The Origins of the Cold War

1. The Origins of the Cold War • End of World War II • Yalta Conference, February 1945 • Potsdam Conference, July 1945 • Hiroshima and Nagasaki • Korean War • The Atomic Bomb • Historical debates on whether it was worth it • Atomic Bomb in postwar culture • The Strategy of Containment • George Kennan’s Article • Popular version

2. End of War > American and Russian Troops, 1945

3. End of War > Why did Roosevelt compromise with Stalin at the Yalta Conference? • Roosevelt wanted Russian participation in the war, particularly on the Pacific front • Russia occupies half of Europe and will not move • Russian fear of invasion from the West • Russian sacrifices in WW II - they bore the brunt of German attacks • Stalin makes promises of democracy (quickly reneges)

4. Atomic Bomb > President Harry Truman announces the Hiroshima bombing Announcer: Good evening from the White House in Washington. Ladies and gentlemen the President of the United States. Harry S. Truman: My fellow Americans, the British, Chinese and United States governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and unfortunately thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately and save themselves from destruction.

5. Atomic Bomb > Was it necessary? • Yes: • necessary to force Japanese surrender • saved millions of American lives • No: • Japanese may have been ready to surrender anyway • Truman didn’t wait for the Russians to enter the fight which would have ended the fighting • Truman true purpose was to intimidate the Russians • Too horrific; destroyed thousands of civilian Japanese lives

6. The Strategy of Containment > George Kennan Its main concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the basin of world power. These considerations make Soviet diplomacy at once easier and more difficult to deal with than the diplomacy of individual aggressive leaders like Napoleon and Hitler. On the one hand it is more sensitive to contrary force, more ready to yield on individual sectors of the diplomatic front when that force is felt to be too strong, and thus more rational in the logic of rhetoric of power. On the other hand it cannot be easily defeated or discouraged by a single victory on the part of its opponents. And the patient persistence by which it is animated means that it can be effectively countered not by sporadic acts which represent the momentary whims of democratic opinion but only by intelligent long-range policies on the part of Russia's adversaries -- policies no less steady in their purpose, and no less variegated and resourceful in their application, than those of the Soviet Union itself. In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.

7. The Strategy of Containment > George Kennan Evidence: “… ideological concepts: … (b) that the capitalist system of production is a nefarious one which inevitably leads to the exploitation of the working class by the capital-owning class…” (true) “the Communists represented only a tiny minority of the Russian people.” (false) “… the stress laid in Moscow on the menace confronting Soviet society from the world outside its borders is founded not in the realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of explaining away the maintenance of dictatorial authority at home.” (false) “Stalin, and those whom he led in the struggle for succession to Lenin’s position of leadership, were not the men to tolerate rival political forces in the sphere of power which they coveted… In 1924 Stalin specifically defended the retention of the ‘organs of suppression,’ meaning, among others, the army and the secret police.” (true) Rhetoric: “Their particular brand of fanaticism, unmodified by any of the Anglo-Saxon traditions of compromise, was too fierce and too jealous to envisage any permanent sharing of power. From the Russian-Asiatic world out of which they had emerged they carried with them a skepticism as to the possibilities of permanent and peaceful coexistence of rival forces.”