The twentieth-century world, Year 10: Yalta, Potsdam and the Iron Curtain (East and West (Cold War) option)

Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin

HintThey led the USA, Britain and the Soviet Union.

The whyYalta was a Black Sea resort in the Crimea, then part of the Soviet Union. The conference dealt with how Germany would be treated and how Europe would be run once the fighting stopped.

That they would hold free elections

HintThink about how citizens pick their rulers.

The whyStalin did not keep the promise. Over the next few years the USSR, helped by rigged elections among other methods, turned most of Eastern Europe into Soviet satellite states.

France

HintThe country on Germany's western border.

The whyBerlin lay far inside the Soviet zone but was also divided between the four powers. This arrangement later led to the Berlin crisis of 1948-49.

Clement Attlee

HintHis party won the general election of 1945.

The whyChurchill's party lost the 1945 election while the conference was under way. Roosevelt had also died in April 1945, so Truman was now the American president.

An atomic bomb

HintThe test took place about a week earlier.

The whyTruman only mentioned a particularly destructive weapon and gave no details. Stalin was already well informed about the American nuclear programme through the Soviet intelligence network.

1949

HintFour years after Hiroshima.

The whyThe Soviet bomb meant the USA no longer had a nuclear monopoly. The development of the atomic bomb triggered a nuclear arms race between the superpowers.

Fulton, Missouri

HintHe spoke at a small college there.

The whyChurchill was no longer prime minister, as his party had lost the 1945 election. President Truman, who came from Missouri, was present. In the speech Churchill described the dividing line as running from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.

Trieste

HintAn Italian port at the head of the Adriatic Sea.

The whyBehind that line, Churchill said, lay the capitals of Central and Eastern Europe, including Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Budapest and Sofia. He gave the speech at Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946.

Satellite state

HintThink of something that orbits a larger body.

The whyBetween 1945 and 1948 the USSR used similar methods to turn most of Eastern Europe into satellite states. Stalin believed that Soviet control there would protect the USSR from any future invasion.

Comecon

HintIt was set up in response to American economic aid for Western Europe.

The whyComecon was founded in 1949 by the Soviet Union together with Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Stalin set it up, along with the Cominform, in response to the Marshall Plan.

Tito

HintHe had led the Partisan resistance during the war.

The whyYugoslavia was criticised in a Cominform resolution in 1948 and the split became public. Yugoslavia stayed communist but was never a member of the Warsaw Pact.