Origins of the Cold War: 1942-1947

This piece continues from Origins of the Cold War: 1917-1942. 

The Grand Alliance of the USA and the USSR (sometimes referred to as the strange alliance) was fraught with problems. From the perspective of the USSR, which was based on communist ideology, Stalin had great reservations in connection with the capitalist countries of the West as well as the West’s legacy of appeasement during WWI and at the Munich Conference. Further and the primary issue between the West and the USSR during WWII was the reluctance of the West to open a second, western front against the Nazis in order to alleviate pressure from the Nazis on the Soviets in Stalingrad, Leningrad, and Moscow. Stalin felt that the West was stalling, but at the same time, FDR and Churchill felt that they did not yet have enough resources in order to open an effective western front which they knew would require invasion of France by sea. In addition, there were disagreements related to the nature of any treaties which would be negotiated at the conclusion of WWII, how to maintain peace after the war, and the western recognition of Soviet land gains after the Pact. According to Derek Watson in his article “Molotov, the Making of the Grand Alliance and the Second Front 1939–1942,” these “questions demonstrated the different priorities of the two sides, and one may question whether the Grand Alliance was the real focal point of the negotiations.”

Despite these tensions during WWII and with the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviets finally started to push the Nazis out of the USSR in the end of 1943, and on June 6, 1944, the Allies opened the second front with the D-Day invasion of France. By spring of 1945, the Allies from the west and the Soviets from the east converged on Berlin to finally defeat the Germans.

Prior to the defeat of the Nazis and in 1945, the USA, Great Britain, and the USSR met at the Yalta Conference in order to discuss the reorganization of Germany and Europe and finalized their agreement at Potsdam on August 1, 1945. The main concern of the western Allies was that the traditional social and economic structures in Eastern Europe no longer exist thus creating an opportunity for exploitation. As discussed supra, the instability of the imperial Russian social and economic structures provided an exploitable environment which led to the rise of the Bolsheviks. FDR and Churchill feared further exploitation by the communist USSR. FDR, Churchill, and Stalin agreed to free and fair elections in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe—an agreement on which Stalin eventually reneged by refusing to allow free elections thus exploiting the situation. The parties also agreed to divide Germany and Berlin into four zones to be controlled in trust by the USA, France, Great Britain, and the USSR with the goal of, at a point in the future, handing authority back to the Germans. Again, Stalin eventually reneged on this agreement as well, evidencing further exploitation of the instability of Europe. Also, and with the failure of the League of Nations in preventing the outbreak of WWII, the parties agreed to the creation of the United Nations (“UN”). In typical Stalin paranoia, Stalin believed that the creation of the UN was a trick by the USA and demanded veto power on the UN Security Council.  

Another issue that created even more distrust between the west and the USSR was the development of the atomic bomb by the USA (the Manhattan Project). The western allies and the United States excluded the USSR from the Manhattan Project. At Potsdam, Truman told Stalin, in general terms, about a new weapon which the USA had been developing, but Stalin already knew about the atomic bomb, as the USSR had been spying on their allies including the USA during WWII. Truman’s decision to drop the bomb on Japan in an effort to quickly defeat the Japanese was designed, in part, to keep the USSR out of Japan and to scare the Soviets. Truman desired to end the war in Japan quickly and before the Soviet troops reached Japan so as to prevent Soviet influence in Japan at the conclusion of war and avoid further exploitation of an unstable situation.  

While Truman was successful in prohibiting Soviet influence in Japan, the same would not hold true in Europe. Stalin, in turn, defaulted on the agreement at Potsdam by refusing to allow free elections in Eastern Europe and installing communist regimes which were under Soviet control.  At the end of the day, the USSR completely controlled Eastern Europe, the portion of Germany which the USSR held in trust, and even the Soviet sector of Berlin.  

