Transcript One World Into two

One World Into two
Atlantic Charter
• The United States and Britain’s Atlantic
Charter called for economic collaboration
between the two countries and for guarantees
of political stability after the end of the war
and also supported free trade, national selfdetermination, and the principle of collective
security.
• What else? Imperial preference system?
• Post war issues (boundaries)
• 1942 Molotov meeting in Washington
• 4 policemen
Casablanca
Churchill and Roosevelt
Stalin busy with Stalingrad
Unconditional surrender –
problematic- why?
Teheran
• Post war boundary
• Baltic States?
• Poland?
How did Britain and Russia view the Atrlantic
Charter
Events in Italy and Teheran brought into open the
dilemmas that would wreck the post-war peace
Yalta
• UN
– 4 great powers dominate
• Far east question
Japan
• Polish-Soviet Border
• Polish government
– Symbol of Russian-American Conflict
• Dismemberment of Germany?
• Final plans were laid for sledge-hammering
the buckling German lines and shackling the
beaten Axis foe. Stalin agreed that Poland,
with revised boundaries, should have a
representative government based on free
elections-a pledge that he soon broke.
Holocaust
• What is the issue in terms of priorities?
Truman
• What was Truman’s dilemma -
Stalin
• Traditional westward policy
• Eastern and central europe
Potsdam/China and the Bomb
The Truman Doctrine and
Containment
• The Truman Doctrine required large-scale military
and economic assistance to prevent communism
from taking hold in Greece and Turkey, which in
turn lessened the Communist threat in the entire
Middle East. The Marshall Plan brought relief to
devastated European countries, ushering in an
economic recovery that made them less
susceptible to communism and opening these
countries up to new international trade
opportunities. This appropriation reversed the
postwar trend toward sharp cuts in foreign
spending and marked a new level of commitment
to the Cold War.
• For the next forty years, the ideological
conflict between capitalism and
communism determined the foreign policy
of the United States and the Soviet Union
and, later, China. The United States pursued
a policy designed to contain Communist
expansion in Europe, the Middle East, and
Asia.
• As tensions mounted, the United States
increasingly perceived Soviet expansionism
as a threat to its own interests, and a new
policy of containment began to take shape,
the most influential proponent of whom
was George F. Kennan.
• was an American advisor,
diplomat, political
scientist, and historian,
best known as "the father
of containment" and as a
key figure in the
emergence of the Cold
War. He later wrote
standard histories of the
relations between Russia
and the Western powers.
• American reaction resulted in the Truman
Doctrine, which called for large-scale
military and economic assistance in order
to prevent communism from taking hold in
Greece and Turkey which in turn lessened
the threat to the entire Middle East, making
it an early version of the “domino theory.”
• The resulting congressional appropriation
reversed the postwar trend toward sharp
cuts in foreign spending and marked a new
level of commitment to the Cold War.
• The Marshall Plan sent relief to devastated
European countries and helped to make
them less susceptible to communism; the
plan required that foreign-aid dollars be
spent on U.S. goods and services
• The Marshall Plan met with opposition in
Congress until a Communist coup occurred in
Czechoslovakia in February 1948, after which
Congress voted overwhelmingly to approve
funds for the program.
• The Marshall Plan (from its enactment,
officially the European Recovery Program
(ERP)) was the primary plan of the United
States for rebuilding the allied countries of
Europe and repelling communism after
World War II. The initiative was named for
United States Secretary of State George
Marshall and was largely the creation of
State Department officials, especially
William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan
• Map of ColdWar era Europe
showing
countries that
received
Marshall Plan
aid. The red
columns show
the relative
amount of total
aid per nation.
• The reconstruction plan was developed at a
meeting of the participating European
states in July 12 1947. The Marshall Plan
offered the same aid to the Soviet Union
and its allies, if they would make political
reforms and accept certain outside
controls. In fact, America worried that the
Soviet Union would take advantage of the
plan and therefore made the terms
deliberately hard for the USSR to accept.
• Over the next four years, the United States
contributed nearly $13 billion to a highly
successful recovery; Western European
economies revived, opening new
opportunities for international trade, while
Eastern Europe was influenced not to
participate by the Soviet Union.
• The United States, France, and Britain
initiated a program of economic reform in
West Berlin, which alarmed the Soviets,
who responded with a blockade of the city.
• Truman countered the blockade with airlifts
of food and fuel; the blockade, lifted in May
1949, made West Berlin a symbol of
resistance to communism.