Lesson video

Why did the USA and the USSR enter a cold war.

So remember the USSR, means the Soviet Union or Russia and the sort of Soviet states, the states around Russia.

So our lesson looks like this today.

We are going to first of all look at two new super powers that emerge after the second World War.

We'll look at two conferences called Yalta and Potsdam.

We're looking at something called the Iron Curtain, the Truman Doctrine and then our end of lesson quiz.

So who are these two new superpowers? Well, after the second World War there was this power vacuum, Germany had dominated central Europe.

The rest of countries in Europe have been devastated by the war.

They had no money left so many of their young men have been killed and so they were struggling to rebuild their own economies and countries and infrastructure.

And so the countries that emerged out of this as superpowers are the USA and the USSR, the Soviet Union.

They still have lots of men and lots of money and not much fighting has happened on their land.

So the USA, their flag looks like this and the Soviet Union at the time, look like this.

So we now call that country Russia, because the USSR ended, we'll get to that at the end of the cold war, it collapsed.

The USA and the USSR at this point, after the second World War had very different ideas of how the world should be.

We sometimes call this an ideology.

Your ideology is the way that you think the way that you think things should be, the way that you think that the world should be, the way you think it should be organised.

And the USSR and the USA had very different ideas about that.

So let's look at the economy, for example, well the USA thought that the economy should be capitalist.

And what that means is that people can trade with each of those as much as they want to they can make as much money as they like, the USSR didn't agree.

They thought that it should be communist and they had a communist revolution in 1917 and have been a communist country ever since, so they actually left the first World War because they had a communist revolution, where they said, "Look, it shouldn't be the case that some people can be fantastically rich and other people desperately poor.

That shouldn't be the way the world or a country is organised.

Everybody should have roughly the same amount of money, and so what should happen with the money of a country it should be all sort of like put together all the resources of the country, put together and shared out amongst the people equally." Two different ways of thinking.

Politics.

The USA and the west, the western European countries believed in democracy that there should be elections that are regular every four or five years there's an election.

They're free, people can choose whatever they like and they're really carefully regulated and police so we can choose who's our government, who's our leader, and people don't get to be in charge for too long.

In the USSR it's different because they have this idea of communism.

They felt like they need dictatorship or one party.

They just need one group of leaders who are going to be in charge and don't give people a vote.

They don't need to vote because they've got leaders that are looking after everybody.

In terms of individual rights, there are differences in rights in those countries so then the USA and what sometimes called the free west.

There's a huge emphasis on liberty, freedom, people being able to choose to do whatever they like as long as it doesn't infringe on other people's rights.

So I should be able to do whatever I like, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.

The USSR, communist countries they're not so interested in individual rights.

It's more about the rights of the whole nation so individuals don't get as much freedom because it can benefit the whole nation when people don't have so many rights.

So have a look at that 'cause I'm going to ask, and I'm going to release up now and ask you to organise the two ideologies between the USA and the USSR because these competing ideologies the reason the cold war begins.

So first of all, there was this idea around the government shouldn't interfere with people's rights.

Was that the USA or the USSR? So draw the USA and the USSR on your page, and then underneath the correct one, the correct country write where that belongs.

Did the USA believe ideologically, that the government shouldn't interfere with people's rights unless it's absolutely necessary or is that the USSR? What about this word, communism? The state owns everything and they share it amongst the people.

What about this one, democracy? It's regular free elections where people can choose their leader or leaders.

Who believes in capitalism? The people can privately trade with each other and make as much money as you want and competition will mean that things stay as cheap as possible and everybody has the opportunity to make money if they work hard enough.

Which ideology felt that individual rights were not as important as collective rights? Individual rights were not important, and which country relied on a dictatorship or one party nation.

Try and organise those now, pause the video and see if you can organise those now, just really important you understand those two different ideologies.

Super.

I'm going to now shift them, so that they're under the correct category, lets see if you've got that right.

So give yourself a tick, if you've got it right put a neat line through it and re-organize it if you've got it wrong.

Great work, everybody already got you're working hard on ideological differences of nation states.

That is tough stuff, well done for sticking with it and well done for understanding how people see the world and this is true of people now, people have different ideologies.

They see the world in different ways and that can cause conflict.

