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The development of the Cold War
Short Introduction Of The Cold War
Perspectives of the cold war
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In WWII the Big Three Allies were the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain. The leaders of this alliance, known as the Grand Alliance, were Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. These leaders believed in the denazification of Europe after the war, so that all traces of Nazism would be destroyed and children would be taught new values. The allies met in Tehran, Iran in November 1943 to discuss future of the war, specifically their final attack on Germany. At this meeting they also decided to divide Germany and that Soviets would liberate Eastern Europe. (712) Stalin was suspicious of western powers so he desired Eastern Europe as a buffer to protect the Soviet Union and also for its resources and military advantages.
In February 1945, the
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United States’ president Roosevelt had died April 1945, so his successor Harry Truman attended this meeting. Truman demanded immediate free elections for countries in Eastern Europe, but Stalin refused. He justified his view by saying that free-elections would be anti-Soviet and therefore threaten his government. (713) Distrust between the east and west came about because Westerners viewed Soviet policy as a conspiracy for world-wide communism. While Soviets viewed Western policy as a plot for global capitalism.(713) The Allies’ only truly common goal was the end of Nazism and once this had been achieved many disagreements arose, thus the beginning of the Cold …show more content…
Czechoslovakia was not Communist until 1948, because it was a county deeply rooted in democratic government. These countries under Soviet control were often referred to as Soviet Satellites. (723) Yugoslavia was the only exception to the Soviet Dominance in Eastern Europe. General Josip Broz, also known as Tito, led Yugoslavia’s resistance against Nazi’s. After the war he “set out to establish an independent Communist State”. Stalin intended to take control of Yugoslavia, like he did with the rest of Western Europe but Tito refused. Yugoslavia joined neither NATO nor Warsaw pacts. After Stalin’s death Tito joined the Soviet bloc.
The Potsdam Conference occurred from July 17th to August 2nd, 1945. The conference took place between US president Harry Truman, Soviet’s Joseph Stain, and England’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The major goal of the Potsdam meeting was what would happen with Germany postwar. They wanted to be able to ensure the “eventual reconstruction of Germany’s democracy and peace.” At that time, the Soviet Union occupied a lot of the Eastern part of Germany and wanted a “unified, but unarmed Germany.” However, President Truman did not trust Stalin’s motives. In addition, Truman had found out that they had tested their atomic bomb and it was ready to be used in battle. Truman seeing the immense advantage the US had from a military standpoint knew he had leverage.
After the Second World War, the Soviet Union spread their political ideology among the countries of East Central Europe. Instantly, Josef Stalin spread Stalinization across each of the countries to assert Soviet control. He created totalitarian governments with limited freedoms for its citizens. Following the death of Stalin, the new leader of the Soviet Union, Nika Khrushchev, began changing the repressive policies of Stalin, opening the doors to the countries of East Central Europe to challenge the rule of the Soviets. Using the Soviet Thaw as an opportunity to reform the system of government, many countries including Hungary and Czechoslovakia had uprisings against Soviet Rule. The Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring were uprisings against the Soviet Union that both ended in defeat with Soviet Union. However, the outcomes for both countries differed in many ways because of the differences in the motives for the uprising, the loss of life and the differences in the leadership of the uprisings.
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States were principle players involved with reshaping post-war Europe. The region most affected policy changes was Eastern Europe, which includes those states that would eventually fall behind the Iron Curtain. While the camaraderie between the Big Three deteriorated, Soviet-backed communism was spreading across Eastern Europe. The argument during this time was that expansionism was inevitable since Stalin had already decided to establish Soviet power and Soviet-typed systems in the lands his army occupied; resistance was pointless. While nothing in history is inevitable, to a great extent, expansionism was highly probable, especially due to Eastern European political traditions, its political structure after World War II and the West's inactivity in the region which left the area more susceptible to Soviet-backed communism. As George Schopflin states, "Stalin, however ruthless and powerful he may have been, was not possessed of superhuman abilities" (58).
During World War II, Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi Germany and was partitioned. A fierce resistance movement sprang up led by Josip Tito. Following Germany's defeat, Tito reunified Yugoslavia under the slogan "Brotherhood and Unity," merging together Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, along with two self-governing provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. Tito, a Communist, was a strong leader who maintained ties with the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War, playing one superpower against the other while obtaining financial assistance and other aid from both. After his death in 1980 and without his strong leadership, Yugoslavia quickly plunged into political and economic chaos.
