Key Question: What did the United States and the Soviet Union disagree about in 1945?

What was the substance of those divisions?

Poland: Stalin had exploited the Red Armys occupation of Poland (1944) to set up a pro-Soviet government called the Lublin Committee and to fix Soviet boundaries with Poland where they had been in 1914. At Yalta the Polish question was revisited by Roosevelt and Churchill. They objected to the unilateral revision of Polands eastern border and asked for the inclusion of London Poles. Stalin believed that his allies had already conceded a sphere of influence to him in eastern Europe. US policies are inconsistent. Britain obtained 90% of Greece, Stalin 90% Romania and Bulgaria (Question why these areas were integral to each superpower? /How did Truman later demand back Stalins areas?). Roosevelt appeared to have endorsed a Soviet sphere of influence 1943/44 to continue to secure Soviet cooperation. Roosevelt had lied to the American public and the Houses of Congress and continued to trumpet their vision of a post-war world without spheres of influence. Perceptions of Stalin later were highly misleading expansionistic. Ambiguities of Roosevelts diplomacy not only confused Stalin but misled American public. Undertakings of promise made in Yalta raised problems of interpretation. Stalin saw the Declaration of Liberated Europe as a statement of intent and not a legally binding document. Soviet-American differences over Poland were an important cause of the Cold War. The dispute over Poland had caused an atmosphere of mistrust between the two sides Economic Reconstruction Stalin had provisionally agreed to join the IMF at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944). United States had promised USSR a post-war loan and this persuaded Stalin to go along with US plans for world economy after the war. However, the provisions of American capital to finance the rebuilding of Soviet Union soon become a contentious issue.

Main Idea: Polands political make up? Informal percentages? How did Roosevelt contribute to the misunderstandin g over Poland (2 ways)? Stalins problem of interpretation terms such as, democracy and free elections? Significance of Polish issue?

Main Idea: Dollar diplomacy, Jan 1945? Termination of Land-Lease, May 1945?

Stringent conditions placed on Dollar Diplomacy (January 1945): In January 1945, the Soviets asked for a $6 billion loan. The Americans immediately imposed conditions on such a loan, in particular the opening of eastern European markets to US manufactured products. The US was using its financial muscle to extract political concessions, known as dollar diplomacy. Termination of Land-Lease (May 1945): It was not intended as a snub to the Soviets but an economic measure. The US had been gifting dollars and equipment to its allies and Truman calculated that the American taxpayer would no longer be prepared to finance Soviet Union in peacetime. For their part, the Soviets had hoped that the flow of capital and equipment would continue at least in the short term and would lay the foundations for economic recovery in USSR. USSR made further request for a loan in August 1945 which was mysteriously lost by the State Department. It appeared to Moscow that the US was unwilling to collaborate in postwar economic reconstruction. A combination of tough conditions attached to post-war US loans, abrupt termination of Land-Lease and dispute over Poland resulted in Soviet Union boycotting both IMF and World Bank in December 1945. Soviet Unions refusal to participate in a global economic system opened up the possibility of a separate economic bloc in eastern Europe under Soviet leadership.

Stalins decision to boycott both the World Bank and IMF? Significance of economic dispute between the superpowers?

Atomic Weapons Eight days after the successful testing of the atomic bomb at the New Mexico desert, Truman casually informed Stalin that the US now possessed a new weapon of enormous destructive power. This deeply worried Stalin of Americas sole possession of the bomb the atomic monopoly. The availability of such a weapon to the US alone presaged a permanent shift in the balance of world power, and Stalin quickly authorised an accelerated atomic weapons programme in USSR. The availability of the bomb immediately influenced American attitudes towards Soviet participation in the Pacific war against Japan. By July 1945, both Truman and Secretary of State, Byrnes, hoped that the bomb would enable the US to defeat Japan without Soviet help. The Soviets would then not be able to lay territorial claims in north-east Asia. The effects from the dropping of the bomb were expected to frighten the Soviets and make them more pliable negotiating partners in the future. The US immediately attempted to turn the possession of the atom bomb into a diplomatic advantage/breakthrough. The Americans now offered information about the bomb in return for the reorganisation of Soviet-controlled governments in Romania and Bulgaria. The tacit of trading the secrets of the bomb for political concessions has been called atomic diplomacy. The bomb proved to be a blunt negotiating instrument since the Soviets refused to be intimidated, but their stance was still very much concealed fear and resentment of Americas future negotiating tactics

Significance of the dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? United States immediate attempt to turn the possession of the atom bomb into a diplomatic advantage?

Germany At Yalta, post-war Germany had been divided into four zones of occupation. Two more important decisions about Germany were taken at the Potsdam Conference: 1) Each occupying power would be entitled to take reparations from its own zone. The extent of war losses was recognised in an agreement whereby they were granted additional reparations from the three western zones in exchange for food and raw materials from the

What were the difficulties the superpowers faced in wanting to establish a joint occupation policy? Significance of the German issue in the way the superpowers

Soviet zone. The precise amount of reparations the Soviets would receive would amount to an estimated figure of $10billion. 2) The occupying powers had agreed to treat the four zones of occupation as a single economic area. Contentious issues: 1) Experienced difficulty in carrying out a joint occupation policy German coal output; an important source of disagreement. - The Soviets wanted coal from the western zones as reparations, but the Americans wanted to use German coal to assist in the economic rehabilitation of West Europe. Pessimistic Americans foresaw the dire state of distress experienced by the societies of Western Europe as an end to European civilisation and the onset of anarchy. In such circumstances, communism might sweep the continent. Soviet reparations claims had to take second place to the energy needs of the war-torn states of central and western Europe. 2) Soviet treating their zone as a self-contained economic entity. - At this stage punishment of a defeated enemy and economic exploitation were the twin principles of Soviet occupation policy. The Soviets were not supplying food and basic commodities in return for some of the reparations offered by the Allies 3) Access to the Ruhr valley Located in the Saar region economically administrated by France. Soviet Union suggested the division of the Ruhr, the same way they had for Berlin. This was strongly discouraged. The Allied forces felt that the influence of Red Army troops in Western Germany would be a threat to the rest of Western Europe **The German issue proved to be a test of the inability of superpowers to work on a daily basis. Just as each side had interpreted the Yalta accords on Poland differently, similarly they had read different meanings into the Potsdam agreements on Germany. The difficulty in implementing agreements was a significant cause of the Cold War.

implemented and interpreted agreements?