Origins of the Cold War

Notwithstanding the above the revisionists certainly gave food for thought to the post revisionists

who built upon, analysed, and adopted several of their conclusions such as empire, expansionism, US aggression and nuclear bomb usage and threat.

According to Gaddis Cold War studies in recent years feature “more monographic work based on a wealth of new sources”. This is certainly epitomised by Melvin P Leffler who argues that a “tolerable configuration of power in Eurasia . . . could not have been brought about without provoking the Soviets” and that US intervention in Europe could well have prevented communist victories in France, Italy and Greece, the formation of an independent and aggressive Germany and Soviet domination of large parts of western Europe. He felt US action ensured Western Europe was “no longer weak and vulnerable; Germany and Japan are strong; Marxist-Leninist ideology and the Soviet model of development are discredited.”.

For Gaddis, the United States planned to operate a post-war policy of containment from 1941 onwards with the Kennan correspondence merely an excuse for this. He cites reasons for the Cold War being “irreconcilable differences in four critical areas: perceptions of history, ideology, technology and personality” although he felt nothing made the Cold War inevitable but in Europe in 1945 “two great powers separated by a power vacuum seemed almost predestined to produce hostility”. He concludes by stating “through his own policies Stalin brought about many of the things he most feared: American commitment and defence of western Europe, a revived West German state, fragmentation in the international communist movement and a conviction on the part of the Western leaders that the Soviet Union could not be trusted.”. He goes on to add that the “persistent ineptitude” of Stalin was “one of the West’s major – yet unappreciated – assets during the early Cold War”. Certainly his attitudes towards communism and Stalin seem to be consistent throughout all his literature.

The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century contains four Cold War essays debating the causes and diplomatic, economic and social/cultural issues of the period. The essays are fairly bland, perhaps due to political considerations but also setting the period within the context of the extremism that raged throughout the 20^th century.

In conclusion, it is very hard to take one text above others and state it to be a“definitive”explanation for the origins of the Cold War, as many texts have something to offer and a variety of explanations and reasons are offered. Certainly many of the historians who have lived through the Cold War may find it hard to be objective about reasons due to the opinions they formed at the time, and the partisan views espoused by the orthodox historians may only offer unwitting testimony to attitudes and, perhaps, valuable sources of opinion. Whilst the revisionists may have been led, by their pacifism, into making extravagant claims, many of these have now been substantiated by analysis put forward by the post-revisionists. Therefore, knowledge in the field has grown empirically, which makes it easy for historians such as Schlesinger and Gaddis to revise their viewpoints substantially throughout their careers.

A discerning reader would take elements from many studies in the field and draw their own conclusions, however, for a fairly easy to read analysis of the origins of the Cold War the Gaddis book, ‘Now we Know’ which is not quite so harsh on communism as his earlier books and more internationalist in perspective, supplemented with the essays in ‘The Origins of the Cold War’ particularly the one by Hans J Morgenthau would provide a reasonable breadth of information.