Origins of the Cold War 1941–1949

Martin McCauley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000406245
• Edition: 5
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Now in its fifth edition, Origins of the Cold War 1941 – 1949 covers the formative years of the momentous struggle that developed between two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.

This accessible text explains how the Cold War originated and developed between 1941 and 1949 and involved the entire globe, with proxy wars being fought much to the detriment of the developing world. The fifth edition is revised, updated and expanded to include new material on topics such as the efforts of the Soviet Union, the UK and France to prevent the outbreak of World War II; the reasons behind the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; atomic diplomacy and the role played by Soviet spies in the West; the culture wars and propaganda; Churchill's efforts to entice the US into the war against Germany; the role of Hollywood in promoting intervention; the US's insouciance concerning the danger of a Japanese attack; the astonishing success of the Soviet Union in recruiting high level American officials to provide invaluable information on politics, science, engineering and avionics; and more. Incorporating the most recent scholarship, Martin McCauley provides students with an invaluable introduction to a fascinating period that shaped today's world.

The book is an important staple for courses on modern global history and international affairs.

Part I
The background

1 The background

Socialism before 1917

The Industrial Revolution first appeared in Great Britain in the second half of the 18th century and had matured by the 1840s. It was spread to France and Germany in the first half of the 19th century and afterwards to the United States and other parts of the world by immigrants from Europe. Russia came late to industrialisation, in the 1880s, meeting fierce resistance from those who favoured a traditional society based on the rural commune. One of the most powerful objections was it greatly expanded inequality in society. The economic base which promoted industrialisation was called capitalism. It transformed society by drawing peasants from the countryside to become labourers and skilled workers in towns, and it broke down barriers between regions and nationalities and eventually attracted immigrants from abroad.

In The Communist Manifesto, published in February 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels regarded capitalism as a positive phenomenon, a necessary stage in the evolution of human society. Primitive capitalism would morph into developed capitalism not only in the rest of Europe but eventually the whole world. The capitalist, in order to prosper and expand would pay labour less than the value of the goods it produced. Hence labour was exploited, and wages were kept low by a constant influx of labour from the countryside and abroad. There were two classes: the entrepreneurs or industrialists, called capitalists, and workers.

Workers, collectively the proletariat or those who sell their labour for money, produced the wealth of the country but reaped meagre rewards. As the domestic market was too small to consume all the goods produced, foreign markets had to be found and they were also a source of vital raw materials. The need to secure these markets led to the expansion of imperialism and colonialism. Hence capitalism, by its very nature, is imperialist, defined as occupying foreign territories for the benefit of the home country.

Cut throat competition among capitalists led to some accumulating great wealth and, in turn, political influence. Marx saw developed capitalism as state monopoly capitalism where the barons of industry run the state in their own interests, and he predicted that in doing so they were digging their own graves.

Marx saw capitalism developing to a point where there would be a small number of huge enterprises, a mass army of the unemployed, and the internal contradictions of capitalism (the need to force down wages, thus reducing the purchasing power of the population and the imperative to find more foreign markets) would permit the proletariat eventually to strike and take power, consigning capitalists to the rubbish bin of history. Workers would take over factories and land and run them in the interests, not of the few, but of everyone. The new society would be socialist where the means of production, distribution and exchange would be run by the proletariat. All private property would become communal property and there would be no need for a police or military force. Crime was viewed as originating in private property and with the elimination of the latter crime would fade away. There would be no need for government as all communities would be self-administered. All a person’s needs would be met, social justice would prevail and there would be no discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnic identity or ability. Everybody would eventually become equal. It would be paradise on earth.

The above would be the second or higher stage of development: the first, or lower stage, being socialism where everyone would be rewarded according to their contribution to society. It follows there would be inequality under socialism. As the economy expanded, the higher stage would follow. No wonder the above vision was wildly popular the more exploited, down trodden and miserable one felt. It was like a Hollywood movie come true. Those on the margins of society could look forward to becoming a member of the elite. And, into the bargain, it was international, one big, harmonious, happy family. Middle-class rebels could also join and saw themselves as qualified to lead the proletariat to the Promised Land.

Socialism had its origins in the French Revolution, and the first socialist experiment was the Paris Commune of 1871. It was put down in rivers of blood by the French state and such was the bloodletting that it was difficult to find a plumber in Paris afterwards. Baron Hausmann subsequently rebuilt Paris with very wide boulevards to ensure that barricades could not easily be built.

The conclusion which Marx drew from the debacle was that it was a premature revolution because a class-conscious proletariat had not emerged but had cleared the path for a harsh bourgeois dictatorship to emerge, leaving the proletariat worse off than before.

The first great downturn of capitalism occurred in Europe in the 1890s and led to two strands of socialism emerging. One, now called social democracy, accepted the capitalist state and sought to improve the life of workers within it. This was gradualism. The other advocated revolution and the overthrow of the bourgeois state and argued that the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class which owns most of society’s wealth and means of production) would never weaken its hold on the state unless it was wrestled violently from it and capitalism thereby abolished. These were later called communists.

