A level History

A World Divided: Superpower Relations

Section 1: Why did the Cold War between the superpowers emerge in the years to 1953?

• Ideology and the Cold War
• The Second World War and the two superpowers
• Shaping the post-war world
• Growing tension: Kennan, Novikov and Churchill
• The Truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan
• The roots of conflict over Berlin
• The Berlin Crisis, 1948–1949
• The Korean War, 1950–1953

Section 2: The post-Stalin thaw and the bid for peaceful coexistence

• The Eastern bloc after Stalin
• Eisenhower’s ‘New Look’
• Soviet policy under Khrushchev
• Poland and reform in Eastern Europe
• Summits from Geneva to Vienna
• The Berlin Crisis, 1958–1962

Section 3: The arms race, 1949–1963

• The development of nuclear warheads
• Delivery systems and the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis
• The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
• The consequences of the Crisis

Section 4: Sino-Soviet relations, 1949–1976

• Sino-Soviet relations, 1949–1956
• Sino-Soviet relations from 1956: evidence of deterioration
• Ideological rivals, 1958–1966
• The Sino-Soviet border conflict, 1969
• Nixon and Mao
• Nixon in China

Section 5: Détente, 1969–1980

• The origins of détente
• The oil price shock
• The Helsinki Accords, 1975
• How successful was détente, 1969–1976?
• Jimmy Carter and détente
• The end of détente – the roots of the Second Cold War

Section 6: Why did the Cold War come to an end in the 1980s?

• The primacy of economics
• Ronald Reagan: Cold Warrior
• Mikhail Gorbachev and renewed superpower diplomacy
• The moral bankruptcy of Marxism-Leninism
• The Gorbachev–Reagan thaw
• Poland and the ‘Sinatra doctrine’
• Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II
• The fall of communism in Eastern Europe