The development of the Cold War, including the Truman Doctrine (March 1947), the Marshall Plan (June 1947), the response of the USSR through Cominform and Comecon, and the consolidation of the two blocs

A 15-mark "assess" needs a judgement on weight.

Thesis

The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan together transformed an emerging diplomatic confrontation into a structured global rivalry by formalising American containment, dividing Europe economically, and provoking Soviet counter-organisation through Cominform and Comecon.

The Truman Doctrine, 12 March 1947

Truman's speech to Congress requested $400 million for Greece and Turkey and pledged to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The speech globalised containment; previously American assistance had been case by case.

The Marshall Plan, 5 June 1947

Secretary of State Marshall's Harvard speech offered economic aid to all European states including the USSR. Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov walked out of the Paris talks on 2 July. The Plan disbursed approximately $13 billion to 16 Western European recipients between April 1948 and 1952. It rebuilt economies, locked them into American trading patterns, and made Western Europe ideologically and materially aligned.

Soviet response

Cominform (September 1947) coordinated European communist parties. Comecon (January 1949) was the Soviet bloc's economic alternative. The Czech coup (February 1948) consolidated the Eastern bloc.

Judgement

The two instruments together created the bipolar Europe that defined the Cold War to 1989. The Truman Doctrine was the rhetoric; the Marshall Plan was the substance.

A 3-mark "outline" wants three distinct, correctly dated points.

The British withdrawal

On 21 February 1947 Britain told Washington it could no longer fund Greece (where the royalist government was fighting communist EAM-ELAS insurgents) or Turkey (under Soviet pressure on the Straits).

The intellectual frame

Kennan's Long Telegram (February 1946) and Churchill's Fulton speech (March 1946) had already cast the USSR as an expansionist threat to be contained.

The political need

Truman had three weeks to act and a Republican Congress to persuade; Senator Vandenberg advised that he would have to "scare the hell out of the American people."

Marking criteria

1 mark each for three distinct, correctly dated circumstances (British note, prior containment rhetoric, congressional politics); do not narrate the Marshall Plan instead.

A 4-mark "explain" needs a cause-and-effect chain with specific detail.

The offer to all of Europe

Marshall's Harvard speech (5 June 1947) offered aid to the whole continent, including the USSR, so the division was not a Western exclusion.

The Soviet refusal

Molotov walked out of the Paris talks on 2 July 1947, and the USSR pressured Czechoslovakia and Poland to withdraw their acceptance, treating transparent accounts as a threat to sovereignty.

The Western consolidation

The OEEC (16 April 1948) coordinated 16 recipients; about 13 billion dollars (1948 to 1952) bound their economies to American trade.

The Eastern counter

The USSR replied with Cominform (September 1947) and Comecon (January 1949), fixing a separate Eastern economic bloc.

Marking criteria

1 mark for the all-Europe offer; 1 mark for the Soviet refusal; 1 mark for OEEC/Western alignment; 1 mark for the Cominform/Comecon counter.

A 5-mark "explain ... using the source" wants the source decoded, then linked to own knowledge.

Decode the source

The pledge to "support free peoples" is deliberately universal: Truman frames a specific Greek and Turkish crisis as a global principle, and the "spread of instability" line is the germ of the domino logic.

The break with the past (own knowledge)

Before 1947 American assistance was case by case and the tradition leaned isolationist. The Doctrine committed the United States to a permanent, worldwide anti-communist role, backed by 400 million dollars for Greece and Turkey and passed by Congress in May 1947.

The link forward

It set the rhetorical frame the Marshall Plan (June 1947) then filled with economic substance, and it institutionalised containment as policy rather than analysis.

Marking criteria

1 mark for reading the source as a universal pledge; 1-2 marks for the break with case-by-case isolationism; 1 mark for specific own knowledge (the 400 million dollars, the Greek context); 1 mark for linking it forward to containment as policy.

A 6-mark "assess the usefulness" rewards origin and perspective, corroboration and limitation, and a judgement.

Origin and perspective

Source B is the revisionist (New Left) reading associated with William Appleman Williams (The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 1959). It is useful precisely because it foregrounds the economic self-interest that triumphalist accounts ignore.

