History of the United States II / Unit 13 USH2 1862 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Who Started the Cold War
The idea
Who started the Cold War is a question the sources answer with different emphases, and the course states both readings. The anchor's account leads with containment: George Kennan's Long Telegram of nineteen forty-six argued that Soviet leaders saw their security in destroying rival nations' influence, and American policy from the Truman Doctrine to NATO answered that threat. Digital History's record supports the reading: between nineteen forty-six and nineteen forty-eight Communist governments were installed across Eastern Europe, ending with a coup in Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union refused to let Poland and Czechoslovakia join the Marshall Plan.
In practice
Two maps of the same years: Soviet-backed governments spreading across Eastern Europe, and American dollars and alliances spreading across the West.
Where people slip
The counter-reading assigns more agency to American policy, and the sources give it evidence too. The Yawp says aggressive anti-Soviet sentiment seized the American government, and that Truman committed the nation to a hard-line approach; it describes the Marshall Plan as designed to open markets and win European support for capitalist democracies. Digital History notes that the plan was largely paid for by European purchases of American coal, crops and machinery. NSC-68 called not only for containing Soviet power but for rolling it back. Two misreadings sit on either side. The first treats the Cold War as Soviet aggression met by American defence alone; the Marshall Plan's terms and NSC-68's aims complicate it. The second treats it as an American invention; the imposed governments and the coup in Eastern Europe contradict that. The course's position: both powers acted, the anchor's containment account is the frame, and the evidence of American interest belongs inside it.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it · Sources for History of the United States II