Cold War (1947–1948)
The Cold War from 1947 to 1948 is the period within the Cold War from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the incapacitation of the Allied Control Council in 1948. The Cold War emerged in Europe a few years after the successful US–USSR–UK coalition won World War II in Europe, and extended to 1989–1991. It took place worldwide, but it had a partially different timing outside Europe. Some conflicts between the West and the USSR appeared earlier. In 1945–1946 the US and UK strongly protested Soviet political takeover efforts in Eastern Europe and Iran, while the hunt for Soviet spies made the tensions more visible. However, historians emphasize the decisive break between the US–UK and the USSR came in 1947–1948 over such issues as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the breakdown of cooperation in governing occupied Germany by the Allied Control Council. In 1947, Bernard Baruch, the multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term "Cold War" to describe the increasingly chilly relations between three World War II Allies: the United States and British Empire together with the Soviet Union.[1]
The list of world leaders in these years is as follows: Clement Attlee (UK); Harry Truman (US); Vincent Auriol (France); Joseph Stalin (USSR); Chiang Kai-shek (Allied China).
: 1946. A proposal by the U.S. to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) to a) extend between all nations the exchange of basic scientific information for peaceful ends; b) implement control of atomic energy to the extent necessary to ensure its use only for peaceful purposes; c) eliminate from national armaments atomic weapons and all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction; and d) establish effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means to protect complying States against the hazards of violations and evasions. When the Soviet Union was the only member state which refused to sign, the U.S. embarked on a massive nuclear weapons testing, development, and deployment program.
Baruch Plan
The Long Telegram and The "", 1946–1947. Formally titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct". The article describes the concepts that became the foundation of United States Cold War policy and was published in Foreign Affairs in 1947. The article was an expansion of a well-circulated top secret State Department cable called the X Article and became famous for setting forth the doctrine of containment. Though the article was signed pseudonymously by "X," it was well known at the time that the true author was George F. Kennan, the deputy chief of mission of the United States to the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1946, under ambassador W. Averell Harriman.
X Article
: April 14, 1950. A classified report written and issued by the United States National Security Council. The report outlined the National Security Strategy of the United States for that time and provided a comprehensive analysis of the capabilities of the Soviet Union and of the United States from military, economic, political, and psychological standpoints. NSC 68's principal thesis was that the Soviet Union intended to become the single dominant world power. The report argued that the Soviet Union had a systematic strategy aimed at the spread of communism across the entire world, and it recommended that the United States government adopt a policy of containment to stop the further spread of Soviet power. NSC 68 outlined a drastic foreign policy shift from defensive to active containment and advocated aggressive military preparedness. NSC 68 shaped government actions in the Cold War for the next 20 years and has subsequently been labeled the "blueprint" for the Cold War.
NSC 68
Speech by , United States Secretary of State "Restatement of Policy on Germany" Stuttgart September 6, 1946. Also known as the "Speech of hope," it set the tone of future U.S. policy as it repudiated the Morgenthau Plan economic policies and gave the Germans hope for the future. The Western powers worst fear was that the poverty and hunger would drive the Germans to communism. General Lucius Clay stated "There is no choice between being a communist on 1,500 calories a day and a believer in democracy on a thousand". The speech was also seen as a stand against the Soviet Union because it stated the firm intention of the United States to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. But the heart of the message was as Byrnes stated a month later "The nub of our program was to win the German people ... it was a battle between us and Russia over minds".
James F. Byrnes
The Cold War generated innumerable documents. The texts of 171 documents appear in The Encyclopedia of the Cold War (2008).[33]
Timeline of events in the Cold War
Animal Farm
Ball, S. J. The Cold War: An International History, 1947–1991 (1998). British perspective
(1988). With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-2186-1.
Banac, Ivo
Beschloss, Michael R (2003). The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941–1945. . ISBN 978-0-7432-6085-5.
Simon & Schuster
Böcker, Anita (1998), Regulation of Migration: International Experiences, Het Spinhuis, 90-5589-095-2
ISBN
Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1989);
Brune, Lester Brune and Richard Dean Burns. Chronology of the Cold War: 1917–1992 (2005) 700pp; highly detailed month-by-month summary for many countries
Ericson, Edward E. (1999), Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941, Greenwood Publishing Group, 0-275-96337-3
ISBN
Gaddis, John Lewis (1972), , Columbia University Press, ISBN 0-231-08302-5
The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941–1947
Gaddis, John Lewis (1990), Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States- An Interpretive History
Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (2005)
Gaddis, John Lewis. Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (1987)
Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (1982)
Grenville, John Ashley Soames (2005), A History of the World from the 20th to the 21st Century, Routledge, 0-415-28954-8
ISBN
Grenville, John Ashley Soames; Wasserstein, Bernard (2001), , Taylor & Francis, ISBN 0-415-23798-X
The Major International Treaties of the Twentieth Century: A History and Guide with Texts
Grogin, Robert C. (2001). Natural Enemies: The United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, 1917–1991. Lexington Books. 978-0739101605.