Corroboration from own knowledge

The record supports part of the claim: the Plan rebuilt European output to 35 per cent above 1938 levels by 1951, locked recipients into American trade, and the dollar-gap problem was real. The largest recipients (Britain, France, Italy, West Germany) became durable American trading partners.

Limitation

By reducing motive to economics, the source understates the genuine security fear after the Czech coup (February 1948) and the Berlin Blockade, and ignores that the Plan was offered to the USSR. Post-revisionists such as John Lewis Gaddis (We Now Know, 1997), using Soviet archives, reaffirm a real Soviet threat alongside the economic gain.

Judgement

Highly useful for recovering the economic motive, but one-sided: it must be read against the orthodox security case and the post-revisionist synthesis that holds both motives together.

Marking criteria

1 mark for naming the revisionist origin/perspective; 1-2 marks for corroborating own knowledge (output figures, trade, dollar gap); 1-2 marks for a limitation (security fear, offer to the USSR, post-revisionism); 1 mark for a judgement on usefulness.

A 5-mark "explain" wants a sequenced, dated cause-and-effect account.

Cominform (September 1947)

Founded at Szklarska Poreba, it tied the French, Italian and Eastern European communist parties to Moscow's line; Zhdanov's "two camps" speech answered the American framing with its own.

The Czech coup (February 1948)

The communist seizure of the last coalition government in Eastern Europe closed the bloc and, with Masaryk's death, horrified Western opinion, accelerating the Brussels Pact.

Comecon (January 1949)

The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was the Eastern answer to the OEEC, though it coordinated trade rather than production and left the satellites tied bilaterally to the USSR.

The shape of the response

Each Soviet move was reactive, mirroring an American instrument: Cominform answered the Doctrine's rhetoric, Comecon the Plan's economics.

Marking criteria

1 mark each for Cominform, the Czech coup and Comecon (dated); 1 mark for the "two camps" framing; 1 mark for recognising the reactive, mirroring character of the response.

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that weighs the named factor against the alternatives and deploys historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

• Thesis. The Marshall Plan was the decisive economic instrument of division, but it divided Europe only because the Truman Doctrine had already drawn the ideological line and the Soviet response (Cominform, the Czech coup, Comecon) hardened it. The Plan was the most important single factor, yet it operated within a division that was political before it was economic.
• Argument 1 - The case for the Plan as decisive. By offering 13 billion dollars to 16 states and binding them into the OEEC and American trade, the Plan made Western Europe materially and ideologically aligned; the Soviet walkout (2 July 1947) and the forced withdrawal of Czechoslovakia and Poland turned an economic offer into a frontier. Evidence: output 35 per cent above 1938 levels by 1951; the largest recipients (Britain, France, Italy, West Germany) anchored to Washington.
• Argument 2 - Why the Doctrine mattered first. The Truman Doctrine (March 1947) globalised containment and framed the world as "free peoples" against subjugation before any aid flowed; without that rhetorical line, the Plan would have read as recovery, not as a bloc. Evidence: the universal language of the 12 March speech; Vandenberg's "scare the hell" politics.
• Argument 3 - The Soviet response and the harder edges. Division was completed by force and institutions the Plan did not control: Cominform (September 1947), the Czech coup (February 1948), the Berlin Blockade (1948 to 1949), Comecon (January 1949) and NATO (April 1949). The blocs were sealed by security crises as much as by aid.
• Historiography. Orthodox accounts (Feis, Schlesinger) read the Plan as a defensive response to Soviet expansion; revisionists (William Appleman Williams, 1959) read it as economic imperialism that provoked the division; post-revisionists (John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know, 1997, on Soviet archives) hold both: a real Soviet threat and deliberate American economic gain. Tony Judt (Postwar, 2005) credits the Plan as the foundation of West European integration.
• Judgement. The Plan was the most important single instrument of division but not a sufficient one: it sealed a split the Doctrine had opened and the Soviet response made hostile. Most important among the factors, yes; the sole cause, no.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 2)

The Marshall Plan could divide Europe so sharply only because the Truman Doctrine had already drawn the line it filled in. When Truman told Congress on 12 March 1947 that it must be American policy "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation," he converted a local crisis over 400 million dollars for Greece and Turkey into a universal contest between freedom and communism - a frame that pre-existed any aid and made the later offer of dollars legible as a choice of camp rather than mere reconstruction. Senator Vandenberg's advice that Truman must "scare the hell out of the American people" shows the deliberate ideological inflation involved. By the time Marshall spoke at Harvard in June, the rhetorical division was set: the Plan was offered to the whole of Europe, yet the Soviet walkout on 2 July was almost foreordained by the antagonism the Doctrine had announced. As the revisionist William Appleman Williams argued, the economics mattered enormously; but the political line came first, which is why the Doctrine, not the Plan, was the trigger the Plan then completed.

