Who is to blame for the Cold War? The Historiography of the Origins of the Cold War

Major schools of thought: in brief Orthodox Stalin and the USSR started it! Those aggressive Soviets… Revisionist The US is to blame! Cash rules everything around us…(potential bonus points) Post-Revisionist Both sides have a point…but which points are valid? Post Cold War A clash of individuals? And ideologies?

Can you identify the school of thought? “The atomic bomb did help seed the Cold War.   Let's face it, the bomb was not just meant to buckle Japan into surrender, it was also a political statement towards the Soviet Union .   A statement of power towards a nation who practiced a political ideology different from America which was unacceptable to the "free democratic" United States…” Revisionist

Can you identify the school of thought? “While scholars may have been blinded by loyalty and guilt in examining the evidence regarding the origins of the Cold War in the past, increasingly, scholars with greater access to archival evidence on all sides have come to the conclusion that the conflicting and unyielding ideological ambitions were the source of the complicated and historic tale that was the Cold War.” Post-Cold War

Can you identify the school of thought? “The Cold War was caused by the conflicting interests of the United States and the U.S.S.R., compounded by miscommunication and poor diplomacy. The differences in the cultures of the American political leaders and their moral and righteous justifications for diplomacy from Soviet leaders' communist expansionist policies led to the unraveling of the new international order nearly established in Roosevelt's wartime conferences with Churchill and Stalin.” Post-Revisionist

Can you identify the school of thought? “The Cold War was caused by the military expansionism of Stalin and his successors. The American response… was basically a defensive reaction. As long as Soviet leaders clung to their dream of imposing Communism on the world, the West had no way (other than surrender) of ending the conflict.” Orthodox

Supporting evidence What events/actions/decisions support the Orthodox view? What events/actions/decisions support the Revisionist view? What events/actions/decisions would post-Revisionists focus on? What events/actions/decisions would post-Cold War scholars focus on?

What do you think?

Origin and Development What time period should you focus on when confronted with these phrases in a Paper II question? Origin: 1945 (or before) to 1946-ish Development: 1946/7 to 1950 (start of the Korean War) Stop by 1953 at the latest (end of Korean War)

Leaders Stalin vs. Truman Roles? Policies? In what ways could Stalin be held responsible for the origin and development of the Cold War? To what extent was the Cold War caused by Truman’s policies?

Paper II style questions “Ideological differences played only a minor role in the origin of the Cold War.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? To what extent did mutual distrust and suspicion cause the Cold War? For what reasons and with what results did the Second World War allies become post-war enemies? How did fear contribute to the origin of the Cold War?

http://www. gilderlehrman http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/1945-present/postwar-politics-and-cold-war Gaddis Lecture on Cold War origins