Causes of the Cold War


Allied and Axis Powers in the Second World War


(Britain, France and the USA are the Big Three – the leaders of 42 allied nations.)


Events of the Second World War

Up until c.1942 Germany was victorious. After this date the Axis powers gradually lost the war. See other sheet.

Allied Powers at Conferences

Atlantic Charter (14/8/1941)

FDR and WSC met off the coast of Newfoundland, in Argentina Bay. They agreed on three things:

  1. They worked out the aims for a democratic alliance.

    This was directed against USSR and Germany.

  2. They agreed on eight principles and four freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of faith, freedom from fear, freedom from poverty.

    Also directed against USSR and Germany who did not provide these rights

  3. They agreed to establish a new permanent system of international security.

    This shows the League of Nations had failed, and it marks the start of the UNO.

The date of the Atlantic Charter is significant because in August 1941 the USA was not fighting in the Second World War, yet the USSR was fighting on Britain’s side. Yet in the charter the USSR was an enemy.

Yalta (2/1945) – see below

FDR, WSC and Stalin

Potsdam (7/1945) – see below

Stalin, Attlee (GB) and Truman (US)

Paris (1946) – see below

Molotov, Bevan (GB) and Byrnes (US)

Germany in the Second World War (1939-45)



Up to c.1942 Germany was largely successful but afterwards she was defeated.

1. German attack on Poland – September 1939 (Axis victory)

Poland was attacked by Germany from the West, and USSR from the East. This is called a period of PHONEY WAR because GB and FR were too busy rearming to defend Poland.

2. USSR conquered Finland and Germany attacked the rest of Scandinavia (Axis victory)

Only Sweden remained independent.

3. Operation Yellow (Axis victory)

Nazi conquest of the Low Countries (BENELUX)

4. Dunkirk (Axis victory)

GB sent an expeditionary force to France but it was driven back to the port of Dunkirk and only rescued by small boats ferrying troops across the channel to England.

5. Nazi Conquest of France 1940 (Axis victory)

With the British in retreat France fell to the Nazis. DeGaulle fled to London. France was divided:

  1. North and West occupied by Nazis
  2. South East = Vichy Regime, a puppet French leader, called Petain

6. Operation Sea Lion – the Nazi plan to invade GB (Axis defeat)

  1. By air. Battle of Britain. RAF won by September 1940. Germany began the blitz of London and Britain'’ main cities (e.g. Coventry). The RAF began to bomb Germany, especially 1944 and 1945.
  2. By sea. Germany lost her siege warfare in the Atlantic by 1943.

7. Operation Barbarossa (Axis defeat)

Hitler decided not to continue his onslaught on Britain but to attack USSR instead. By 1943 Germany had lost this campaign because:

  1. Russian scorched earth
  2. Severe Russian winter
  3. Germany stretched her supply line
  4. Germany lost battle of Stalingrad (January 1943). German people were shocked at this defeat because Goebbels’ propaganda had said the Nazis were invincible.

8. War in North Africa (Axis defeat)

Italy tried to conquer Greece and Yugoslavia from Albania and tried to oust GB from Egypt. Germany relieved the hapless Italians, but Rommel was defeated at El Alaniein (November 1942) by Britain’s Montgomery. As a result Germany did not control Middle Eastern oil, or the Suez Canal, and could not link up with Japan in the Pacific.

9. Japan in China and the Pacific (Axis victory)

Japan conquered Manchuria by 1932 and began to expand into the Pacific. The USA declared war after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, the USA’s Pacific fleet in Hawaii (7th December 1941). Prior to this USA has unofficially helped Britain with Lend Lease (March 1941)

10. Defeat of Italy (Axis defeat)

Allies decided to invade Italy in the summer of 1943. After the battles of Anzio and Montecassino Mussolini was deposed and later shot by his own people in April 1945.

11. Operation Overlord – D Day (Axis defeat)

In June 1944 the Allies (GB, USA and Canada) commanded by Eisenhower, landed on the Normandy beaches. This opened up a ‘second front’ against Germany who was already being attacked by the USSR from the East. Eisenhower followed a ‘broad front’ policy, only advancing towards Berlin after he had conquered land. The Russians swiftly advanced towards Berlin and captured it. On 30th April 1945, Hitler committed suicide and on 7th May, Germany surrendered.

12. Defeat of Japan (Axis defeat)

After the defeat of Japan by the American Navy at Midway Island (June 1942) Japan became the defender rather than the aggressor in the Pacific. She was only defeated after the USA dropped two atom bombs on Japanese cities:

  1. Hiroshima (6th August 1945)
  2. Nagasaki (9th August 1945)

Japan surrendered to USA on 15th August 1945.

The Peace Treaties at the End of World War Two

Refer to the map showing wartime conferences (1941-1945). Some peace treaties were signed after the war had ended, but many of the real decisions had already been made at two meetings in 1945 at Yalta and Potsdam (NB before the war was over). During these talks and at the Paris Peace Conference (1946) a struggle developed between the Western powers and Russia to see who could gain certain European objectives before the other.