The French, British and American zones became the German Democratic Republic, West Germany. This country was a democracy, which meant that the people could ... ... middle of paper ... ... a huge threat. The Warsaw Pact was therefore set up, which was a military alliance for the Communist-controlled countries of Eastern Europe.
Yugoslavia also joined the Communist bloc. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia had helped drive out the Germans near the end of the war. Communists led by Josip Broz Tito then took over the government (Cold War). East and West opposed each other in the United Nations. In 1946, the U.S.S.R. rejected a U.S. proposal for an international agency to control nuclear energy production and research.
Stalin did not trust the West, Britain and USA. because he remembered they had invaded Russia in 1919 and had ignored Stalin's appeal for a second front. Stalin was convinced they wanted the USSR to destroy itself when fighting Germany. At the end of the war, the Allies met at Yalta and later Potsdam.... ...
The arms race the Soviet Union had been involved in with NATO had bankrupted their economy. This in turn affected the people, when the economy started to collapse, the people started to lose their jobs, were not able to get the basic necessities from the local stores. In most cases when one form of government can not provide the basic needs for their people, then the people will look for a form of government that can provide for them. Then there is one aspect of human nature that the Communist Party in the Soviet Union was not able to control and the desire of the people of Eastern Europe to be free of Soviet control. Before World War II, the countries that made up Eastern Europe had been independent countries able to decide their own fate.
The new American President, Eisenhower, was actually. prepared to support a new independent Hungary. In Czechoslovakia however, current leader Dubcek, new the outcomes of. the Hungarian revolt and so did not want to make the same mistake. He specifically told the Soviet leader Brezhnev, that the Czechs have no intention in leaving the Warsaw Pact as the Hungarians did but less.
When the Soviet Union annexed the countries of East Central Europe, it began to spread its communist influence amongst the countries. After the death of Joseph Stalin, the new leader of the Soviet Union, Nika Khrushchev, began changing the repressive policies of Stalin, which opened the doors to the countries of East Central Europe to challenge the rule of the Soviets. In both Hungary and Czechoslovakia, there were uprisings for independence from the Eastern Bloc. Although the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring had the similar crushing defeat by a soviet invading force, the two uprising differed in outcomes due to Hungary’s nationalist attempt to break free from communism versus the Czechoslovak attempts to reform communism internally within the country.
During this conference, one thing they could agree on was to take out the Axis Powers. They knew they were a huge threat to all three countries and had to take them down. Here, they discussed their strategies on attacking the powers. They negotiated the change of the Eastern borders by moving German / Polish border to the Oder and Neissc River. This would benefit them more for attacking Europe and Germany. Before they did this, Stalin wanted to take out Japan and have Germany
...was not to preserve peace, but to preserve the sovereignty and independence of the states of Europe against potential aggressors. The basic rule was to ally against any state threatening domination. The weaker countries would seek alliance with the other weaker states. They would thus create a balance or counterweight against the state whose ascendancy they feared.
The year was 1946. World War 2 had ended only months before, and already the stage was set for another global conflict. The United States and the Soviet Union, formerly allies in the war against Hitler's Third Reich, were now engaged in a standoff over what system of beliefs would prevail over the slowly recovering nations of Europe. The Soviet Union wasted no time in forming an Eastern Bloc, a group of satellite nations controlled by puppet governments, whose primary purpose was to provide a buffer of sorts between Russian soil and the other nations of Europe, sealing their new territory behind tightly controlled borders that came to be called “The Iron Curtain”. The USSR had no intention of stopping their expansions, making no secret of their desire to conquer all of the remaining territory to be had. The United States responded with the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, in an attempt to contain the spread of Communism.
"By the early 1950s, Czechoslovakia was a Soviet-style dictatorship and a loyal ally of the Soviet Union" (Goldman 123). Antonin Novoty was appointed the head of Czechoslovakia in 1952 by Joseph Stalin. Novoty was not well liked by the Communist Party. He refused to make changes to the political system, thinking that it would improve the Soviet's political influence in Czechoslovakia. In 1967, many very popular writers rebelled against him. It made it more difficult for Novoty to establish policies. The Communist Party then asked him to resign in January 1968.
American President Harry S Truman and leader of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin were significant leaders in the beginning of the Cold War, as they introduced the antagonistic quality of US-Soviet relations that would dominate throughout the period. Stalin’s attitude towards the West and towards Easter Europe largely determined the nature and