… an inevitable outcome of the Second World War?

A major problem to me, to understand the Cold War as an outcome of WW2, is that there seems to be no clear, available periodisation of the Cold War.

Did those events that were subsequently identified as part of the Cold War, occur only after WW2? To some Kennan’s Long telegram marks the start of this particular period, to others the tensions had already begun with the Big Three’s problems about the second front in Europe. To some the bombing of Hiroshima was not the last shot of WW2 but the first of the Cold War. DeGroot shows that ‘[…] the Soviets decided that Fat Man and Little Boy had been directed as much at them as at the Japanese.’* The question, when the Cold War started is essential for its understanding. If the C.W. is a period of its own, like a kind of political, and historical entity, one could explain it from a certain set of origins. If, however, it is interpreted as the continuation of several chronological strings, which started at different points in time and space, we may come to the result that the term Cold War is a helpful intellectual construction to facilitate the comprehension of the bipolar conflict after 1945, but that it is not possible to recognize ‘origins’ of this extremely complex phenomenon.

That does not mean that there was no Cold War, some of us have lived under the nuclear umbrella more or less comfortably, but that it makes more sense to scrutinize the actual historical ways of decision-making rather than pumping up the behemoth of the all-overarching Cold War. If we make our tools of understanding the centre of explanations, we will eventually end up explaining history by quoting contemporary receptions. This could block the way to understand the dynamics of the post WW2 world.

The schools developed to describe the events that led to the political standstill between the former allies have been used to produce a picture of history that served political rather than scientific needs. The orthodox, the revisionist, and the post revisionist theories reflect perfectly the intra societal discussions of their times: The orthodox school helped to form a common ideological self-reception of the western world, the revisionist school developed during the years of rising critical approaches in social sciences (Of which history is one since), and the post revisionist school arrived hand in arm with détente policies.

Any ideas?

best wishes,

Olaf

*DeGroot, Gerard J.(2005), The Bomb. A Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, pg. 132

ps DeGroot got the 'Earl of Westminster medal for military history writing' for this book. Its a great read.