If we are to determine whether the Cold War (which I would define as the global ideological, political, economic and military conflict between the capitalist-democratic and the communist-totalitarian blocs short of direct mass warfare between the USA and the USSR) was indeed an “inevitable outcome” of WWII, I suggest we should start by outlining the key features of the international system in 1945-1948 which obtained directly as a result of that conflict. For our purposes, I would argue that the most important were:

Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946

1) an utterly devastated continental Europe, with a shattered economy and a population on the brink of starvation;

2) an unprecedented power vacuum in Europe, northern Africa the Middle East and Asia-Pacific due to the collapse of France, Germany, Italy, Japan and (by mid-1947) the significant abdication of the UK of most if its positions in these areas;

3) the military breakthrough of an economically exhausted USSR to the heart of Europe -and Germany;

4) the willingness of the USA to exploit politically and ideologically its dominant economic and military position in the international system; and

5) the geographical collision, in Europe and Asia, of the US and the USSR -embodying two discrete systems of governance, each with universal ambitions and mutually exclusive on the political, economic and ideological levels.

The question to be answered, therefore, is whether these specific consequences of WWII rendered the Cold War inevitable.

In brief, I would argue that the cumulative effect between 1945 and 1948 of these five key outcomes of WWII rendered the Cold War (as defined above) “inevitable” indeed. By “inevitable” I mean that, given the “macro” features of the international system described above, the “mezo” nature and composition of the foreign policy networks of the USA and USSR which determined the dynamic evolution of the policies of these war-time allies with respect to each other between 1945 and 1948 would have led, sooner or later, to a Cold War between the two irrespective of the existence or actions of any individual personalities occupying positions of leadership in Moscow or Washington, DC.  Four possible counter-arguments deserve particular attention:

Ideology: Gaddis does indeed state that no Cold War resulted between the USA and the USSR after WWI, despite identical ideologies; however, “the correlation of forces” at the end of WWI was entirely different from that after WWII:

1) with the important exception of north-western France and the BENELUX countries, Europe ( and in particular Germany, Central Europe and the UK) were not devastated economically;

2) no power vacuum obtained in Europe, the Mediterranean, or Asia; to the contrary, France, the UK and Japan expanded their colonial empires and Germany retained most of its national territory;

3) the USSR had suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the German Empire, ratified in the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk which (ironically!) reduced the former Russian Empire to the frontiers of today’s Russia; the Versailles Treaties reversed these losses but only partially and established a “cordon sanitaire” of approximately 12 countries between its western border and Berlin, Vienna and Istanbul; not only was the USSR NOT at the heart of Europe militarily, but it was isolated and fighting for its survival until 1921;

4) failure of the US Senate to ratify the League of Nations Treaty and Wilson’s subsequent stroke resulted in a return of the USA to an isolationist position for the next two decades, thus failing to take advantage politically or ideologically of its dominant economic and military position in 1919; and

5) for the reasons stated above (and with the exception of some ill-prepared and ultimately futile US and allied attempts to quell the Soviet revolution in Russia) no direct geographic collision of the USA and USSR took place at the end of WWI.

In sum, the different macro outcomes of WWI as compared with WWII explain the failure of a direct and sustained ideological confrontation between the USA and USSR, and not the fact that these ideologies were somehow capable of establishing a peaceful global cohabitation in spite of their irreconcilable differences and “ways of life”.

Realpolitik: As Zubok and Pleshakov explain in light of recent Soviet archive materials, the foreign policy paradigm of the Soviet foreign policy establishment (therefore not only of Stalin, but also Molotov, Litvinov, Maisky and Zhidanov) adhered to the same revolutionary-imperial paradigm resulting in a definition of security in primarily territorial terms. This paradigm resulted in Stalin’s failure to hold free elections in Poland and other East European countries, as he had committed himself to, and pushing his cards to the limit in Iran, Turkey, the Mediterranean and Central Europe -thus forcing a US foreign policy establishment -which had remained at least until February 1947 generally lenient towards the demands of the USSR- to radically shift its analysis of Soviet aims from those of a traditional great power to those of an ideologically-driven revolutionary state bent on global domination. Although Stalin’s personality and paranoia played an understandably important role in this process, there is no documentary evidence to assume that, had he died or been replaced at the same time with Roosevelt and Churchill, the ultimate long-term outcome would have been any different.

Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin at the Yalta conference, February 1945

Personal mistrust: any level of “trust” between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt established during WWII was largely based on their forced cooperation to defeat a common enemy. Although Roosevelt did indeed think he could “handle Uncle Joe”, before his death he realized that the Soviet dictator could not be trusted; on March 24, 1945 he stated, angrily, that “Averell [Harriman] is right; we can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of the promises he made at Yalta.” (R.J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, p. 11). A few days later (April 6), he cabled to Churchill: “I am very pleased with your very clear strong message to Stalin… Our armies will in a very few days be in a position that will permit us to become “tougher” than has heretofore appeared advantageous to the war effort” (Ibid, p. 12). Stalin’s actions were in fact in flagrant contradiction with the terms of the Atlantic Charter regarding freedom, self-determination and democracy of all nations and the fact the Churchill and Roosevelt had given priority to the defeat of Nazi Germany and tolerated Stalin’s violations of his promises until the end of the war by no means implies that they would have continued to do so after the conclusion of the hostilities. In fact, at the end of April 1945 Churchill was writing to Stalin in the following terms: “There is not much comfort in looking to a future when you and the countries you dominate, plus the Communist countries in many other states, are all drawn up on one side and those who rally to the English-speaking nations on the other. It is quite obvious that their quarrel would tear the world to pieces… Even embarking on a long period of suspicions, of abuse and counter-abuse and of opposing policies would be a disaster hampering the development of world prosperity for the masses” (A. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, Fontana Press 1993, p. 973). As to Stalin, who never really trusted Roosevelt and Churchill for both personal and ideological reasons but was willing to accommodate them to the extent necessary to accomplish the common aim of defeating Nazi Germany, Zubok clearly shows that at the very latest after the explosion of the US atomics bombs in Japan in 1945, he reverted sharply from a more conciliatory attitude towards his “friends” (now disappeared from the political scene) to his traditional revolutionary-imperial paradigm of foreign policy pushing him to grab as much as he could as long as he could – in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

"The Big Three" Summit in Potsdam" Attlee, Truman and Stalin, July 1945

The irreversible tipping point from difficult cooperation to Cold War took place, on the US side, in early 1947, before Truman’s speech to the US congress asking for financial aid for Greece and Turkey and outlining his “Truman Doctrine” -when Under-Secretary of State Acheson, heretofore willing to overlook Soviet actions as those of a normal great power, shifted his position in light of Stalin’s demands in Iran, Turkey, Libya and Europe to see the USSR’s policies as a determined global offensive of an ideologically-driven enemy which had to be contained and rolled back, and played a key role in the drafting of the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and their ratification by the US Senate; whilst on the Soviet side, the tipping point occurred when Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov walked out of the Paris Marshall Plan Conference, in July 1947.

President Truman addresses the US Congress and outlines his famous “Truman Doctrine”, 1947

Although these specific events and dates were contingent on individual actors and discrete decisions, any one of which were not in themselves inevitable or determinant, the Cold War itself, as defined above, was indeed an inevitable outcome of the five key factors discussed previously which arose as a consequence of WWII.