In our History class we started studying The Cold War. So in order to understand how it started we saw both conferences which led to it: The Potsdam and Yalta conference. Here is the slide share we made.

Why had the agreements at Yalta been relatively easy to reach while Potsdam had mainly disagreements?

• Change of President in the US. Truman was much more anti-communist than Roosevelt.
• Churchill was replaced by Attlee so the tension between the USA & USSR grew.
• At Yalta the Sphere of Influence was just an idea. In Potsdam, it became true. Many eastern European countries were under Soviet control. Capitalists feared a communist expansion.
• At Yalta the war had not ended and the main focus was defeating Japan, in Potsdam the war had ended so the new focus was on  Soviet and  fear became real.
• There was great fear of nuclear power from the side of the US. This created tension for the USSR.

How far were the disagreements at Potsdam to blame for the start of the cold war?

• Yalta: sphere of influence was an idea, Churchill was a moderator of the differences between Stalin and Roosevelt, Germany was the common enemy.
• Potsdam:  sphere of influence, change of presidents , Churchill was no longer present, Japan was the new common enemy.

In our BYOD (bring your own device) day, we were asked to watch a presentation and a  video on the outbreak of the cold war. Then we were asked to answer some questions with the help of looking some information, these are my answers and the links to the videos and the presentation.

Slideshare.

Video.

 1) Why did the wartime Alliance fall apart?

2) What were the major differences between the superpowers?

3) The importance of Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

4) The roles of Stalin and Truman.

1) Wartime alliance fell apart since different things were agreed on after and before the war with different people. Before the war ended Roosevelt was still alive and Churchill was still the prime minister, but after, Churchill was replaced and so was Roosevelt. Russia did not follow her words when she freed Europe from Germany, the big three did not agree on the same things, the ideas weren’t clear and there wasn’t a clear point of view.

2) Stalin wanted to cripple Germany fully to prevent future attacks to the USSR but Truman did not want to repeat the same mistakes as the Treaty after the first war.

Stalin wanted compensation from Germany since she caused many deaths in the USSR but Truman still did not agree, he was determined to prevent the same mistakes as after WW1.

Truman did not like the fact that Stalin could place pro-soviet government in eastern Europe.

3) Both Yalta and Potsdam conferences are very important since they both stated what would happen with Germany after the war.

The Yalta conference stated that Germany was to be divided in four and so was its capital. Also Russia had promised to fight against Japan once Germany surrendered. The big three agreed to hunt down Criminals from the Genocide, also countries would be able to choose their government after they were liberated from Germany.

The Potsdam Conference stated was a failure for me, five months after Yalta, so many things had changed that decisions weren’t the same. Roosevelt was dead and Truman came into power, the issue was that Truman was more anti-soviet than Roosevelt. Churchill was defeated in Elections and a new prime minister was elected, so we had 2 new opinions and ideas that did not match the previous leaders, which preoccupied Stalin. Also, Stalin did not follow his words, he stayed in the placed he freed from Germany not giving the population the option to choose the government they wanted.

4) Stalin wanted power, he did not care about others opinions or attitudes, he just wanted what «belonged» to him. he had a communist country so he knew he was threatening to others and that he was powerful

Truman was very anti-soviet, he didn’t like Stalin one bit neither his actions, he was determined to find out what Stalin’s plans were.