Question

The overall purpose and mission of the cold war movement. (As detailed as possible)

Answer 1

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• The origins of the Cold War can be traced through numerous conflicts between the Soviet Union and Western nations, starting with the Russian Revolution in 1917.

• Events preceding the Second World War and the Russian Revolution of 1917 fostered pre- World War II tensions between the Soviet Union, western European countries, and the United States. A series of events during and after World War II exacerbated these tensions, including the Soviet- German pact during the first two years of the war leading to subsequent invasions, the perceived delay of an amphibious invasion of German-occupied Europe, the western allies’ support of the Atlantic Charter, disagreement in wartime conferences over the fate of Eastern Europe, the Soviets’ creation of an Eastern Bloc of Soviet satellite states, western allies scrapping the Morgenthau Plan to support the rebuilding of German industry, and the Marshall Plan.

Pre-World War II Tensions

• As a result of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and its subsequent withdrawal from World War I, Soviet Russia found itself isolated in international diplomacy. Leader Vladimir Lenin stated that the Soviet Union was surrounded by a “hostile capitalist encirclement,” and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon to keep Soviet enemies divided, beginning with the establishment of the Soviet Comintern calling for revolutionary upheavals abroad. Tensions between Russia (including its allies) and the West turned intensely ideological.

• After winning the civil war, the Bolsheviks proclaimed a worldwide challenge to capitalism. Subsequent Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a “socialist island,” stated that the Soviet Union must see that “the present capitalist encirclement is replaced by a socialist encirclement.” As early as 1925, Stalin stated that he viewed international politics as a bipolar world in which the Soviet Union would attract countries gravitating to socialism and capitalist countries would attract states gravitating toward capitalism, while the world was in a period of “temporary stabilization of capitalism” preceding its eventual collapse.

• Differences in the political and economic systems of Western democracies and the Soviet Union—socialism versus capitalism, economic independence versus free trade, state planning versus private enterprise—became simplified and refined in national ideologies to represent two ways of life. The atheistic nature of Soviet communism concerned many Americans. The American ideals of free determination and President Woodrow Wilson ‘s Fourteen Points conflicted with many of the USSR’s policies.

Conflicting Postwar Goals

• Several postwar disagreements between western and Soviet leaders were related to their differing interpretations of wartime and immediate post-war conferences. At the February 1945 Yalta Conference, they could not reach firm agreements on crucial postwar questions like the occupation of and postwar reparations from Germany. Given Russia’s historical experience of frequent invasions and the immense death toll of the war (estimated at 27 million), the Soviet Union sought to increase security by dominating the internal affairs of its bordering countries. Stalin was determined to use the Red Army to gain control of Poland, dominate the Balkans, and destroy Germany’s capacity to engage in another war. On the other hand, the United States sought military victory, the achievement of global American economic supremacy, and the creation of an intergovernmental body to promote international cooperation. The key to the U.S. vision of security was a postwar world shaped according to the principles laid out in the 1941 Atlantic Charter—a liberal international system based on free trade and open markets. This would require a rebuilt capitalist Europe with a healthy Germany at its center to serve once more as a hub in global affairs.

• At the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, the Allies met to decide how to administer the defeated Nazi Germany. Serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and Eastern Europe. At Potsdam, the U.S. was represented by President Harry S. Truman, who relied on a set of advisers who took a harder line toward Moscow than his predecessor Franklin Roosevelt. Under Truman’s administration, officials favoring cooperation with the Soviet Union and the incorporation of socialist economies into a world trade system were marginalized. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in part a calculated effort on the part of Truman to intimidate the Soviet Union, limiting its influence in postwar Asia. Indeed, the bombings fueled Soviet distrust of the U.S. and are regarded by some historians not as only as the closing act of World War II, but as the opening salvo of the Cold War.