Three Voices on the Iron Curtain
The motion: “The Cold War was made in Moscow.”
Your opponent: Winston Churchill, George Orwell, Mahatma Gandhi · Course: Pearson Edexcel International GCSE History (4HI1) · Assessment objectives: AO1, AO2, AO4
Churchill, Orwell and Gandhi were all alive when this began, and no two of them agreed. You must hold one position against all three.
What you are asked to argue
You take a position on responsibility for the Cold War's origins and hold it against three incompatible critiques.
What the specification expects you to bring
- The wartime conferences: Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam, and what changed between them
- Soviet actions in eastern Europe 1945–48
- The Truman Doctrine, Marshall Aid and Cominform
- The Fulton speech of March 1946 and its reception
- The Berlin blockade and airlift
- The historiographical debate: orthodox, revisionist and post-revisionist readings
Positions that are defensible
Disagreeing with the figure is not an error. Any of these can score full marks if argued well:
- That the Cold War arose from mutual misperception and neither side 'made' it
- That American economic interests drove the confrontation (the revisionist case)
- That the origins lie in 1917 and 1941, not in 1945
- That the question of blame is itself the wrong question, and structure explains more than intention
Common misconceptions this debate is built to expose
- Wrong: In a panel debate you can satisfy everyone by agreeing with each in turn.
The correction: The panellists disagree with EACH OTHER. Agreeing with all three produces a position that contradicts itself, and the format is designed to expose exactly that. - Wrong: The Fulton speech declared the Cold War.
The correction: It was a speech by a private citizen out of office, and it was widely criticised at the time, including in the United States. Its significance is in what it named, not in what it started.
What passing it proves
One position held against three incompatible critiques, with what each panellist gets right explicitly acknowledged and answered, and a judgement that survives all three.
Why them?
Read the life before you argue with it — the case you are about to meet was built by a real person, over a real career:
- The life of Winston Churchill — Prime Minister of Great Britain · Prime Minister of Britain · 1874–1965
- The life of George Orwell — Chronicler of the Total State · Writer & Journalist · 1903–1950
- The life of Mahatma Gandhi — Mahatma · Father of the Indian Nation · Father of the Nation · 1869–1948