If you think that the, if you're a communist and you think that the state should own all property and that should be distributed amongst people fairly and evenly and somebody else caps this and they say, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I should be able to make as much money as I want as long as I work hard enough the state shouldn't be taking that money off of me.

What right do they have to take away my property? That means if there are two different people they're going to butt heads they're going to be in conflict and when you've got two powerful nations with nuclear bombs that feel that way well, the stakes just get raised even higher.

So we're going to flick now to two conferences, Yalta and Potsdam.

So Yalta and Potsdam are the names of two places and they are places that conferences happened.

It was actually, so Yalta happened during the second World War, and it's where the leaders of the allies met and decided what to do with Europe after the second World War is over.

So once they realised that they were going to win the second World War they started to make some plans for what they would do and just like in World War one, we had the big three.

Do you remember the big three in World War one? See if you can remember the three, big three, for Great Britain there was.

Good, David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of France, excellent, Georges Clemenceau and who was the last one of the big three, we have David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, we had the Prime Minister of France, Georges Clemenceau and the last one was the American President, who was Woodrow Wilson, well done.

The big three France, Britain and the USA for World War one made the Treaty of Versailles, this time it was Great Britain, the USSR and the USA, the three main allied countries who had led to the victory against Germany and the leaders of those countries towards the end of the war were these three, Winston Churchill on the leftover there, the Prime Minister of Great Britain in the middle, FDR or Franklin D Roosevelt, the President of the United States and on the right, Joseph Stalin who was, his title is General Secretary but that means sort of leader, it's the equivalent of the President within the Soviet Union, which was Russia and the other sort of communist states around it and they met, you can see the meeting here at Yalta, and they met to agree what would happen with Europe after the war, after we defeat Germany, "What shall we do?" And they made a number of agreements.

They said, first of all, Germany needs to be divided up so we divide it up into four areas and the USA will control one area.

Britain will control another area and the USSR will control a third area and France will control the fourth area.

Berlin the capital city of Germany was in the USSR zone but it will be divided into four parts with those countries the USA, Britain, USSR, and France all controlling a bit of the capital.

They scrapped the League of Nations.

The League of Nations was Woodrow Wilson's big idea to keep peace in Europe, obviously utterly failed because the second World War broke out.

One of the reasons it failed was because it was toothless.

It wasn't able to stop Germany going to war with the rest of Europe because it didn't have an army so it can't actually stop anybody, so they said, "Let's scrap the League of Nations and we'll replace it with something beefier we'll replace it with something stronger and they called it the United Nations, a partnership of different countries called the United Nations.

They decided that they should allow free elections across Eastern Europe, so all of those countries near the Soviet Union, they should be allowed to have elections.

The USSR agreed that they would help fight Japan after Germany was defeated so it helped the USA fight Japan after Germany was defeated and then the USSR would get some land back in Asia that they'd lost, so the East side of Russia borders onto Asia and countries like China and so it was decided that some of the land that they'd lost in some wars previously, they would get that back as long as they agreed to allow free elections in Eastern Europe and to help fight the Japanese.

So a little question to see if you can process all of this, I'm going to ask you to recall as much as you can about what was agreed at Yalta.

If you want to, you can pause a video and read it through again before I asked you that question, but these are the big things that were agreed towards the end of the war.

So the question I have for you is at the Yalta conference, the Big Three agreed on many things including, pause the video and write down as many as you can remember now.

Super, so give yourself a tick if you mentioned that they were going to divide Germany up, that they were divide Berlin, the capital city in Germany even though it was in USSR was part, that they were going to create a new organisation called the United Nations, that they will allow free elections in Eastern Europe, that the USSR would fight Japan, and they would then get land back in Asia.

Well done if you've got those, you can add some if you want to.

So this, then this map here, if you take a closer look at this, this shows Germany following that division so you can see here that it's been divided into different parts.

So Americans have this part here, France have this part here, Britain have this part here, and the Soviet union have this part here, and this little bit is not coloured in because that's Berlin and Berlin is divided into four parts where again, America, France, Britain and the Soviet Union is each having a bit of the capitol city because it was so important.

Let's zoom into Berlin, so Berlin looked like this on the Eastern side, Soviet Union.

The Americans getting the South, the British over in the west and the French on the north.

