Origins of the Cold War
- Grades
- Grades 9-12
- Time
- About two 50-minute class periods
- Includes
- 11 ready-to-teach files
- Format
- Word (.docx) · PowerPoint (.pptx)
- Slide deck
- Guided notes
- Guided notes teacher key
- Activity + answer key
- Quiz + answer key
- Exit ticket + answer key
- Teacher guide
- Teacher presentation notes
What students do
- Compare what was promised at Yalta in February 1945 to what actually happened in Eastern Europe by 1948
- Analyze Truman's March 12, 1947 address to Congress asking for aid to Greece and Turkey
- Define containment and trace how it drove the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the Berlin Airlift
- Explain how NATO and the Warsaw Pact split Europe into two armed alliances by 1955
What it covers
- Why the wartime alliance between the US and the Soviet Union had nothing holding it together once Germany fell
- How Eastern European countries became satellite states through rigged votes and pressure rather than outright invasion
- What containment meant in practice, from Greece and Turkey to the airlift that kept West Berlin fed
Learning targets
- Explain why the U.S.-Soviet wartime alliance broke apart after 1945.
- Describe how the Soviet Union built a bloc of satellite states.
- Define containment and explain the strategy behind it.
- Explain what the Truman Doctrine promised and what triggered it.
- Explain how the Marshall Plan used economic aid as a Cold War tool.
Peek inside
The U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union fought Nazi Germany together.
They shared one goal: defeating Hitler, not building a shared future.
The United States was a capitalist democracy.
The Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship under Joseph Stalin.
Once Germany fell in 1945, the common enemy that held them together was gone.
Why They Fought on the Same Side
The U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union all fought Nazi together as allies.
The United States was a capitalist democracy; the Soviet Union was a communist under Joseph Stalin.
Once Germany fell in 1945, the enemy that held the alliance together was gone.
1. After 1945 the United States and the Soviet Union never fought each other directly, but they spent four decades competing through aid, alliances, propaganda, and wars fought by other countries on their behalf. Historians call that long rivalry the .
Why this matters
At Yalta in February 1945, the Allies made promises about Eastern Europe's future. By 1948, those countries were satellite states controlled through rigged votes and pressure rather than invasion, a harder kind of takeover to recognize as conquest.
Truman's March 12, 1947 address to Congress turns containment from an abstract term into an actual policy decision, asking aid for two specific countries. Tracing that from Greece and Turkey through the Marshall Plan to the Berlin Airlift lets students watch one idea harden into two armed alliances by 1955.
From one teacher to another
Most students refuse to believe the US and the Soviet Union were ever actually allies, so that's where this lesson starts, with the wartime alliance itself. Two countries that had just finished fighting the same war together spend almost no time before treating each other as the next threat, and figuring out why that happened this fast is more interesting than any list of events that follows. This opens my last unit of the course, and I built it to set the terms the rest of the unit keeps coming back to: ideology, distrust, and two competing versions of the postwar world.
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Related resources
Decolonization in Africa
Decolonization in Asia
Globalization and the Modern World
The Berlin Wall
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Korean War
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