AP World History: Modern · Lesson 1 of 8 · Unit 8

Setting the stage: origins of the Cold War and decolonization

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This topic sets the foundation for the entire post-1945 era by explaining how the devastation of World War II dismantled Western European empires and elevated two rival superpowers. On the AP exam, you will frequently use these developments to earn the Contextualization point on Cold War or decolonization essays, and to answer Causation questions in multiple-choice and short-answer sets.

By the end you’ll be able to

Explain the historical context of the Cold War, including how technological and economic gains during World War II shifted the global balance of power towards the victorious nations.
Explain how hopes for greater self-government went largely unfulfilled after World War I, while increasing anti-imperialist sentiment after World War II contributed to the dissolution of empires.
Explain how the democracy of the United States and the authoritarian communist Soviet Union emerged as superpowers, producing an ideological conflict and power struggle between capitalism and communism across the globe.

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Core ideas (continued)
Worked examples
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What the exam asks

Multiple Choice (Section I, Part A): Stimulus sets often feature speeches from the Bandung Conference (1955), maps of post-war occupation zones, or political cartoons of the “Iron Curtain.” You will be asked to identify the historical situation or explain why leaders rejected superpower alignment.
Short Answer (Section I, Part B): Prompts regularly ask you to compare the aftermath of World War I with World War II regarding colonial self-determination, or to explain how wartime economic shifts caused the bipolar Cold War order.
DBQ and LEQ (Section II): This topic is your powerhouse for Skill 4: Contextualization. Whether an essay asks about proxy wars, economic globalization, or newly independent states in Asia and Africa, explaining the post-1945 shift in the balance of power provides strong broader historical context.

Core ideas

1. From World War I frustrations to World War II dissolution

After World War I, colonized peoples hoped Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of self-determination and their own wartime sacrifices would lead to independence. Instead, the Paris Peace Conference created the Mandate System, which transferred German and Ottoman territories to British and French control, leaving hopes for self-government largely unfulfilled.

World War II broke this imperial hold. European colonial powers (Britain, France, the Netherlands) were economically bankrupted and militarily exhausted, even in victory. Furthermore, Axis powers had shattered the myth of European invincibility—particularly in Asia, where Japan rapidly overran British, French, and Dutch colonies. Combined with growing indigenous anti-imperialist sentiment and the Atlantic Charter’s promise that all peoples had a right to choose their government, empires began to dissolve rapidly after 1945.

2. The superpower balance of power

World War II shifted the global balance of power away from Western Europe and toward the two victorious nations that gained the greatest wartime technological and economic advantages:

Superpower	Political & Economic System	Wartime Position & Post-1945 Advantage
United States	Democratic state; capitalist free-market economy	Mainland untouched by bombing; massive industrial expansion; held a monopoly on atomic weapons until 1949; launched the Marshall Plan (over $12 billion in aid) to rebuild Western Europe and contain communism.
Soviet Union (USSR)	Authoritarian one-party state; communist command economy	Suffered immense casualties and infrastructure loss, but the Red Army occupied Eastern Europe; vast industrial capacity relocated east of the Urals; established a buffer zone of satellite states and developed nuclear weapons by 1949.