The Cold War began in 1945 after World War 2 between the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies. This led to the formation of opposing military alliances like NATO and the Warsaw Pact and tensions including arms races and proxy wars. It also resulted in Soviet espionage efforts in the West through spies like the Cambridge Five who betrayed secrets to Moscow. The Cold War lasted over 45 years until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

1. The Cold War
1945 – 1962

2. Menu
Causes
The Formation of the NATO and the Warsaw
Pact
The Cambridge Spies
Effect

3. Look at these images
what do they represent?

5. What do these acronyms stand for?
CIA
KGB
SIS

7. Who were these people
– Winston Churchill
– Franklin D Roosevelt
– Truman
– Stalin

8. • Winston Churchill
Prime Minister of Britain in 1945
• Franklin D Roosevelt
President of the USA in February 1945
• Truman
became president of the USA in 1945
• Stalin
leader of Russia in 1945

9. What was the COLD WAR?
• The end of the Second World War saw the
emergence of two superpowers, the USA and the
USSR, who were locked in a struggle which lasted
for 45 years. This was known as the Cold War.

10. • The term Cold War was first used in 1947 to
describe the conflict. It was a war of
words, of propaganda and of threat between
the USA and the USSR, but it did not involve
the two Superpowers in direct confrontation.
They both took part in proxy wars – that is they
helped their allies to fight the other Superpower
or their allies but did not become directly
involved in the conflict themselves.

11. Why did the Cold War begin?
• Four causes
– Beliefs
– Aims
– Resentment about History
– Events

12. Long Term Causes:
• Differing ideologies
• Stalin’s suspicions of the West
• The USA’s change in policy
Short Term Causes:
• Tensions between the leaders at Yalta and
Potsdam
• The A Bomb began an arms race
• Personality clash between Truman and Stalin

13. Group work time
Get in 6 groups and prepare a short
presentation on the causes of the
Cold War.

14. What was NATO?

15. NATO
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
was formed in April 1949 by the Western powers.
This was during the period of the Berlin Blockade,
and was partly in response to Stalin’s aggression.
• The original twelve members of NATO in 1949
were the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, France, Denmark, Iceland, Italy,
Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, and
Luxembourg.

16. • NATO was a military alliance that committed all
members to the defence of all the others.
• But NATO was more than a promise of American
help in an emergency. The alliance was to be
supported by large numbers of troops on the
ground.
• In particular, there were a large number of troops
in West Germany. By 1953, 5 divisions of US
troops were permanently based there.
• Stalin, unsurprisingly, saw NATO as a threat to
the USSR and Eastern Europe.

17. What was the WARSAW PACT?
• The Warsaw Pact was set up in 1955.
• The Warsaw Pact was a defensive military
alliance of the USSR and its satellite states in
Eastern Europe.
• It was intended as a counter-force to NATO,
which was a military alliance of western powers.

18. • The Warsaw Pact, like NATO, relied on collective
security – if one nation was attacked, the others
would come to its support.
• The Warsaw Pact helped to make Eastern Europe
an effective ‘buffer zone’ for the USSR against the
West.

19. The WARSAW PACT vs NATO
For the next
three decades,
NATO and the
WARSAW Pact
forces faced
each other and
prepared for
war.

20. The Cambridge Spies
A world of shadows
• The early years
• Failure to trust
• Looking for discrepancies
• Dealing with suspicion

21. A world of shadows
• The hardest and most bitterly fought
confrontation between the Soviet Union and the
western democracies during the 50 years of the
Cold War was on the espionage front. In this
arena the KGB, the 'sword and the shield' of the
USSR, pitted its wits against its principal
adversaries - the Central Intelligence Agency of
the United States (CIA) and the British Secret
Intelligence Service (SIS).
...all of whom operated in a world of shadows,
where deception and betrayal flourished.

22. Aims
• was to steal the secrets of the other side
• to try to peer inside the mind of the enemy
• to fathom his intentions
• to neutralise them before they could be
executed.

23. The four most remarkable spies of the
Cold War
• HAR (Kim) Philby
• Guy Burgess
• Donald Maclean
• Anthony Blunt
all of whom betrayed their country to spy for
Moscow.

24. Group work time
• Get in 4 groups and prepare a
short presentation on each of the
different spies.

25. Anthony Blunt Guy Burgess

26. HAR (Kim) Philby Donald Maclean

27. Effects
• Both the United States of America and the
Soviet Union built up huge arsenals of atomic
weapons and ballistic missiles.
• The military blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact
were formed.
• It led to destructive conflicts like the Vietnam
War and the Korean War.
• The Soviet Union collapsed due to economic
weaknesses.

28. • The Berlin Wall was demolished and the two
German nations were unified.
• The Warsaw Pact disintegrated.
• The Baltic States and some former Soviet
Republics achieved independence.
• America became the sole superpower of the
world.
• Communism collapsed worldwide.