The ‘First’ Cold War in Europe, 1945-61
Multiple Choice Questions
Exam Questions
Discussion Questions
What were the interests of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union in the fate of Germany after 1945?
How did local conditions in Eastern European states influence their incorporation into the Soviet bloc?
How did Truman frame the American stance towards the Soviet Union, 1946-1949?
What effect did the Marshall Plan have on Europe?
How did the early Cold War contribute to different attempts at integrating Europe in the 1940s and 1950s?
How did global events 1949-1950 contribute to American perception of the Cold War?
Why was there an opportunity for a thaw in the Cold War in 1953?
What was the doctrine of “massive retaliation” and how was it intended to provide a defense to western Europe?
How was the propaganda front of the Cold War managed by the US and Soviet Union?
How did the fate of Berlin repeatedly influence the Cold War, 1945-1961?
Exam Questions
To what extent were the Cold War policies of the superpowers driven by realpolitik rather than ideology?
To what extent was the outbreak of the Cold War driven by the failure of the Grand Alliance to negotiate a peace deal ending the Second World War?
To what extent was the early Cold War (1945-1961) driven by misperception of the interests of the other superpower?
Weblinks
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp – text of Truman Doctrine
http://www.emersonkent.com/speeches/iron_curtain.htm – text and audio of Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech
http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-129-9-cp-46-186-36.pdf – text of British Cabinet document on divided Germany 1946
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/national-security-council-paper-68-nsc-68/ – text of NSC 68
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-the-marshall-plan – text of Marshall Plan speech 1947
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/23331/x/the-sources-of-soviet-conduct – 1947 text of Foreign Affairs by Kennan on the sources of Soviet conduct
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/21042-long-telegram-original – text of George Kennan “long telegram” of 1946 discussing threat from Soviet Union
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/warsaw.asp – text of the 1955 Warsaw Pact
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111002 – letter from Roosevelt to Stalin on acceptable compromise on post-war Poland 1945
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/111004 – memorandum from Litvinov to Stalin discussing post-war situation of Japan and Germany 1946
Bibliography
Amerian, Stephanie M., “‘Buying European’: The Marshall Plan and American Department Stores,” Diplomatic History 39:1 (2015) 45-69.
Apor, Balazs, Peter Apor, & E. A . Rees, eds., The Sovietization of Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on the Postwar Period, (New Academia Publishing, 2008).
Baudet, Floribert, “‘A statement against the totalitarian countries of Europ’: Human Rights and the Early Cold War,” Cold War History 16:2 (2016) 125-140.
Harbutt, Fraser J., Yalta 1945: Europe and America at the Crossroads, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Harrington, Daniel F., Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012).
Healey, Timothy, “Will Clayton, Negotiating the Marshall Plan, and European Economic Integration,” Diplomatic History 35:2 (2011) 229-256.
Levsen, Sonja, “Authority and Democracy in Postwar France and West Germany, 1945-1968”, Journal of Modern History 89:4 (2017) 821-850.
Majerus Joé, “Final Strategy: The Post-War Grand Strategic Designs of Henry L. Stimson”, International History Review 41:4 (2019) 845-865.
Mistry, Kaeten, The United States, Italy and the Origins of the Cold War: Waging Political Warfare, 1945-1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Naimark, Norman M., Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Post-War Struggle for Sovereignty, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2019).