Early Cold War 1945–1949

Between 1945 and 1949 the Cold War moved from suspicion to open confrontation. In Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union used a combination of political manipulation and military presence to install communist regimes loyal to Moscow. In Western Europe, the United States responded with a new strategy of "containment", backed by economic aid and military alliance. By the end of 1949 Europe had been divided into two armed blocs, Germany had been split into two separate states, and the USSR had broken the American monopoly on atomic weapons. The framework of the Cold War was essentially complete.

This lesson covers the crucial four years between the Iron Curtain speech and the formation of NATO. It is a dense period for Edexcel 1HI0 Paper 2: the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Blockade and the creation of NATO are all likely examination topics, and you need to be able to explain the consequences of each and the connections between them.

Salami tactics and Eastern Europe

Between 1945 and 1948, one Eastern European country after another fell under communist control. Stalin's approach has been called "salami tactics" — cutting away opposition one slice at a time. Typically this involved a coalition government in which communists took the key posts (interior ministry, police), then gradually discredited, arrested or exiled non-communist politicians until the Communist Party ruled alone.

The process varied by country:

Country	Communist control established	Key feature
Albania	1945	Communist partisans already in power at liberation
Bulgaria	1946	Rigged election; opposition leader executed 1947
Poland	1947	"Government of National Unity" dominated by communists
Romania	1947	King forced to abdicate December 1947
Hungary	1948	Communist Mátyás Rákosi consolidates power
Czechoslovakia	February 1948	Communist coup; Jan Masaryk dies in fall from window

The Czechoslovak coup of February 1948 particularly alarmed the West. Czechoslovakia had been the one functioning democracy in Eastern Europe. Its loss convinced many in Washington and London that Stalin intended to extend communist rule as far as he could, and made the passage of the Marshall Plan through the US Congress much easier.

The Truman Doctrine, March 1947

In February 1947 Britain informed the United States that it could no longer afford to support the Greek government, which was fighting a civil war against communist partisans. Turkey was also under Soviet pressure over control of the Dardanelles. Truman decided that the United States would have to step in.

On 12 March 1947 Truman addressed Congress and announced what became known as the Truman Doctrine:

"It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

The immediate measure was $400 million in military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey. The wider significance was the global commitment: the United States would now support any country threatened by communism. This was the policy of containment, influenced by the American diplomat George Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow in February 1946.

The consequences of the Truman Doctrine were major:

• It formally ended American isolationism.
• It divided the world into "free peoples" (US-aligned) and communist-threatened, a framing Stalin found provocative.
• It set the pattern for future US interventions in Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere.
• It made the Cold War into a global, rather than purely European, struggle.

The Marshall Plan, June 1947

Economic containment followed political containment. In June 1947 US Secretary of State George Marshall announced a vast programme of economic aid for a war-ravaged Europe. Over the following four years, **$13 billion** was distributed to sixteen Western European countries — a huge sum, equivalent to roughly$13billion∗∗wasdistributedtosixteenWesternEuropeancountries—ahugesum,equivalenttoroughly170 billion today.

Marshall presented the plan as economic rather than political: its stated purpose was to rebuild Europe so that hunger and poverty would not drive populations towards communism. Aid was offered to all European states, including the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe. Stalin, however, saw the plan as "dollar imperialism" — an attempt to draw Eastern Europe into the American economic orbit. He refused the aid and ordered Czechoslovakia and Poland, which had shown interest, to do the same.

Consequences of the Marshall Plan included:

• Accelerated economic recovery in Western Europe, with industrial production reaching pre-war levels by 1950.
• Strengthened pro-American governments in France, Italy, West Germany and elsewhere.
• Deepened the economic divide between East and West.
• Provided a model for the political and military alliances that followed.

Cominform and the Soviet response

Stalin responded to the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan by consolidating his own bloc. In September 1947 he established Cominform (the Communist Information Bureau), a body designed to coordinate the policies of communist parties in Europe and to enforce the "Two Camps" doctrine announced by Andrei Zhdanov: one imperialist camp led by the USA, one anti-imperialist camp led by the USSR. Cominform brought discipline to Eastern European communist parties and tightened Moscow's control.

A later economic counterpart, Comecon (the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), followed in January 1949 to coordinate economic policy across the Eastern bloc — the Soviet answer to the Marshall Plan, though on a much smaller scale.