1. Yalta

(Points a, b, c, d, g, m most important, especially g)

  1. February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta, in the Crimea
  2. It was agreed that Germany should be disarmed, demilitarised and divided into zones, to be occupied by Britain, USA and Russia (a French zone was included later).
  3. Berlin was to be divided into zones as well and shared out amongst the above countries. (Berlin would be in the Russian zone). A joint Control Commission was set up to govern Berlin.
  4. Similar arrangements were made for Austria and Vienna.
  5. Germany was to pay reparations ‘to the greatest possible extent’ of which half would go to the Soviet Union.
  6. Arrangements were made to try war criminals.
  7. Countries occupied by Germany (including her allies) were to be free to elect their own governments.
  8. It was agreed that Russia should get Polish territory east of the Curzon line. (Remember this land was taken from Bolshevik Russia in 1921).
  9. Poland was promised German land to her west to compensate her, but Roosevelt and Churchill refused to agree to Stalin’s demand that Poland should get all German territory east of the rivers Oder and Neisse.
  10. Poland was to gain Danzig
  11. As the Russians pushed the Germans out of Poland they backed the establishment of a communist government in Lublin, even though there was a Polish government-in-exile in London. However, Stalin promised that London Poles would be included in the Lublin ‘government’ and that there would be free elections.
  12. It was secretly agreed that Russia would enter the war against Japan.
  13. A charter for the United Nations should be composed at a meeting in San Francisco.

2. Potsdam

(Points a, c, e, g most important)

  1. In July 1945 Truman (USA), Attlee (Britain) and Stalin (USSR) met in a suburb of Berlin, Potsdam.
  2. It was agreed that the Foreign Ministers of Britain, France, USA, USSR and China would meet in 1946 to conclude treaties with Italy, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary and Rumania.
  3. The war with Germany was over but no agreement was reached about her long-term future beyond what had been decided at Yalta. (see Yalta points B+C)
  4. The British and Americans were annoyed because Germany west of the Oder-Neisse Line had been occupied by Russian troops and was being run by the pro-Communist Polish government.
  5. The reparations question was raised again and each country was permitted to extract reparations from its zone. Only USSR took any.
  6. It was agreed that German minorities were to be deported to Germany.
  7. Truman did not inform Stalin about the nature of the atomic bomb, though the British were told about it during the conference. The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima two days after the conference had ended. The war was ended without the need for Russian aid, and so did not take part in the occupation of Japan.

Points (e) and (g) show signs of future conflict between USA and USSR in the Cold War.

3. The Paris Peace Conference, 1946

(All points are important)

  1. 21 countries were represented, though the defeated countries were allowed little to say.
  2. The talks were dominated by the Foreign Secretaries – Byrnes (USA), Bevan (Britain) and Molotov (USSR). There were many instances of friction between the West and the USSR, especially as Molotov’s actions were unpredictable.
  3. In February 1947, peace treaties were signed with Italy, Finland, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria. No treaty was signed with Germany.

4. The German and Austrian Peace Treaties

  1. Austria and Vienna were divided into four zones, but unlike Germany she was allowed her own government, because she was seen not as a defeated country but as a state liberate from the Nazis. The Austrian government had limited powers and had a problem similar to that of Germany, the three western powers built up their zones and the USSR insisted on squeezing reparations from its zone, mainly in the form of food supplies.
  2. It seemed that the USSR was reluctant to make a permanent settlement but the Russians became unexpectedly co-operative. In May 1955, a peace treaty was signed, possibly because the Russians feared a merger between the western zones of Germany and Austria.
  3. Austria was to be a neutral country and was forbidden to unite with Germany.
  4. A peace treaty was never achieved with Germany because of the continued division of that country.

Meaning of Cold War

At the end of the Second World War, relations between the USA and the USSR deteriorated, especially at Potsdam (July 1945) and Paris (1946). These two powers were rivals and the tension is called the Cold War. In Europe there was a little bloodshed but outside Europe there was more traditional warfare. (Korea, Cuba, Vietnam)

Origins of the Cold War

1. The Cold War began as a result of suspicious that the democratic west had about the USSR and vice versa.

After 1945 the USSR feared a Western invasion of her new satellites and the west feared the spread of Marxism.

2. Relations between the major powers got worse at the end of the Second World War

This occurred especially at Yalta (February 1945), Potsdam (July 1945) and Paris (1946). At Paris, Molotov refused to accept the west’s ideas about not taking reparations and about wanting free elections in Eastern Europe.

3. Germany was divided into four occupation zones:

  1. Britain got the ruins
  2. France got the wine
  3. USA got scenery (Bavaria)
  4. USSR gained the lion’s share and surrounded Berlin

Austria was also divided.

4. In 1946, Churchill at Foulton, Missouri said:

‘An iron curtain is descending on Europe extending from Stettin in the north to Trieste in the south.’

He nearly got it right. The metaphorical line that separates the communist east from the democratic west should not end at Trieste because although Yugoslavia was communist it was independent of the USSR (under Tito). The satellites = Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Albania, Czechoslovakia and Eastern Germany.

5. Economic Origins

  1. Official America anti-Soviet policy began with the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) where American aid was offered to European countries which bordered onto Communist countries. This was extended by the Marshall Plan (June 1947) which offered aid outside Europe. This was designed to stop the spread of Communism – called CONTAINMENT.
  2. The USSR set up Comminform (Cominform) in September 1947, which Stalin said was a news agency, but really it was a means of Russifying the economic policies of the eastern blob countries.
  3. In June 1948, the three western powers united their zones with a new deutschmark. This financial union was the forerunner of a political union (3 zones = West Germany).

6. The Arms Race

The USSR was annoyed not to know about America’s atom bomb (1945). The USSR gained the atom bomb in 1949 and both sides began to stockpile arms.

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