Rus to Russia

Rus’s first capital was Kiev but then the Mongol invasion forced the rulers and much of the population to move north; the Grand Principality of Moscow emerged as the strongest entity. What the Russians call the ‘Mongol-Tatar yoke’ lasted from 1240 to 1480 with the Prince repairing to the Mongol capital yearly to report on his administration, pay tribute and receive a yarlik to reign for another year. If the Great Khan did not like what he heard, the Prince did not return. Afterwards Muscovy was strong enough to expand, and Ivan IV was crowned in 1547, acquiring the title of Tsar, and the Tsardom of Russia was proclaimed. Russia eventually reached the Pacific Ocean and concluded its first treaty with China, the Treaty of Nerchinsk, in 1689, and moved into the Caucasus and Central Asia in the 19th century. It thus became an empire, holding sway over many different nationalities, and was the largest country in the world.

The United States of America before 1914

The United States expanded rapidly after securing independence from Great Britain in 1776, taking over territory previously held by France and Spain, and later bought Alaska from Russia. After its defeat in the Spanish–American war of 1898, Spain ceded the Philippines but a year later local forces tried to regain independence but were again defeated with the Americans losing over 4,000 men and the Filipinos five times that number. Over 200,000 civilians also died during the brutal conflict which ended in 1902.

Thereby, America acquired a colonial empire that encompassed the former Spanish Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Many Americans were unhappy that the United States was following in the footsteps of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia and Japan, and engaging in imperialism and colonialism. One argument was that if the United States did not do so, other powers would take over. A more convincing argument was that it opened up opportunities for American business, and there was the view that the locals were incapable of ruling themselves, thus ignoring the fact that they had been ruling themselves for centuries.

Europe

In Europe, before 1914, the way to resolve a conflict was to go to war. Germany became very concerned about the economic and military advance of Russia and Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Chancellor, thought that if this continued for several years, Russia could not be defeated militarily. A war in the near future was therefore desirable but Russia must be seen as the aggressor. Russia made the mistake of mobilising first, in July 1914, and set in train events which led to the First World War. Some military commentators judge that if the war had started in 1917, Russia would not have been defeated. The Russian High Command even believed, in 1914, that Germany could be beaten, a catastrophic misjudgement. The tragedy was that Germany did not need to go to war to secure primacy in Europe as it was the leading scientific, technological and industrial power, not only in Europe but in the world. Was Russia a military threat to Germany in 1914? No. Russia had only intervened outside its borders in the past as a member of a military coalition – it occupied Berlin, in 1760, during the Seven Years’ War and Paris, in 1815, to defeat Napoleon.

The outbreak of the First World War has been intensely studied as it appeared to be an ‘accidental’ war. Historians are frustrated by the fact that the most valuable German documents relating to the month of July 1914 were destroyed and it is therefore impossible to work out precisely why war broke out in August 1914.

The United States of America after 1914

In 1914, the United States was already a world power but was in two minds about how to exercise that power. Should it intervene abroad to promote the values of American life: democracy, free markets and the rule of law? In order for the US economy to expand foreign markets were needed. Would foreign countries welcome American investment and the new industrial technologies which were proving so successful at home? Would dynamic American capitalism not undermine the ruling elites in those countries? Surely, they would resist American encroachment and draw the US into military conflicts. Was the grand vision of a world full of states imitating the US worth the candle? The other view was that, as most of the ruling economic and political elites were of European origin, America should not become involved in the squabbles of a continent which the immigrants had gratefully left behind. Isolationism was the more sensible policy. The US should stand apart from other countries’ wars, wait for them to end and then benefit from the results, and it did not need to waste resources on a large land army as there was no threat in the north from Canada and the US could and indeed did intervene in Mexico to protect the nation’s interests. There was no need for a blue water navy as the Pacific and Atlantic oceans provided a cordon sanitaire.

Russia

Russia, in 1914, was experiencing rapid economic growth and a flowering of culture which embraced literature, art, music and ballet. The first airplane appeared as did the first submarine, and French and German influence was growing. However, the Tsar and his ministers were not keeping pace with these rapid changes in the minds of the educated and less well educated. The Tsar still regarded himself as an autocratic ruler who, before God, was responsible for everything and everybody in the Russian empire. The 1905 revolution, which included defeat by Japan, had forced him to issue a Manifesto promising a parliament – a Duma – and some civil liberties. Afterwards his ministers gradually strangled the Duma and attempted to suppress dissent. No wonder there was a general feeling among educated society that an explosion was coming.

The Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party was set up in Minsk, in 1898, the result of a merger of various Marxist organisations and the Jewish Bund, but it split, in 1903, into Bolsheviks (the majority faction) and Mensheviks (the minority). They fell out over who should be a member, with the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, maintaining that it should only be a party of professional activists and the Mensheviks taking the normal European social democratic view that anyone who supported the party manifesto could be a member. The Okhrana (secret police) ensured that most Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were forced abroad or incarcerated in Russia. Given that Russia was only just industrialising, the working class was very small.

