The origines of the "Cold war"

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In this essay I’m going to explain why by the time of the Potsdam conference the “cold war” had begun. Before I start it is important to remember that the history of the USA and the USSR were completely different. USA being a young country had always been ruled in a democratic way while a single man always had ruled the USSR, before Stalin there had always been a Tsar. During WWII the two great powers only had one thing in common and it was their enemy, Germany.

In august 1941 the president of the USA, Roosevelt, and the Prime minister of the UK, Churchill, met in the Atlantic to discuss the “Atlantic Charter” which were principles on how the post war world would be handled when Germany had been defeated. One of the principles of the meeting was to “enable the liberated peoples to destroy the last vestiges of Nazism and Fascism and to create democratic institutions of their own choice”. In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met again in what is known as the Casablanca conference. Here they issued the Casablanca declaration, which was intended as a message to Stalin that they would not abandon Russia in the fight against Germany. Russia was fighting the Nazis on its own at this time and desperately wanted the allied forces to open a new front in the west. In November the same year “the big three”, Stalin Roosevelt and Churchill, met in Tehran to discuss matters such as the treatment of Germany after the war, the fate of eastern Europe and how to ensure peace and stability in the world. The “big three” were sure to be victorious in the war it was only a question of when they would be. In February 1945, the original “big three” met for the last time in Yalta in Ukraine to agree on certain points now that Germany was clearly loosing the war. The three leaders all wanted something different from the conference so they all had to compromise on some points and even though they were allies there were lots of talking behind the back. Neither Stalin nor Churchill liked each other and they were suspicious of one another all the time. Stalin could not trust Churchill as Churchill had tricked his allies in the past and Churchill would not trust Russia as he thought it had become a danger to the free world. Roosevelt on the other hand wanted good relations with Stalin as he saw how bad Russia had suffered from the war. He also wanted Russia to enter the war against Japan within three months after the wars end. For Churchill the future of Poland was important and he wanted the polish government in exile in London to form part of the new polish administration. As he and Roosevelt had discussed in the “Atlantic meeting” it was important that governments followed the principles of democracy in the liberated Eastern Europe because they didn’t want communism to spread. Churchill also wanted France to be part of the wartime alliance, as another anti-Russian member, because he felt that Roosevelt was too nice and too accepting towards Russia, which might have been true as Roosevelt was a old and very ill man at the time. Stalin’s aims were to get control over Eastern Europe, to get more territory by moving Poland westwards and to get compensation for all the damage done in Russia during the war. All these were off course in the favour of Russia and its future security, as Stalin did not want Russia to ever suffer as bad as it did again. From what the three leaders wanted, it was agreed that:
- Stalin would enter the war against Japan.
- That Germany would be split up into four zones one for each member plus a zone for France (this zone was to be taken from the American zone and the British zone).
- The Big Three to join the new United Nations Organisation.
- Eastern Europe would be “a soviet sphere of influence” for Russia’s future security. (This one is a bit vague as “sphere of influence” can be interpretable in different ways).
- Poland would be moved to the west in the disadvantage of Germany. (This one was discussed a lot because neither Roosevelt nor Churchill approved of it but Churchill agreed as long as Stalin would not interfere in Greece where the British tried to prevent communism).
- Poland should have a non-communist government and that there should be free elections there.

It is pretty ironic how a communist leader, who wants to spread communism in Eastern Europe, and two anti-communist leaders, who want to spread democracy in Eastern Europe, could have come to any agreements as those above. The next conference that was to be held was the Potsdam conference in July-august 1945. This conference did not resemble the conferences the three big powers had had before, as many things had changed during the past five months. The soviet troops had now liberated country after country in the east and instead of leaving the countries free they stayed. This was just what Stalin had promised not to do and now the whole east feared a communist takeover. In his defence, Stalin used the fact that Germany had attacked Russia thru these countries, Finland Poland and Romania, and that by controlling them he would increase the future security of his country. Stalin had also arrested the polish leaders to be able to take the power in the country. In America the president Roosevelt had died and was replaced by the vice-president, Harry Truman. Truman, being more anti-communist than Roosevelt, was very suspicious of Stalin, as Stalin had broken his promise, and he feared that Stalin was planning a communist takeover of the rest of Europe. The fears got eased when the new revolutionary weapon had been invented and tested successfully, by the Americans. This weapon was the atomic bomb and Truman did not wait to inform Stalin about it. At the conference, tensions between Stalin and Truman got greater and greater as they could not agree on what to do with Germany. Stalin wanted to crush Germany and get compensation for all the damage the country had done but Truman did not want to repeat the same mistake they had done after WWI. After the conference the two powers went their way. Stalin took power in the east and created an iron curtain, as Churchill described the boarder, between the east and the west. Truman would not let Russia continue without interfering and he writes: “Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language war is in the making. Only one language do they understand – ‘how many divisions have you got?’… I’m tired of babying the soviets”.
This last phrase written by Truman clearly shows that something is about to happen. Russia had changed from being an ally to America to become its worst enemy in a very short time and St...