The Origins of the Cold War in Europe

Allies until the enemy was gone

During the Second World War the USA and the Soviet Union fought on the same side against Germany. They were never natural friends. One was a democracy with a free market; the other was a one-party communist state. What held them together was a single shared aim: defeating Germany. The moment that aim was achieved, the thing holding them together was gone, and nothing had ever agreed what Europe should look like afterwards. Their hopes for postwar Europe were opposite. The Soviet Union, invaded twice from the west in thirty years at a terrible cost in lives, wanted a wall of friendly states between itself and Germany. The USA wanted free elections and open economies across a recovered Europe. Here is the idea the whole topic turns on. Because their aims were opposite, each side read the very same action in opposite ways. A move that felt like plain self-defence to the side making it looked like aggression to the side watching it. Soviet control of Eastern Europe felt like security in Moscow and looked like the forcing of communism on free countries in Washington. American money to rebuild Europe felt like generosity in Washington and looked like a bid to buy control in Moscow. Neither side set out to start a new war, and yet each defensive step provoked the next, until Europe was split in two. Carry one question through everything that follows: who saw this as defence, and who saw it as a threat?

Words for the early Cold War

Six terms, each defined by what it is. How they fit together comes next.

Whose action was it

Tap the TWO actions that were taken by the USA and its allies, rather than by the Soviet Union.

• Offering money to help rebuild the economies of Western Europe
• Promising to help countries that were resisting communism
• Setting up friendly communist governments across Eastern Europe
• Cutting off the land routes into the western half of Berlin

Why the alliance broke so fast

The USA and the Soviet Union had been allies against Germany, yet they fell out within a couple of years of victory. What best explains how quickly it happened?

• Defeating Germany had been their only shared aim, and their hopes for postwar Europe were opposite, so once the common enemy was gone each side saw the other as the danger
• The leaders simply disliked one another for personal reasons
• It was an accident that better manners could easily have avoided
• They had always been at open war and simply carried on

One action, two readings

The heart of the Cold War in Europe is that the same action looked completely different depending on which side you stood on. Watch the two readings for two key moves.

Match each Cold War move to what it was

Two things the Berlin crisis showed

Select the TWO things the Berlin Blockade and Airlift showed about the new conflict.

• That the West would not abandon the western half of Berlin, even at great effort and cost
• That the two sides would compete fiercely without fighting each other directly
• That the Soviet Union had captured the whole of Berlin
• That the two sides had gone to open war with each other

Explaining a spiral, not listing events

A shape that turns a list of Cold War events into the argument the examiner wants. Start from the loss of the shared aim. Say that the alliance existed only to beat Germany, and that once that was done the two sides wanted opposite things for Europe. Then show the spiral, not a list. Each move was a response to the one before it. Soviet control of Eastern Europe led to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, which the Soviet Union read as interference, which hardened its grip, and so on. The engine of the whole thing is that each side saw its own moves as defence and the other side as expansion. Name the turning point. The Berlin Blockade and Airlift were the moment the drift became a settled division, after which the two sides formed themselves into opposed alliances. Then reach a judgement. Say how the Cold War began and why, in a sentence that could be argued against. Two habits cost marks. The first is blaming one side outright. Historians disagree about blame, and a strong answer attributes a view rather than asserting it, weighing how each side read the other. The second is reaching for a date you are unsure of. The Berlin Blockade of 1948 to 1949 and the forming of NATO in 1949 are safe. If you are unsure of another year, use the order of events instead.

Order the slide into two blocs

Put these stages of the early Cold War into the order they happened.

• At Yalta the wartime allies agree in principle about postwar Europe
• At Potsdam, with the war in Europe won, the cracks between them show
• The Soviet Union secures friendly communist governments across Eastern Europe
• The USA responds with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
• The Berlin Blockade and the Airlift bring the two sides to the brink
• The two sides harden into NATO and then the Warsaw Pact

Build the spiral sentence

This is the sentence that captures how the Cold War grew. Assemble it.

The Cold War quick-fire

Five questions on how the Cold War began in Europe. Three lives.

Berlin, 1948 to 1949

Here is the moment the drift became a settled division, told as the exam wants it explained rather than listed. By 1948 Germany was split into zones held by the wartime allies, and the old capital, Berlin, sat deep inside the Soviet zone, itself divided among them. When the Western powers moved to rebuild their zones and join them into one strong economy, the Soviet leadership read it as the West building a hostile Germany on its doorstep. In response it closed the land routes into the western half of Berlin, cutting off more than two million people from food and fuel. Each side read the same crisis in opposite ways. To the Soviet leadership, closing the routes was a defensive squeeze to force the West out of a city it had no business holding so far east. To the Western powers, it was an attempt to starve a free population into surrender. The West did not send tanks, and it did not leave. Instead it flew in everything the city needed by air, for month after month, until the routes were reopened. Nothing was fought over directly, and yet everyone could see that the two sides were now opponents. Within a year the western zones had become one country and the eastern zone another, and the two sides began turning their halves of Europe into formal military alliances. The division that would last for forty years had set.

Complete the Cold War facts

The American promise to help countries resisting communism was the _____. The American programme of money to rebuild the economies of Western Europe was the _____. The American policy of stopping the spread of communism without going to war was called _____. The Eastern European countries under Soviet control were known as _____.

Turning down the money

The Soviet Union refused the Marshall Plan for itself and its neighbours, even though it was an offer of money. Why turn down aid?

• It saw the aid as a way for the USA to gain influence over the economies of those countries, weakening Soviet control, so it read the money as a threat rather than a gift
• The Soviet Union already had far more than enough money and had no use for it
• The rules of the plan banned any European country from taking part
• It never found out that the offer had been made

Three Cold War answers to sharpen

Three student answers on the origins of the Cold War. In each case the facts are right and the reasoning needs work.

• A student answers by writing a list of events with dates, Yalta, Potsdam, Berlin, NATO, in order. Why does that not reach the top marks?
• A student writes that the Cold War was entirely the fault of the Soviet Union. How would you sharpen it?
• A student describes the Marshall Plan only as America being generous to a ruined Europe. What is missing?

Explain how the Cold War began in Europe

A friend can name the events of the early Cold War but keeps writing them as a list and losing marks. Explain how the Cold War began in Europe as an argument rather than a list.

• Explain what had held the USA and the Soviet Union together, and why that bond ended in 1945
• Explain how the same action could look like defence to one side and a threat to the other, using Eastern Europe or the Marshall Plan as your example
• Explain how the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were a Western response, and how the Soviet Union read them
• Explain why the Berlin Blockade and Airlift were the turning point
• Explain how the two sides ended up as NATO and the Warsaw Pact
• Finish with a judgement about how the Cold War began, attributing any view about blame rather than asserting it, and using only dates you are sure of