Cold War

Cold War. Although the term was not generally used until the 1950s, historians of the Cold War have traced its origins to the strains of the Grand Alliance from 1941 onwards.

Both Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that the western powers must sink their differences with Stalin for the duration of the war against Germany: and western propaganda went to great lengths to conceal the crimes of their Soviet ally. Stalin's contribution to the Allied war effort was so immense that he could flout the Atlantic Charter almost at will, and could gain acceptance of the Soviet viewpoint on many issues where there would otherwise have been no agreement. Even so, there were several conflicts of interest where the Anglo-Americans were unwilling to yield to Soviet claims. One was in Persia, which western oil companies had targeted for post-war developments; another was in Poland whose independence had been guaranteed in 1939.

Stalin, for his part, was careful to bide his time and to avoid an open breach. The Soviet Union received huge shipments of Lend-Lease war materials from the West; and Moscow was paranoid about the (unlikely) possibility of the western powers changing sides and joining Germany in an anti-Soviet crusade. All three partners of the Grand Alliance were fearful of a split until both Japan and Germany had been forced into unconditional surrender.

At the end of the war, the Red Army's advance across the states of eastern Europe made Soviet control there a reality, irrespective of western wishes. But before absorbing them completely into the communist bloc, Stalin again played a waiting game in the hope that US troops would be taken home within two years as Roosevelt had once indicated. As a result, despite growing tensions over the joint administration of Germany, western and Soviet officialdom maintained an uneasy truce to the end of 1946. Relations began to deteriorate after the blatant manipulation of the elections, by the communists, in Poland in January 1947, and reached breaking-point after the announcement of the Truman Doctrine and of Marshall Aid later that year.

Once Stalin could see that the Americans were not going to withdraw from Europe, he had no further cause for restraint. The communist coup in Prague, in February 1948, and the Berlin blockade launched an era of hostility which never broke into open warfare but which lasted for 40 years. See also diplomacy.

Norman Davies