A-Level History coursework focusing on the Cold War and whether the USA or the Soviet Union were to blame for its beginnings. This essay achieved 38 marks of 40 which equates to an A* grade for the essay. The essay uses 3 key chosen works alongside references to other supplementary historians/sourc...
Assignment title: Historians have disagreed about the causes of the Cold War.
What is your view about the causes of the Cold War?
With reference to three chosen works:
● analyse the ways in which interpretations of the question, problem or issue
differ
● explain the differences you have identified
● evaluate the arguments, indicating which you found most persuasive and
explaining your judgements.
Different historians take different stances on the Cold War; however, one of the most
common arguments is about whether to blame the USSR or the USA for the
causation of the Cold War. Typically, a historian either blames one nation or the
other, although some historians prefer to look at both sides and their actions in detail
and aren’t so clear about which nation they feel should be blamed. In this essay I will
take a look at three historians who represent a range of these opinions about the
causes of the Cold War and will compare and contrast these historians’ differing and
sometimes opposing viewpoints on the causes of the Cold War. I will be looking at
Sherwin and his ideas about the significance of the atomic bomb in the lead up to the
Cold War, I will study McCauley’s ideas about how the Soviets weren’t trying to be
an aggressive and very expansive country and finally, I will look at Schlesinger’s
opinion on the USSR and his views about how the Soviets wanting to spread
Communism led in part to the Cold War breaking out. Whilst looking at each
historian’s own viewpoints in general, I will also focus on three key factors of the
build-up to the Cold War in order to better map out where the historians lie on the
spectrum of opinions about the causes of the Cold War. I will look at the actual and
perceived national interests of each side, the personalities of the leaders as well as
the core of some of the conflict: the two nations’ beloved political ideologies of
capitalism and communism respectively.
Sherwin focuses a lot on the Anglo-American development of the atomic bomb in the
early 1940s, which allows us to look at how Sherwin assesses the USA’s national
interests in regard to the atomic bomb and how this played a role in triggering the
Cold War. Sherwin discusses how Roosevelt was encouraged to “maintain the
Anglo-American atomic monopoly” as a diplomatic counter to the “post-war
ambitions of other nations”. In other words, Churchill wanted Roosevelt and the USA
to continue exclusively working with him and Britain on the atomic bomb in order to
be better prepared for the possible post-war fallout with the USSR. However,
Roosevelt had also been advised by a number of scientists to do his best not to use
the atomic bomb as a policy because they realised that there could be monumental
consequences to doing this. So, whilst Roosevelt knew he always had the security of
atomic ammunition, he did his best to sustain an “amicable relationship” with the
USSR for after the war. At this point it did seem as though the national interest of the
USA was to keep this relationship healthy to avoid any sort of dangerous nuclear
fallout from the war and ambitions of the USSR. The change in this ambition of the
Americans comes along with Truman becoming President. After Roosevelt died in
April 1945, his Vice-President, Truman became President and was considerably
more anti-Soviet than Roosevelt had been and didn’t seem so focused on keeping a
good relationship with the Soviets after the war. In August of the same year Truman
, dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively in Japan as a
retaliation to the Pearl Harbour bombings which took place in 1941. Sherwin would
possibly argue that this was much more than just a necessary act of war but rather a
threatening warning for other countries from the USA, specifically the Soviet Union.
Truman had always been very clearly opposed to the USSR and their ideas of
socialism needing to be worldwide. While the Soviets had actually become much
less expansionist during the war, Truman still seemed to believe strongly that they
were going to try and take over the Western World, which certainly could’ve pushed
him to drop two atomic bombs in an attempt to frighten the USSR and Stalin. At this
instance, under Truman, the national interests of the USA seemed to be focused
around nullifying any threat of Soviet expansion.
McCauley would agree with Sherwin that Truman could certainly have been trying to
scare the Soviets into submission with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
McCauley would blame this on a misconception that Truman might have had about
the national interests of the USSR being very expansionist and aggressive with this
expansion. McCauley, however, focuses on the actual national interests of the
Soviets. McCauley notes how “Reparations were held to be of key importance by the
Soviets” while they were something that held “no significance” for the US economy
which had already begun to thrive thanks to the war. The lack of importance of the
reparations to the USA showed how their economy was strong in comparison to that
of the USSR who needed the reparations quite a lot more. This made the Soviets
feel less safe than they would’ve liked to have been about their national security.
This fear of a lack of security led to the Soviets and Stalin in particular began again
to place people in labour camps and impose Stalinism upon the USSR on a tighter
level than had been maintained during the war. McCauley puts this down to the fact
that the USSR felt they “should conduct a prudent a foreign policy, one which
secured maximum advantage without involving the country in any new conflict”. The
Soviets achieved this newer level of security by mobilising all of their resources and
forces, utilising strengths like the Red Army to their maximum and doing their best to
be extremely careful to not get on the wrong side of the USA which was a lot harder
for them while Truman was in power. While these actions by the Soviet Union may
seem slightly threatening and expansionist, they were simply security precautions as
Stalin felt the USA may try to mobilise themselves to expand capitalism after the end
of the war due to the colossal economic success that the war led America to.
McCauley argues this and states these actions were to “halt and turn back the march
of American capitalism” which was certainly expanding after the war. During the war,
the USA’s Gross National Product had more than doubled while the Soviets were
actually struggling economically. This does suggest that it was actually the USA who
were the main aggressors in expansionist policy at this time towards the end of WW2
rather than the Soviets.
This view is strongly challenged by Schlesinger who takes a much more orthodox
position on the Cold War. Whilst looking at Schlesinger’s ideas in this essay, it is
important to remember that the was likely to hold a certain bias due to his relations
with the White House and particularly because of his close relationship with
President Kennedy. Despite the numerous pieces of evidence that support the idea
that the Soviets actually were not being so expansive, Schlesinger’s and the typical
orthodox view is that “the Cold War was the brave and essential response of free
men to communist aggression”. It is fair to say that both Sherwin and especially
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