The Cold War 1945 - 1961

Front 1

The Yalta Conference

Back 1

February 1945 : Germany was not yet defeated.

Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to split Germany into four zones of occupation ad to allow free elections in Eastern Europe countries.

Russia was invited to the United Nations and promised to join the war against Japan when Germany was defeated.

Front 2

The Potsdam Conference

Back 2

July 1945 : Germany had been defeated, Roosevelt had died and had been replaced by Truman. Churchill lost the 1945 election - therefore there were open disagreements. Truman was angry about the size of reparations and the new communist government set up in Poland. Truman did not tell Stalin that he had the atomic bomb.

Front 3

Iron Curtain

Back 3

Fulton, Missouri 1946 : In a speech, Churchill declared that the metaphorical curtain dividing the Eastern powers of the Soviet's and the Western powers of the USA was growing and it had to be stopped. However Stalin saw Churchill's speech a "declaration of war" and in response to this speech, he set up Comintern - an alliance of communist counties designed to obey Soviet rule.

Front 4

Truman Doctrine

Back 4

March 1947 : President Truman warned American Congress that it was America's duty to stop communism growing any stronger. This was known as the Truman Doctrine.

Front 5

The Marshall Plan

Back 5

June 1947 : General George Marshall believed that Europe was so poor that the whole of Europe would soon turn to communism. Marshall and Truman asked Congress for $17 billion to fund a European Recovery programme nicknamed The Marshall Plan, to increase economy. Congress were hesitant but March 1948, when Czechoslovakia turned communist, they agreed. The aid was given in the form of food, grants to buy equipment, improvements to transport systems and health care. Stalin forbade the Comintern countries to apply for Marshall aid.

Front 6

The Berlin Blockade Crisis of 1948

Back 6

In 1945, the Allies decides to split the capital of Germany, Berlin, also into four zones. The USSR took huge reparations from its zone in eastern Germany but the other zones tried to improve conditions. In June 1948, Britain, France and America untied their zones to make west Germany and introduced new currency to help trade. In response to this, Stalin cut off all links to west Berlin - The Berlin Blockade. The west saw this as an attempt to stave Berlin into surrender.

Front 7

The Berlin airlift

Back 7

In response to the Berlin Blockade, the west decided to supply west Berlin by air. The Blockade lasted 318 days. During this time, 275000 planes transported 1.5 million tons of supplies and a plane landed every three minutes at Berlin Templehof airport. On 12 May 1949, Stalin abandoned the Blockade.

Front 8

The Warsaw Pact

Back 8

1955 : When Stalin died, Nikita Khrushchev became soviet leader. He set up the Warsaw Pact - a military alliance of communist countries, in rival to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - a military alliance of western powers that was originally created to provide a counterforce to the Soviet armies of Eastern Europe). American responded by increasing the number of NATO troops in Germany.

Front 9

The U2 incident and the Paris summit of 1960.

Back 9

1st May 1960 - An American U2 spy plane was shot down over Russia and the pilot, Gary Powers , was captured. At first the American's said it was a weather plane and tried to cover the planes mission of being in Russia's flying area, but they were forced to admit it was a spy plane after Russia revealed that much of the plane survived and they had captured Gary Powers alive. When the summit met in Paris, 14 May, Khrushchev demanded the US president, Eisenhower apologised, When Eisenhower refused, Khrushchev left. This made the Cold War more dangerous.

Front 10

The Berlin Wall

Back 10

By the 1960s Berlin was still undecided - the USSR controlled the East and the USA guaranteed freedom in the West. Thousands of refugees escaped to West Berlin. Much to the embarrassment of the USSR, on 13 August 1961, Khrushchev closed the boarder between East and West Berlin and started building a Berlin Wall. However the wall became a propaganda disaster and became a symbol of all that was bad about Soviet rule.