18.1 Origins of the Cold War

Former Allies clash  Soviet system of communism  State controlled all property and economic activity  Capitalistic American system  Private citizens controlled almost all property and economic activity  American democratic system  The people elected a president and a congress from competing political parties  In the Soviet Union  The communist party established a totalitarian government in which no opposing parties were allowed to exist  United States had kept its development of the atomic bomb a secret from the Soviets

United Nations (UN)  New international peacekeeping body  June 26 th, 1945  UN headquarters was built in New York City

The Potsdam Conference  Truman pushed Stalin to allow free elections  The Soviet dictator refused  Soviet army occupied the Eastern Europe nations in question

Tension Mounts  Soviets tighten their grip on Eastern Europe  Stalin installed or propped up Communist governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Poland  Satellite nations- countries dependent upon and dominated by the Soviet Union

Policy of Containment  An effort to block the Soviets’ attempts to spread their influence by creating alliances and supporting weaker countries

Cold War  The state of hostility, short of direct military confrontation, that developed between the two superpowers

The Truman Doctrine  The United States should support free peoples throughout the world who were resisting takeovers by “armed minorities” or “outside pressures”  Between 1947 and 1950, the United States sent over $400 million in aid to Turkey and Greece

The Marshall Plan  June 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed that the United States provide aid to all European nations that needed it  People opposed giving away $12.5 billion  February 1948, Soviet tanks rumbled into Czechoslovakia and took over the country  Sparked Congress into action  A great success both economically and politically in European countries

Superpowers Struggle over Germany  The Soviet Union wanted to keep Germany weak and divided  In 1948 England, France, and the United States decided to recombine the three western zones into one nation

The Berlin Airlift  The Soviet Union cut off all highway, water, and rail traffic into the western zones of Berlin  West Berlin’s 2.1 million inhabitants would run out of food and fuel in about five weeks  For 327 days, planes took off and landed every few minutes, around the clock  In 277,000 flights, they brought in 2.3 million tons of supplies  By May 1949, the Soviet Union realized it was beaten and lifted the Berlin blockade

The NATO Alliance  Ten western European nations  Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal  Joined with the United States and Canada on April 4, 1949  North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)  An attack on one would be regarded as an attack on all