Every card in The twentieth-century world, Year 10: Yalta, Potsdam and the Iron Curtain (East and West (Cold War) option)
The whole deck, in order — so you can read it through before your child ever sees it.
- Which three leaders met at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 to plan the end of the war in Europe?
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin
HintThey led the USA, Britain and the Soviet Union.
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.
- What did Stalin promise at Yalta about the countries of Eastern Europe that had been freed from Nazi rule?
That they would hold free elections
HintThink about how citizens pick their rulers.
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.
- At the end of the war Germany was split into four occupation zones, run by the USSR, the USA, Britain and ____.
France
HintThe country on Germany's western border.
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.
- Midway through the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Britain's prime minister changed from Winston Churchill to whom?
Clement Attlee
HintHis party won the general election of 1945.
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.
- What did President Truman tell Stalin at Potsdam on 24 July 1945 that the USA had successfully tested?
An atomic bomb
HintThe test took place about a week earlier.
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.
- In which year did the USSR test its own atomic bomb, ending the American monopoly? (year)
1949
HintFour years after Hiroshima.
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.
- In which American town did Churchill give his 1946 speech warning that an 'iron curtain' had descended across Europe?
Fulton, Missouri
HintHe spoke at a small college there.
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.
- In 1946 Churchill said that from Stettin in the Baltic to ____ in the Adriatic, an iron curtain had descended across the Continent.
Trieste
HintAn Italian port at the head of the Adriatic Sea.
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.
- A country that is officially independent but is dominated and controlled by a more powerful neighbour
Satellite state
HintThink of something that orbits a larger body.
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.
- Which organisation, set up in 1949, tied the economies of the communist states of Eastern Europe to the USSR?
Comecon
HintIt was set up in response to American economic aid for Western Europe.
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.
- Which Yugoslav communist leader broke with Stalin in 1948 and kept his country independent of Soviet control?
Tito
HintHe had led the Partisan resistance during the war.
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.
1★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0226
2★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0227
3★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0228
4★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0229
5★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0230
6★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0231
7★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0232
8★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0233
9★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0234
10★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0235
11★ GCSE-HIST-TWE-0236
Keep what you learn
Here, nothing is saved. In your child’s own sky every card is scheduled — it comes back just before they’d forget it — and the professor who wrote it is one tap away.