Causes & Prevention of War
THE COLD WAR AND KOREA
I.	 HOW THE COLD WAR ERUPTED: EVENTS
A. Poland and Eastern Europe:
1.	 Warsaw uprising, 1944. Stalin induces the Polish non-communists into a
futile rebellion against Hitler, then watches inertly while Hitler
slaughters them. Americans wonder what else Stalin intends.
2. Stalin makes a vague promise at Yalta (Feb. 1945) to allow democracy in
Poland; then he imposes communism instead.
B. Iran 1946: Stalin won't leave northern Iran until he is pressured.
C. Turkey 1946: Stalin says he wants some Turkish territory; instead Truman
sends the Missouri to the Mediterranean, a threatening show of force.
D.	 Greece 1947: the West thought Stalin was instigating the Communist revolution
in Greece. (He wasn't. Yugoslavia's communist Tito government was aiding
the Greek communists, but not Stalin.)
E. Berlin Crisis of 1948-1949--an outgrowth of the struggle for Germany.
F.	 Military aspects:
1. The illusion of Soviet military superiority. American intelligence and
the Western press depicted a vast Soviet conventional superiority in
Europe and downplayed the implications of the American atomic monopoly.
Hence a Soviet threat that was largely political--the Soviets had some
capacity to disrupt or subvert Western Europe--was also perceived as
2. The Soviet atomic bomb explodes, September 1949. Now the West is really
scared. What if Stalin isn't deterrable?
Western responses: the Marshall Plan (1947); the Berlin airlift (1948-49); the
formation of NATO (1949); and a vast American military buildup (1950-53). This
triggered a large Soviet counter-buildup.
II. WHAT CAUSED THE COLD WAR? WHO CAUSED THE COLD WAR? SIX EXPLANATIONS
A.	 Communist totalitarian expansionism? "The totalitarian Soviets were the
aggressor, the democratic West the defender. Soviet aggression sprang from
the aggressiveness of Communist political systems. Communist governments
are aggressive either because they are (a) inherently messianic--Communist