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The Cold War Era

The Postwar Order and the Origins of the Cold War

The founding of the UN and the emerging rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Wikimedia Commons · Frank Gatteri, United States Army · Public domain

60-Second Review

Express review

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

  1. Rebuilding the World Order: From the League's Failure to the Blueprint for the UN. Allied planners built the wartime blueprint for the UN as a direct correction of the League of Nations' failures.
  2. Yalta and Potsdam: Blueprint and the Fraying of the Grand Alliance. Yalta fixed the UN veto system in February 1945, while Potsdam that summer revealed the growing rift among the wartime Allies.
  3. San Francisco and the Charter of the United Nations (1945). Fifty nations signed the UN Charter at San Francisco in June 1945, creating a General Assembly, a Security Council, and supporting organs.
  4. The Atomic Bomb and the Collapse of the Grand Alliance. The atomic bomb, dropped on Japan in August 1945, deepened Soviet mistrust just as the wartime alliance against fascism unraveled.
  5. Ideological Rivalry and the Satellization of Eastern Europe. Two rival, universalizing ideologies divided Europe as the USSR consolidated one-party communist regimes across its wartime conquests.
  6. Containment Takes Shape: The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and Kennan. George Kennan's doctrine of containment, applied through the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan of 1947, made the division of Europe official policy.
  7. Germany Divided and the Blocs Formalize: Berlin, NATO, and the Warsaw Pact. The Berlin Blockade of 1948-1949 split Germany in two and pushed both sides to formalize rival military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
  8. The Cold War Goes Global: China, Korea, and the Question of Origins. The Chinese Revolution and the Korean War carried the Cold War beyond Europe, even as historians still dispute exactly when and why it began.

This is the starting point of The Cold War Era: you don't need any prior knowledge of this subject to begin.

Key points

Visual module map

1Rebuilding the World Order: From the League's Failure to the Blueprint for the UN
2San Francisco and the Charter of the United Nations (1945)
3Ideological Rivalry and the Satellization of Eastern Europe
4Containment Takes Shape: The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and Kennan
5The Cold War Goes Global: China, Korea, and the Question of Origins

Alternative visual view: a simplified sequence of some of the module's key points, in their order within the syllabus.

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Final test

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Optional mini-games

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Review Flashcards

Review each key point with cards that flip to reveal the summary.

Memory

Match each concept with its definition in as few attempts as possible.

Time Attack

Answer true or false statements before time runs out.

Chronological Order

Put the module's key points back in their original order.

Further reading

Bibliography and cited sources used to create this module.

  • John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History.
  • John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History.
  • George F. Kennan (writing as "X"), "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs, 1947.
  • United Nations, Charter of the United Nations (1945), available at un.org.
  • Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev.
  • Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War.
  • Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations.
  • Winston Churchill, "The Sinews of Peace" (Fulton Address), Westminster College, 1946.