Cold War relations, 1945-1991
From Alliance to Cold War
The alliance between the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain that defeated Hitler began to fracture almost as soon as the war ended. Deep ideological differences between communism and Western capitalism had never really disappeared; wartime cooperation had been driven by a common enemy, not shared values. By 1947, the wartime coalition had collapsed into the prolonged standoff known as the Cold War.
Key turning points included the Soviet refusal to allow free elections in Eastern Europe, the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 (committing the USA to containing communism), and Winston Churchill's famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946. Stalin's establishment of Soviet-backed communist governments across Eastern Europe created what Churchill described as an “iron curtain” dividing the continent.
The Cold War emerged from the breakdown of the wartime alliance between 1945 and 1947. Key markers include Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech (March 1946) and the Truman Doctrine (March 1947). By 1947 Europe was divided into Soviet-aligned East and American-aligned West.
The Warsaw Pact and NATO
In 1949, the Western powers formed NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) — a military alliance committing members to collective defence. In direct response, the Soviet Union formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. The formation of two competing military blocs institutionalised the division of Europe.
The USSR demonstrated its willingness to use force to maintain control of its satellite states when Hungary attempted to leave the Warsaw Pact in 1956. Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian uprising, killing thousands and confirming that Eastern European states had no genuine independence. A similar intervention suppressed the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia in 1968. After the Prague Spring, Brezhnev Doctrine explicitly justified intervention in any socialist country threatened by counter-revolution.
At the heart of the Cold War was the nuclear arms race. The USA had used atomic bombs against Japan in 1945; the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949 and its first hydrogen bomb in 1953. Both sides built up arsenals capable of destroying human civilisation many times over. This mutual vulnerability created a doctrine of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) that, paradoxically, made direct war less likely.
The Space Race ran alongside the arms race: the USSR launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in October 1957, shocking the Western world. Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space in April 1961. The USA responded with massive investment in NASA, eventually landing on the Moon in 1969. The Space Race had genuine scientific importance but was also a propaganda contest, with each side using achievements in space to demonstrate the superiority of their system.
Hot Spots: Berlin and Cuba
Berlin — divided between East and West since 1945 but located entirely within Soviet-controlled East Germany — was the most dangerous flashpoint of the early Cold War. From 1949 to 1961, roughly three million East Germans fled to the West through Berlin. In August 1961 East Germany, with Soviet backing, began construction of the Berlin Wall, sealing the border. The Wall remained until November 1989.
The most dangerous moment of the Cold War came during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. American U-2 spy planes discovered Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida. For thirteen days US President Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev stood at the brink of nuclear war. The crisis was resolved when the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for American pledges not to invade Cuba and a secret agreement to remove American missiles from Turkey. The crisis led both sides to establish a direct communication hotline between Washington and Moscow.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the closest the Cold War came to nuclear conflict. It was resolved when the Soviets withdrew missiles from Cuba in exchange for US guarantees not to invade Cuba and a secret agreement to remove American missiles from Turkey.
In December 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support a struggling communist government. The war quickly became a costly quagmire: Soviet forces controlled the cities but could not pacify the countryside against the American-backed mujahideen guerrilla fighters. The war lasted nine years, killing approximately 15,000 Soviet soldiers and vast numbers of Afghans, and contributing significantly to Soviet economic strain.
The invasion revived Cold War tensions after the relative relaxation of détente in the 1970s. US President Reagan accelerated American defence spending dramatically from 1981, pursuing his Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) and announcing that the USSR was an “evil empire.” This “Second Cold War” placed enormous economic pressure on a Soviet system already struggling with stagnation. Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was finally completed in February 1989 under Gorbachev.