The Causes and Consequences of the Berlin Crisis 1948

The Causes and Consequences of the Berlin Crisis 1948

After the collapse of Germany in 1945, the Allied Powers of Russia,

France, Britain and the United States divided the city of Berlin among

themselves. However, relations began to go sour and the British,

French and American zones merged in 1947. A series of events after

that led to the Blockade of Berlin and the Berlin Airlift.

The Berlin Blockade represented the first heightening of Cold War

tensions. There was a series of key events that led to the Soviet

blockade of Berlin, the first of which concerned reparations. Russia

wanted Germany to pay for the killing of 20 million Russians and

widespread destruction it had caused to the USSR in the war. Stalin

wanted ten million dollars from Germany. At Potsdam the Allies agreed

that Russiashould be given a quarter of the industrial goods made in

the Western zones, in return for food and coal from the Soviet zone.

Russia was also given permission to strip factories from the Soviet

Zone and bring their machines to Russia. The British and Americans

kept to their word and sent the industrial goods to the Russians, as

agreed in Potsdam. However, Russiafailed to send back food and coal.

So in May 1946, the British and Americans stopped sending industrial

goods to the Russian zone.

Secondly, in response to communist revolutions in Greece and Turkey in

March of 1947, President Harry Truman announced that Americanow

promised to "support free people who are resisting attempted

subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures (with U.S.

military aid)." This policy meant that America was prepared to send

money, equipment and ad...

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... the Warsaw Pact. This was also a military treaty in

which the Communist countries of Eastern Europe (and later China) all

agreed to help each other - and the Soviet Union - in the event of

armed attack from the West.

Later, in 1954, the West formed the South East Asia Treaty

Organisation (S.E.A.T.O.) which was aimed at preventing attacks by

communists, and also in 1959, they formed the Central Treaty

Organisation (C.E.N.T.O.) helping prevent the spread of communism in

the Middle East.

So after the Berlin crisis, East-West relations entered a deadly new

phase. On the one hand, the Soviet Union had exploded their first atom

bomb late in 1949 (much sooner than the West had expected) and 350 000

American troops still remained in Western Europe. The whole world was

now divided and was on the brink of a nuclear war.