So we now have the Soviet Union who see the world very differently to the west have different ideology, having the east side of Berlin and also the east side of Germany and Germany became then known as two countries, West Germany and East Germany.

Berlin's divided as well, but in the Soviet zone and they're right next to each other.

So my question now for you is how could that have caused, how might that division of Germany, including Berlin have caused tension in Europe, now you have the Soviet Union, those western powers right next to each other.

How might that then caused tension in Europe? Pause the video and write your best answer.

Okay, so I'm going to show you what I wrote for this answer and you can use this model to try and improve your answer or it may well be that you've gone beyond what I put in which case, fantastic.

Take a photo, ask your parents or carers to put it on Twitter, I'd love to read it.

So here it is, I said the west and the USSR, so I'm using the west to mean the United States and western nations, the west and the USSR had very different ideologies.

I'm using that technical vocabulary of ideologies, since they controlled land right next to each other they might want to influence how other countries lived and operated.

This could eventually cause conflict.

Have a look at your answer give yourself a tick if you put any of those sorts of ideas you can always improve it if you didn't.

So what this meant is that, Winston Churchill called an Iron Curtain descended across Europe, so not a real Iron Curtain, of course but I sort of a line occurred and going down Europe with the Soviet Union on one side, communists on one side and the rest of the western European states on the other side.

These two different ideologies were divided by this curtain that was so strong, so difficult to penetrate.

It's like it was made of iron and immediately the two different sides start to team up as we've seen before so the western countries create something called NATO which still exists today, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

We've heard about treaties before they make an agreement.

If anybody attacks one of us then the rest of us will attack back, and the USSR were not invited to be part of NATO.

Instead it was Belgium, Canada, Denmark France, Iceland, Italy, all the countries in Europe and the North Atlantic, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and then United Kingdom, the United States two main members of NATO.

Russia weren't invited, the Soviet Union weren't invited to be involved and the USSR break their promise that they made at Yalta.

So you'll remember, they promised that they would allow free elections in the Eastern European countries.

They don't allow that instead they encourage revolutions within Eastern Europe, communist revolutions so that those countries become communist as well and part of their Soviet Union, part of their little communist empire and so you can see the division here.

You can see that on this side, the blue side they're the members of NATO, all of these countries are in blue are members of NATO, western countries with our ideology of freedom, democracy, liberty, capitalism.

And on the red side here, the Soviet Union.

With all of these countries becoming communists, beginning with just Russia and then the USSR begins to expand and it becomes a Union of Soviet or communist republics and Hitler famously said, "There's an iron curtain going across Europe, so where is the iron curtain? Where's that division? Run your finger now across the map, tracing the Iron Curtain that Churchill, Winston Churchill was talking about.

Okay, so your fingers should have gone down here the division across Germany and out down towards the South here, that's the Iron Curtain that was the two different sides.

So how did the western powers respond to this? Well, one of the ways was something called the Truman Doctrine.

So FDR, as we know, died, the American president, he died before the end of the war.

The USSR broke some of the Yalta conference promises, the USA didn't tell the USSR that they had a nuclear bomb even though they were on the same side and so another conference is called, but by this time the relationship has really broken down, and so Harry Truman, the new US President has a plan.

Can you guess what his plan was? He's worried about this situation in Europe.

He's worried about these nations that they're worried sometimes about like a domino effect that we've already lost this country here to communism and then this country here, if this country goes then this country goes and eventually the whole place becomes communist.

So how can he protect these countries without causing a war? Well, the Truman Doctrine was based on something called a Marshall Plan.

So within the Truman documents, a Marshall plan, and this was basically to give, the plan was give loads of money and weapons to those countries so they don't need communism because they're so rich without it that they won't be persuaded to become communists and if somebody tries to force them to be communists by for example, trying to have a revolution, they'll have enough weapons to stop that from happening.

So we're going to do a bit of reading now, if you want to, you can pause and read and I'll read to you in case you are on a screen that's too small.

So the Marshall plan, western powers, and in particular the USA were worried that Stalin would continue to expand and that communism would take over in Europe.

In different countries, the USSR was encouraging and supporting communist revolutions.

So remember Stalin was in charge of the USSR, that union of communist countries and they were encouraging more communist revolutions.

This led to President Truman to come up with a plan called the Truman Doctrine.

The USA chose to give lots of money and resources to any country that might be taken over by communists.

