The German historian Wilfried Loth demands a lot of his readers. He challenges them with a complex thesis about the Cold War being anything but unavoidable. He forces them to abandon their illusions. He asks them to question everything they took for granted. He accuses them of taking the easy way out.
Maybe he is asking too much from some readers. But he enables those who get into his reasoning to see the tide of events that let to the Cold War from a different angle.
Not everyone who deals with his point of view will necessarily be convinced because there are valid arguments that can be brought forward against his thesis. Nevertheless reading it can lead to a more profound understanding of the topic.
Loth advances the view that the cold war was not, as it is often said, unavoidable. In his opinion the fear of being attacked that was omnipresent both in the Western world and the USSR was not only exaggerated but completely baseless. He says that a cooperative post-war policy would have been possible if there had not been suspicion and a lack of communication on both sides.
He accuses the United States of not profiting from their situation as the only power that had suffered comparatively small losses during World War II to build up a peaceful international community. In his opinion they should have known that the USSR did not pose a threat to them because the country was considerably weakened after World War II and could therefore not want to provoke another war. On the other side he reproaches the USSR with a behaviour that provided those in the Western world who wanted the confrontation with good arguments.
Loth comes to the conclusion that the course of events could have been changed towards an easing of tension but he admits that a confrontation was likely in the first place given the sharp contrasts between Western capitalism on the one hand and Stalinist socialism on the other. However, Loth refuses to accept it as predetermined and bases his theory on what he calls the openness of history.
Compared to Loth’s thesis other approaches seem rather simple. Especially in the Western world it is a common view to blame the USSR of having caused the Cold War by threatening the Western world with its expansionist tendency. Historians argue that as the Soviet Union was occupying Eastern European countries, annexing them as Soviet Socialist Republics or maintaining them as satellite states and creating the Eastern Bloc, the Western powers had no choice but to believe that the Soviet Union posed a threat to Western Europe as well. As the free and democratic states could not tolerate the oppressing system of the USSR spreading further around the world they had to adopt a containment policy to support democracy and fight back communism as it was stated in the Truman Doctrine in 1947.
Another thesis brought forward is that the USSR even provoked the Cold War on purpose in order to accelerate the reconstruction of the destroyed country. By fueling the fear of the American imperialism among the population the political leaders could increase the willingness to work hard for the reconstruction.
There are others, however, who blame the primary dept on the United States. By offering their European Recovery Program, the Marshall Plan, only under the condition that the receiving country established a free and democratic political system the United States excluded the USSR from the program even though the country needed the money badly. The USSR felt even more affronted because they had only suffered so much during World War II in the first place because the Western Allies had delayed opening a second front. The United States could have defused the mistrust this behaviour had cost by making at least financial amends. If they had used the opportunity, history might have taken a very different course but they passed up the chance.
Even if they distribute the responsibility differently those who bring forward these explanations agree upon the following: that the Cold War was unavoidable because two systems as conflictive as Soviet communism and American capitalism could not coexist peacefully in the long run – especially as they accused each other of having world conquest tendencies.
At first sight it seems that Wilfried Loth’s arguments disprove their conclusion. In his opinion there were moments where the course of history could have been changed. In 1947 for example, if the United States had not affronted the USSR by refusing to help them. Or in 1953, when Nikita Chruschtschow came into power after Stalin’s death and suggested that a peaceful coexistence was indeed possible. In these cases as in many others the main problem was the lack of communication. Both powers assured that they did not want another war to break out but the signals they sent out sometimes seemed to belie them. One threat followed the other because the protagonists were afraid that signs of conciliation would be considered as weakness. In the long run, however, this very weakness would have gone down in history as a great strength because it would have meant to put world peace before personal pride.
Given that the course of events could have been totally different if one side had broken off the confrontation it seems that Wilfried Loth may be right.
However, his thesis has a shortcoming: he argues from a present-day perspective. That does explain why as a reader one is willing to agree to his theoretical explanations today.
The fears and the mistrust that contributed essentially to the development of the Cold War seem emotional and unreal to us. We can never fully understand why the superpowers could not simply trust each other and believe that they both did not want the nuclear war to break out. This is due to us not being able to put ourselves in the position of people who have just undergone two World Wars and feel overshadowed by just another one. The cruel reality of war was a part of their lives and from this point of view their fears seem all too comprehensible. Especially in the USSR where people had suffered most from Nazi Germany’s war of extermination certainly nobody wanted to take any risk that could result in experiencing another such loss
Insofar it can be said that Loth’s thesis is not entirely unrealistic but its realisation, the prevention of the Cold War and the first step towards reconciliation would have demanded more courage and confidence in the opponent in those days than we can imagine today.
© Lea Hartwich, 2009
