
states along the USSR's southwestern frontier. The pact's headquarters were in Baghdad.

=> FOR THE EASTERN BLOC.

September 1947: Creation of the COMINFORM (political alliance) in Poland: Communist Information
Bureau gathering Communist parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania,
the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia.
It was a Soviet-dominated organization of Communist parties to impose Moscow’s decisions to the
other communist Parties

1949: Thanks to the Soviets Spies in the USA, Russia had been able to create the Atomic bomb in 1949.

May 1955: The WARSAW PACT, treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, signed in Poland in 1955 (official name 'The Treaty of
Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance').
It was actually a military treaty, which bound its signatories to come to the aid of the others,
should any one of them be the victim of foreign aggression, signed after the creation of the NATO in in 1949
and the re-militarization of West Germany in 1954 and its integration into the NATO in 1954 => potential
threat to the Eastern countries.

The Pact quickly became a powerful political tool for the Soviet Union to hold sway over its
allies and harness the powers of their combined military.
When Hungary tried to extricate themselves from the agreement in 1956, Soviet forces moved to
crush the uprising; and, in 1968, Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia (with support from five other Pact
members), after the Czech government began to exhibit 'Imperialistic' tendencies.

b) Economic organization of both blocs

=> WESTERN BLOC => OEEC
The Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) came into being on April 1948. It
emerged from the Marshall Plan and sought to establish a permanent organization to continue to work
on a European recovery program and in particular to supervise the distribution of aid.

The European organization promoted co-operation between participating countries and their
national production programs for the reconstruction of Europe, and developed intra-European trade by
reducing tariffs and other barriers to the expansion of trade: ANCESTOR of the EUROPEAN UNION

=> EASTERN BLOC:

1947: The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to
rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet
Union (USSR's version of the Marshall Plan)
The plan was a system of bilateral trade agreements to create an economic alliance of socialist
countries with the USSR

January 1949: Creation of the COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), 1949–1991.
Economic organization of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of communist elsewhere in the world. The
Comecon was the Eastern Bloc's reply to the formation of the Organization for European Economic Co-
operation in Western Europe.

GENERAL CONCLUSION:

A shock to the West in 1949 was the news that the USSR had successfully developed an atomic
bomb. Previously the huge Russian superiority in land forces in Europe – the Americans having withdrawn
and demobilized most of theirs – had been counter-balanced by the American monopoly of atomic
weapons. Now, America still had a lead in nuclear technology, but the Russians were reducing it as fast as
possible. The future would see a struggle of world-wide setting, with two super-powers developing
weapons capable of destroying all their opponents’ main centers of population – and Europe’s – within
a few minutes.
After 1949 the world saw the increasing rivalry of the two super-powers in nuclear weapons – the
USA had the hydrogen bomb by 1952, the USSR only a year later – in the exploration of space and with
a series of direct and indirect clashes between these powers involving war or its possibility.

The death of Stalin on March 5th 1953 symbolically marked the end of a very tense period, of
the origins of the Cold War, but not the end of a worldwide competition.
The New leader of this post-Stalin period was Nikita Khrushchev who promoted a new internal and
foreign policy, the Thaw (= an appeasement) from mid-1950’s to early 1960’s, as the USSR went from a
totalitarian regime to an authoritarian model (some degree of individual freedom).