Cold War - the first chapter

After several years of pretending to be friends during the second world war, by the end of it, relations between America and the USSR were beginning to get a bit strained. Thanks to massive ideological differences, the ongoing feud between Russia and Poland - evidenced by the refusal of Stalin to send troops to help the Poles overthrow their Nazi occupiers - and the vast number of war casualties suffered by Russia (an estimated 90 times more than those of the USA), a post-war friendship was never really on the cards.

Was this because they had completely different aims? Well, the Americans were all about self-determination for the peoples of Europe. They wanted to see freely elected governments taking control after years of oppression by the Nazis. Perhaps they wanted this so that they would have a strong, healthy market in Europe in which to sell American goods.

Meanwhile, Stalin was more interested in keeping Russia safe from attack. He believed that capitalists must fight in order to remain capitalists, and since Russia had been invaded several times from the west, he wanted to keep his country safe and secure by installing friendly governments along his western borders. And don't forget those warm water ports! Throughout Russian history, they've struggled to control some of those.

To start with, everyone played nice. Here was the situation at Yalta.

(If you click on the picture, it should get bigger).

As you can see, everyone is smiling and happy. The end of the second world war was in sight - Hitler was about 2 months away from killing himself and it was time to party and divide up the spoils (and debts) of war.

Stalin was happy, because he thought he was soon going to get his hands of $10 billion in reparations, paid by Germany after the war. The USA were happy, because the USSR had agreed to free elections for the peoples of eastern Europe. Germany had been portioned up between Russia, America, Britain and France - this wasn't ideal, but they couldn't agree on anything else at this time, so they created the boundaries as a sort of stop-gap.

However, by the time the Potsdam conference came around in July, things had changed significantly. For a start, there was a new American president. Roosevelt had kicked the bucket shortly after Yalta and his replacement, Truman, was nowhere near as pragmatic as his predecessor. He was suspicious of Stalin and the Soviets, and not willing to give them an inch.

And he didn't really have to, thanks to a huge event which had just taken place in the New Mexico desert. The first atomic bomb had been successfully tested, and the Americans were now the proud owners of the world's most destructive weapon. Like a man driving around on his new motorised lawnmower while his neighbour struggles with a rusty old mechanical one, Truman smugly hinted that Stalin no longer held all the cards, all through the conference.

Stalin knew exactly what had happened, thanks to his excellent network of spies, and instantly upped funding to the USSR's own atomic bomb project.

A third thing that changed was the Polish government. Stalin had ignored his previous promise and not allowe democratic elections, possibly fearing that a Russia-friendly government would not be popular with the Polish people and he would lose control. It became clear that he was not about to allow free elections anywhere else in Europe, either.

Finally, America now flatly refused to whack Germany with enormous reparations payments, probably remembering the Treaty of Versailles and how the enormous fines spelled out in that had led to financial ruin for German and, eventually, the second world war. Stalin, expecting $10 billion, was now left with nothing. I bet he'd already spent some of it, too. Don't you hate it when that happens?

By the end of the Potsdam conference, this was the rough situation.


Relations had cooled considerably. But it was only going to get colder.