Marker's note. A band-6 response keeps "more than any other factor" in view throughout, ranking the Plan against the Doctrine and the Soviet response rather than describing each, anchors every claim in dated evidence, sets at least two historians (e.g. Williams against Gaddis) in genuine tension, and reaches a graded judgement. Narrating 1947 to 1949 without weighing the factors caps the response in the middle bands.

This is an extended-response/essay. Markers reward a sustained, evidence-based argument that addresses the "responsibility" comparison directly and weaves in historiography - not a narrative.

Band-6 PLAN

• Thesis. Responsibility was shared but asymmetric: American instruments (the Doctrine and the Plan) institutionalised the Western bloc, but they responded to prior Soviet actions in Eastern Europe, and it was Soviet choices (the Marshall Plan refusal, Cominform, the Czech coup) that converted division into hostility. The United States built the wall's western face; the Soviet Union laid most of the bricks.
• Argument 1 - The American contribution. The Truman Doctrine globalised containment and the Marshall Plan bound 16 states to Washington; revisionists read these as provocations driven by export markets and the dollar gap. Evidence: the universal 12 March pledge; 13 billion dollars and the OEEC.
• Argument 2 - The Soviet contribution. Rigged elections in Eastern Europe (1945 to 1947), the Marshall Plan refusal (July 1947), Cominform's "two camps," the Czech coup (February 1948) and the Berlin Blockade were Soviet choices that hardened the line. Evidence: Molotov's walkout; the forced withdrawal of Czechoslovakia and Poland; Masaryk's death.
• Argument 3 - The spiral of misperception. Each side read the other defensively: Novikov's telegram mirrored Kennan's, and both Doctrine and Plan can be read as reactions to a threat each genuinely felt. Responsibility lies partly in the dynamic, not only the actors.
• Historiography. Orthodox (Feis, Schlesinger) place responsibility on Soviet expansion; revisionists (William Appleman Williams, 1959) on American economic imperialism; post-revisionists (John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know, 1997, using Soviet archives) restore a real Soviet threat while conceding American economic motive; Melvyn Leffler (For the Soul of Mankind, 2007) stresses mutual fear and misjudgement on both sides.
• Judgement. The United States designed the formal architecture of Western division, but Soviet conduct in Eastern Europe gave it cause and the Soviet refusal made the split hostile. On balance, responsibility tilts toward the USSR for the loss of trust, with the United States responsible for the institutional form - a shared but not equal verdict.

MODEL PARAGRAPH (Argument 2)

If American policy gave the Western bloc its institutions, Soviet conduct gave the division its hostility. Long before the Marshall Plan, the rigged Bulgarian and Polish elections of 1945 to 1946 had shown that Stalin would not honour the Yalta pledge of free elections, and when Marshall's offer reached the whole of Europe in June 1947, it was Molotov who walked out of the Paris talks on 2 July and the Kremlin that forced Czechoslovakia and Poland to retract their acceptance - turning an offer into a frontier by Soviet choice. The point was sealed in February 1948, when the communist coup in Prague destroyed the last coalition government in Eastern Europe and Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk fell to his death from a ministry window; Western opinion, until then divided over American militancy, hardened almost overnight and the Brussels Pact followed within weeks. As the post-revisionist John Lewis Gaddis argues from the Soviet archives, the threat Washington perceived was not invented, even if its response served American interests - which is why responsibility for the hostility of the division, as opposed to its institutional shape, rests more heavily on Moscow.

Marker's note. A band-6 response holds the "United States rather than the Soviet Union" comparison in view throughout, distinguishes responsibility for the FORM of division from responsibility for its HOSTILITY, anchors claims in dated evidence, sets historians in genuine tension (revisionist against post-revisionist), and delivers a graded, defensible verdict rather than splitting blame evenly by default.