ISBN
Hardt, John Pearce; Kaufman, Richard F. (1995), East-Central European Economies in Transition, M.E. Sharpe, 1-56324-612-0
ISBN
Henig, Ruth Beatrice (2005), The Origins of the Second World War, 1933–41, Routledge, 0-415-33262-1
ISBN
LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1992 7th ed. (1993)
Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2018) The United States, the Soviet Union and the Geopolitical Implications of the Origins of the Cold War, Anthem Press, London
Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2018), , Scholar's Press, ISBN 9786202317269
The Role of Ideology in the Origins of the Cold War
Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2010), The German Question and the International Order,1943-48, Palgrave Macmillan, 978-0-230-24812-0
ISBN
Lewkowicz, Nicolas (2008), , IPOC, ISBN 978-88-95145-27-3
The German Question and the Origins of the Cold War
Mitchell, George. The Iron Curtain: The Cold War in Europe (2004)
Miller, Roger Gene (2000), To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949, Texas A&M University Press, 0-89096-967-1
ISBN
Nekrich, Aleksandr Moiseevich; Ulam, Adam Bruno; Freeze, Gregory L. (1997), Pariahs, Partners, Predators: German–Soviet Relations, 1922–1941, Columbia University Press, 0-231-10676-9
ISBN
Ninkovich, Frank. Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988)
Paterson, Thomas G. Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (1988)
(2002), Stalin, the Pact with Nazi Germany, and the Origins of Postwar Soviet Diplomatic Historiography, vol. 4
Roberts, Geoffrey
Roberts, Geoffrey (2006), Stalin's Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953, Yale University Press, 0-300-11204-1
ISBN
Shirer, William L. (1990), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Simon and Schuster, 0-671-72868-7
ISBN
Saxonberg, Steven (2001), The Fall: A Comparative Study of the End of Communism in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Poland, Routledge, 90-5823-097-X
ISBN
Sivachev, Nikolai and Nikolai Yakolev, Russia and the United States (1979), by Soviet historians
Department of State (1948), , Department of State
Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941: Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office
Soviet Information Bureau (1948), Falsifiers of History (Historical Survey), Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 272848
Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974)
Walker, J. Samuel. "Historians and Cold War Origins: The New Consensus", in Gerald K. Haines and J. Samuel Walker, eds., American Foreign Relations: A Historiographical Review (1981), 207–236.
Wettig, Gerhard (2008), Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, 978-0-7425-5542-6
ISBN
Cumings, Bruce The Origins of the Korean War (2 vols., 1981–90), friendly to North Korea and hostile to U.S.
Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1959-1956 (1994)
Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War (1993)
Leffler, Melvyn. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992).
. Russia's Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism, 1941–1945 (1979)
Mastny, Vojtech
Zhang, Shu Guang. Beijing’s Economic Statecraft during the Cold War, 1949–1991 (2014).
online review
Perović, Jeronim (2007). . Journal of Cold War Studies. 9 (2). MIT Press: 32–63. doi:10.5167/uzh-62735. ISSN 1520-3972.
"The Tito–Stalin Split: A Reassessment in Light of New Evidence"
Banac, Ivo (2008). "Introduction". In Banac, Ivo (ed.). . New Hven: Yale University Press. pp. xv–xlviii. ISBN 978-0-300-13385-1.
The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933–1949
(2005). Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York City: Penguin Press. ISBN 1-59420-065-3.
Judt, Tony
McClellan, Woodford (1969). "Postwar Political Evolution". In Vucinich, Wayne S. (ed.). . Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp. 119–153. ISBN 978-0-520-33110-5.
Contemporary Yugoslavia: Twenty Years of Socialist Experiment
(1968). Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East. Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History. ISBN 978-0-88029-059-3. LCCN 67-60001.
Ziemke, Earl F.
Archived May 13, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
Draft, Report on Communist Expansion, February 28, 1947
on CVCE website
The division of Europe
The division of Germany. From BYRNES, James F. Speaking Frankly. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1947. 324 p, Available on the CVCE website.
James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly
on CVCE website
The beginning of the Cold War
Winston Churchill speech in 5, March, 1946, warning about the advance of communism in central Europe. Sound extract on the CVCE website.
The Sinews of Peace
The 1944 division of Europe between the Soviet Union and Britain into zones of influence. On CVCE website
Dividing up Europe
Deutsch-Amerikanische Zentrum / James-F.-Byrnes-Institut e.V
James Francis Byrnes and U.S. Policy towards Germany 1945–1947
National Archives excerpts of Cabinet meetings.
UK Policy towards Germany
Royal Engineers and the Cold War