Diplomatic History of Europe 1500 - 2000 | The Cold War Begins (Lecture 32)

Lecture 32: Earlier tensions and disagreements between the Soviet Union and both the United States and Great Britain now turned into a long-term standoff called the Cold War. This lecture examines Europe in the key years of 1946–1949, as the split between former allies widened, and explores the distinctive crisis diplomacy of the Cold War. Issues included the future of Poland and divided Germany and the civil war in Greece. After the 1947 announcement of the Truman Doctrine, American involvement in Europe extended to the Marshall Plan for economic recovery, the massive and dramatic airlift of supplies in the Berlin Crisis of 1948–1949 and support for the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany formed out of the western zones of occupation.

Essential Reading:
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, pp. 446–72.

Supplementary Reading:
Reynolds, David. “The Origins of the Cold War: The European Dimension, 1944–1951,” The Historical Journal.