The Cold War
01/09/15
What was the Cold War? (Introduction / Class Discussion)
Powerpoint Notes
What Was the Cold War?
When did the Cold War Occur?
Origin of the Cold War
Beginnings of the Cold War
The First Cold War
The Thaw 1953-1957
The ‘Second Cold War; 1958-62
The Period of Détente 1963-1979
The Third of ‘New Cold War’ 1979-91
End of the Cold War
- Proxy War - Between the USSR and the USA
- Conflict of ideology
- War over power
- Both sides had nuclear weapons
- M.A.D - Mutually assured destruction
- Proxy - A persons authorised act for another
- Cuba - Missile Crisis
- Bi-Polar world
- Uni-Polar world after the Cold War
- Today - Multi-Polar
Powerpoint Notes
What Was the Cold War?
- Cold War - A period of extreme tension between states stopping just short of war
- Eduard Bernstein came up with the phrase ‘Cold War’ he used this to describe Germany in 1893, ‘there is no shooting but… bleeding’
- George Orwell - Conflict between Russia and America, permanent state of war but couldn’t conquer each other
- Military Arms Race - Both sides built up both nuclear and conventional military weapons on a prolonged arms race
- Ideological Struggle - Under Stalin, the USSR was an Authorisation Marxist-Leninist State which believed a conflict between Communism and Capitalism was inevitable and unavoidable
- The USA was a Capitalist Liberal Democracy which viewed the USSR an an ‘evil empire’ (Ronald Reagan) intent on the destruction of democracy
- Geopolitical Struggle - The conflict was the inevitable results of the struggle for power and resources between the two Superpowers
- Anders Stephanson 1994 defined the Cold War as:
- Both sides denied each other’s legitimacy as a regime and attempted to attack each other by every means short of war
- Increasingly this conflict became ‘bipolar’, that is to say a struggle between the two great Superpowers, the USA and USSR
- There was an intense build up of both nuclear and conventional military weapons and a prolonged arms race
- Each side suppressed its internal dissidents
When did the Cold War Occur?
- Historians disagree to when the Cold War actually begun
- Most people agree that the Cold War began in 1947
- Some argue that there were three Cold Wars
- 1941 The USSR and USA became allies
- 1948-1953 (1st Cold War)
- 1953-1958 (‘Thaw’)
- 1958-1963 (2nd Cold War)
- 1963-1979 (Dententé)
- 1979-1985 (3rd Cold War)
- 1985-1989 (End of the Cold War)
- Overall the years 1945-1989 the ‘Cold War era’
Origin of the Cold War
- 1917 Before the Bolshevik Revolution Russia and the USA were always allies
- Historian Howard Roffman (1977) ‘The Cold War proceeded from the very moment
- Ideological clash between President Woodrow Wilson and Lenin
- 1917 Wilson’s ’14 points’ advocated to end empires, self-determination for all peoples’, free trade and collective security through a League of Nations
- Lenin preached world revolution and wanted to overthrow Capitalism
- The ‘Comintern’ or Communist International was set-up
- 1920s-1930s USA became ‘isolationist’ and withdrew away from the worlds’ affairs and focused on their own economic development
- Growing divide between Germany, Britain and France
Beginnings of the Cold War
- Hitler’s invasion brought the USSR and the USA together as they became allies in WWII
- 1945 Hitler was defeated and there was a vacuum of power
- The USSR occupied Eastern Europe with its troops whilst the USA and the Allies occupied Western Europe
- 1945 Despite agreements at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences the sides collided and struggles to divide Europe
- Stalin promised to support democratic governments in Eastern Europe
- The USA tried to stop the USSR from spreading Communism in Europe
- 1947 The Truman Doctrine - America will offer military help to any states resisting communist aggression e.g Greece
- 1947 The Marshall Plan - Offered economic help to rebuild Europe to stop the temptation of Communism spreading
- The USA also rebuilt Western Germany as a Capitalist state by merging the occupation zones of UK, France and USA and introduced a new currency
The First Cold War
- 1948 the Cold War began and tension rose
- 1948-49 The USSR tried to blockaded West Berlin for 11 months and the allies had to airlift supplies
- 1949 Russia built their first
- 1949 Asian tensions rose after the Communists won the Chinese Civil War
- 20th June 1950 This was followed by the invasion of South Korea by the Communist North Korea
- The Korean War
- 1953 Armistice signed between North and South Korea
The Thaw 1953-1957
- 1953 Death of Stalin - The USSR became distracted by an internal power struggle to replace Stalin
- New leader Nikita Khrushchev promised a ‘peaceful co-existence’ with the US
- 1956 ‘Thaw’ ended when the USSR used military force to end popular revolts against its rule in Hungary and Eastern Europe
The ‘Second Cold War; 1958-62
- 1958 Khruschev began threaten the USA and Western Europe with the latest missile technology to force the West to withdraw from West Berlin
- Millions of Germans were illegally escaping to the West through the West of Berlin which was a serious threat to Communist East Germany
- 1961 USSR solved this crisis by building the Berlin Wall
- 1962 tension rose when the USA spotted Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba
The Period of Détente 1963-1979
- 1960s both USA and the USSR had their own distractions from direct confrontation
- The USA became more and more involved with the Vietnam War
- The USSR faced huge economic problems with China
- 1963 Test Ban Treaty - Agreement on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1969 and Helsinki Accords 1975
The Third of ‘New Cold War’ 1979-91
- USSR used new nuclear missiles in Europe and invaded Afghanistan
- The USA responded by basing Cruise missiles in Europe forming a new arms race
- 1983 President Reagan launched the ‘Strategic Defence Initiative’ which planned to shoot Soviet missiles out of the sky from space
- The USSR were loosing to Afghanistan because of the cost of the arms race with the US and conflicts back in Russia
End of the Cold War
- New leader of the Soviet leader - Mikhail Gorbachev
- 1985 Launched a series of reforms known as ‘Glasnost’ (openness) and ‘Perestroika’ (reform)
- Wanted to improve the Soviet economy via Capitalism
- 1989 the Soviet military would no longer oppose uprisings in Eastern Europe
- All regimes collapsed
- 1991 the USSR was dissolved and the Cold War ended
- Tore down the Berlin war which divided East and West Berlin