President Woodrow Wilson

When war broke out, President Wilson immediately sided with the Entente powers (led by Great Britain, France and Russia) against the Central Powers (headed by Germany and Austria-Hungary) (his family was descended from Ulster Protestants). He also believed the US had a mission to solve the problems of the world. However, most Americans had no desire to become embroiled in a European civil war, but Germany provided the pretext for US involvement by its attacks on Allied shipping crossing the Atlantic.

Wilson thought that white Americans and West Europeans were best suited to solving the world’s problems and East Europeans, Russians, Latin Americans, Asians and Africans could be tutored and led to accept that his vision was not only in America’s interest but also in everyone else’s worldwide. The League of Nations, based in neutral Switzerland, would be the institution which would legitimise this vision. Koreans asked for a clause in the League’s charter to include the statement that all races were equal, but this was rejected. Wilson suffered a catastrophic blow when, in November 1919, a Republican dominated Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles which Wilson had played a key role in drafting and had signed. This meant that it rejected the League of Nations as well. Even more embarrassing for Wilson, the US declined to become a member on the basis that the Treaty infringed US sovereignty. In other words, America might be prevented from acting in its own national interest in the future. The refusal of the US to join fatally weakened the League because it never had the military power to enforce the implementation of its decisions. After the League had failed to counter Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, a diplomat, at a reception amid the sound of popping champagne corks, commented wryly: ‘Listen to the artillery of the League of Nations!’

The Marxists

The war deepened the divide among Marxists with the moderate left – social democrats – reluctantly siding with their national governments but the radical left – Bolsheviks and others in Germany, France and Italy – condemning it as an ‘imperialist war, a war of capitalist domination of world markets and for the political domination of important colonies in the interests of industrial and financial capital’. These are the words of Karl Liebknecht who became, with Rosa Luxemburg, the founders of the KPD (Communist Party of Germany), in December 1918. The Mensheviks concluded that it was the lesser of two evils to defend the motherland against foreign aggression (called defensism) despite the fact that Russia had begun the war by attacking Germany in East Prussia and had suffered a humiliating defeat. Lenin believed that the defeat of Russia would result in the downfall of the tsarist autocracy and usher in a bourgeois revolution. This is what happened, in February 1917. One of those who enthusiastically welcomed it was President Wilson. Berlin provided the Bolsheviks with finance to promote their anti-war cause and helped Lenin to return to Petrograd (the new name of St Petersburg which sounded too German but was actually Dutch), in April 1917.

The October Revolution and Lenin’s Revolution from above

The new Russian government decided to continue the war, but a disastrous June 1917 offensive discredited it and the Bolshevik slogan of peace, land and bread eventually swept them to power in the October Revolution. The moderate socialists and their allies foolishly left the Second Congress of Soviets (in which they had a majority) in protest against the Bolshevik use of violence to secure primacy. The grateful Bolsheviks passed a land decree which abolished private property and distributed the landed estates among the peasantry, and a peace decree which declared an end to the war, and formed a government. Civil war descended on the country in the summer of 1918 (the Bolsheviks were the Reds and their opponents the Whites) and lasted until 1920. Trotsky was the brilliant organiser of the Red Army and deployed brutal tactics to overcome the Whites. Stalin was even more violent than Trotsky as they competed for Lenin’s support. A cluster of countries, including Great Britain and the United States, intervened on the side of the Whites but to no avail.

The impact of the October Revolution on Europe and the rest of the world

The Bolshevik Revolution terrified European ruling elites as the Bolsheviks preached violent revolution throughout Europe. The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires had expired as well as the Russian empire. Gross Domestic Product had declined in France by about 40 per cent and in Germany by over 75 per cent. Lenin did not believe that the Bolsheviks could retain power in Russia unless there were socialist revolutions elsewhere in Europe, with the key country being Germany, and he expected Berlin to become the socialist capital of Europe. The German comrades would then help to industrialise Russia. The Polish defeat of the Red Army, dubbed the ‘miracle of the Vistula’, in 1920, during the Polish–Soviet war of 1919–21, halted the communist advance. Had the Red Army taken Poland, the door to Berlin would have been open. The Bolsheviks had called on Polish workers and peasants to join them, but the Poles viewed them as imperialist aggressors.

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated in January 1919 by Freikorps officers during a communist (Spartacus League) uprising, and this severely weakened the communists. Communists did seize power in Munich and proclaim the Bavarian Soviet Republic, in April 1919, but it was put down in blood the following month (Hitler sided with them but changed sides after their defeat) and the Hungarian Soviet Republic, set up in March 1919, was quashed by Romanian troops in August 1919. There were uprisings in Bremen, the Ruhr, Rhineland, Saxony, Hamburg and Thuringia but were quickly suppressed and it was only in 1923 that the spectre of communism faded away.

Rosa Luxemburg had been a sharp critic of Lenin’s seizure of power which she saw not as a dictatorship of the proletariat but as a dictatorship of a political elite. This was an important point as Marx had warned against a premature revolution, meaning an attempt to seize power before a class-conscious proletariat had...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Chronology
• Who’s who
• Maps
• PART I     The background
• PART II     Descriptive analysis
• PART III     Assessment
• PART IV     Documents
• Further reading
• References
• Index