Under the shroud of Soviet control of Eastern Europe and on March 5, 1946 and in the presence of Truman, Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain Speech” at Westminster College in Missouri. Churchill blasted the policies of the USSR in Eastern Europe and asserted that “[f]rom Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill implored both the USA and Great Britain to forcefully counter Soviet communist expansionism. In addition and pointing to the horrible policies of appeasement prior to WWII, Churchill strongly advised that the same failed appeasement strategy would not work in containing the USSR and that the only tactic which the USSR understood was raw power. Churchill asserted that there was nothing which the USSR admired “so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for military weakness.” Churchill concluded that the USA, as the “pinnacle of world power,” must take the lead.

About a year later and on March 12, 1947 and in his address to Congress, Truman established what is commonly known as the “Truman Doctrine.” Truman defined the USA/USSR tensions as democracy (United States and Great Britain) versus communism (USSR) with the USA and Great Britain supporting freedom and democracy in Western Europe and the USSR supporting communist factions in Eastern Europe. Truman pointed to the then developing crisis in the Mediterranean with Greece being overrun by communists and the fear that the USSR would support the communists in Greece which would ultimately affect Turkey as well. Fearing communist expansion in Greece and Turkey, the USA and Great Britain sought an anti-communist Turkey and a free Greece. In order to ensure freedom in Greece and Turkey, Truman requests from Congress $400 million to prevent subjugation by communists. With Truman’s speech, the USA was firmly and financially involved in foreign affairs outside of the Western Hemisphere and the Cold War was officially on.

According to Maryna Bessonova in “Soviet Perspective on the Cold War and American Foreign Policy” which is a chapter in the book Comparative Perspectives on the Cold War – National and Sub-National Approaches, it is important to remember that the goal of the communist Bolsheviks was to replace capitalist systems and to build socialist societies across the globe. The Soviet perspective of the origins of the Cold War are outlined in a speech by Andrei Zhdanov (member of the Soviet Politburo) at the founding of the Communist International Organization in September 1947 and commonly known as the “Zhdanov Doctrine.” Zhdanov couches the global tensions as “the imperialist and anti-democratic camp [USA, Great Britain, and France], on the one hand, and the anti-imperialist and democratic camp [USSR and “new democracies” of Eastern Europe], on the other.” In characterization of the Truman Doctrine, Zhdanov asserts that the USA sought to establish “American bases in the Eastern Mediterranean with the purpose of establishing American supremacy in that area” and providing “support of the reactionary regimes in Greece and Turkey as bastions of American imperialism against the new democracies in the Balkans.” Zhdanov concludes that the USA desired as follows:

Constant pressure on the countries of the new democracy, as expressed in false accusation of totalitarianism and expansionist ambitions, in attacks on the foundations of the new democratic regimes, in constant interference in their domestic affairs, in support of all anti-national, anti-democratic elements within these countries, and in the demonstrative breaking off of economic relations with these countries with the idea of creating economic difficulties, retarding their economic development, preventing their industrialization, and so on.

The Zhdanov Doctrine is in line with Soviet propaganda and rhetoric dating back to 1917. The communist Bolsheviks forcefully overthrew Imperial Russia in 1917 and failed miserably in the domestic policy. For the next 30 years and from within or from outside the USSR, the Soviets maintained their hold on power by “finding an enemy and to hold them responsible for any defeats.” Following WWII and the beginning of the Cold War and despite their aggressive expansionism of tyrannical communist ideology across the world, the USSR played the victim and simply couched nearly all problems related to international relations as “the capitalist powers” suppressing the “young socialist state.”

As evidenced by both the Truman Doctrine and the Zhdanov Doctrine, both the USA and the USSR concede that the origins of the Cold War were the ideological differences between them. Inevitably and despite being allied against the Nazis in WWII and considering the USSR espoused the goal of replacing capitalist systems with global communism, these countries were bound to clash at some point. Over the next 40 years following the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, the world was under threat of global nuclear destruction as the Cold War raged, and even though the USSR is no more and the threat of global annihilation is lessened, this ideological battle still exists today both globally and within factions in the USA. Clearly, and despite the end of the Cold War, the battle between communism and capitalism continues.