For example, in 1947, the USA gave Greece and Turkey $400 million as well as weapons to fight communists attempting to gain power in those countries.

In total, the Marshall plan gave $17 billion to European countries that's how much they wanted to stop that communism from spreading and that was their plan.

I'm going to ask you some questions now based on this bit of text, if you want to pause it and read it through again, you can, otherwise we'll move on to this next task.

So some sentences for you to copy, however, there are two different choices in each of the sentences.

It could be the USA was hoping that communism would take over all of Europe or it could be the USA was worried that communism would take over all of Europe.

You need to write the sentence choosing just the correct words.

So leaving out the incorrect word there and then do the same for this sentence and this sentence and this sentence.

The four sentences to write, choosing the correct option in each one, pause the video and have a go at that now.

Great.

Well done.

Let's have a look at some answers and let's see if you've got those correct.

So the USA was worried that communism would take over all of Europe tick your answer if you got that correct.

Well done.

The USSR was encouraging communist revolutions across Eastern Europe.

The USSR wanted countries to become communist.

So they were encouraging that, tick that if you got it right, well done.

That way, if you got it wrong, well edited it.

The USA gave a lot of money and resources to many countries in Europe and the Marshall Plan gave $17 billion to European countries.

So I'd just like to return to this map here, because you remember that we had West Germany and East Germany, but within East Germany, there was Berlin.

Within East Germany, there was the capital and that was divided into the western powers; Britain, France, and America and the Soviet powers.

Now the Soviet and the western powers were unhappy with each other.

They were trying to get communist revolutions going, giving money and weapons, not in directly fighting but allowing fighting to happen on behalf of the ideologies, and so, Stalin choose to do something to try and stop the western powers, having Berlin and having such a good time in Berlin with all of that money he chooses to blockade or block any supplies coming in, so previously the Americans, the British, the French they were driving trucks and taking money and food and all sorts of lovely things to their parts of Berlin and people in Berlin could see how good it was.

People in Soviet Berlin and East Berlin, they could see how good it was all of this money in this better standard of life.

And so they were starting to get worried about this and upset about this and lots of them were actually leaving and they were saying, "Well I'm not going to live in the Soviet part.

It's not as nice, you don't have as much money to what sometimes called the brain drain where all the good brains left the Eastern side, the Soviet side, the Soviets didn't want this, Stalin didn't want this and so he's decided to block it.

This was in 1948 just three years after the second World War.

Stalin decided to block supplies coming from West Germany into West Berlin.

This became known as the Berlin Blockade and it was Stalin's attempt to gain complete control of Berlin, with the people in West Berlin starving the USA and western powers had to act quickly.

So what do you think they did? We've got this predicament, haven't we? The Soviets now stopping deliberately blocking the food coming in, their people starving.

So what would the West do? What would the USA do given these nuclear weapons that are around, given the fact that we've just had a World War? Well, what do you think? Maybe imagine you're in charge, you're the president.

What would you do? So how do you think the western powers responded to the Berlin Blockade? Write down your prediction, pause, before I tell you, pause the video and write down what your prediction is for what the President did.

Did you predict that they went to war? Wrong.

Did you predict that they sent soldiers? Wrong.

Did you predict that they use nuclear bomb, Wrong.

Those two nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The only two nuclear bombs that have ever been used in warfare.

The President of the western powers did something quite clever.

They didn't want to provoke a war.

They didn't want to create a conflict because they knew how damaging that could be.

It could create another huge World War and so instead what they did, is they did something called the Berlin Airlift.

They sent their planes over to Berlin, but instead of dropping bombs, they dropped food and supplies.

Now the USSR could block the trucks but it couldn't stop the planes going.

The only way Stalin could have stop the planes was by shooting them down and that would have been so aggressive that that would have been an act of war and that would have created a war.

So the Americans and the western powers bet that if they sent planes Stalin wouldn't shoot them down.

He'll stop their trucks and they'll turn them away 'cause that's not that aggressive but he wouldn't shoot planes down and so they sent their planes and you can see them here with the people saying, thank you.

They sent their planes and they dropped 8,000 tonnes of food and supplies and all sorts of things that people in West Berlin needed, every single day.

They did that for months.

That way they had people still got what they needed.

Communism didn't take over and they didn't cause a war.