Cold War
The victorious forces at the end of the war divided Germany into four zones. They also divided Berlin into four zones. Each of the victorious nations controlled one zone and one sector of Berlin.The Allies (Britain, America and France) ran their zones differently to the areas controlled by Russia. Russia wanted to keep Germany as weak as possible to ensure that Russia itself was never attacked again by Germany. They also took from their zones whatever was needed by Russia so that it could be used in Russia itself. This way, Russia could start to rebuild itself at Germany's expense and the Germans would be kept poor.The Allies believed that a strong Germany would enable democracy to prosper after the years of Nazi dictatorship. They also believed that Europe needed a strong Germany so that their economies would prosper. To enable their zones to work more effectively, the British, Americans and French decided to amalgamate their zones into one unit and introduced into that one unit a new currency - the Deutschmark. All four occupying forces had agreed to inform one another if changes were going to be made in their respective zones. This the Allies failed to do with regards to Russia.The biggest problem for Stalin was that the
It was the adoption of the Marshall Plan that allowed Western Europe to make its quick economic recovery from the ashes of World War II. The US non-policy which ignored Eastern Europe in the late thirties and forties, while strongly supported domestically, was another means to Roosevelt's plans to achieve US world supremacy. Therefore, the US won the space race to the moon. There were over one-hundred killed in attempts to climb over it. The question of Europe having been settled for the most part, the two superpowers rushed to fill the power vacuum left by Japan in Asia. They believed that World War II was a fight for democracy and was not going to let it be overthrown. In July 1945, another conference was held in Potsdam, Germany. However, Churchill did eventually agree to it, realising that without the help of the United States, he would lose much more than Great Britain's colonies. America has tried to achieve an open world economy for over a century. The USSR responded by signing the Warsaw Mutual Defense Pact, promising military aid to each other. Stalin's main plan seemed to be to conquer all the territory that his armies could reach, and create to socialist states within it. Both sides soon had the power to wipe out the not only the enemy, but the rest of the world as well. To be controlled by the Soviet Union at all was to become a socialist state; freedom to decide the domestic structure, or how to interact with the world markets was denied to such states. He was convinced that the Soviet Union would move westward and abandon its totalitarian political system along with its policy of closed and internal markets.
Common topics in this essay:
Soviet Union,
Britain France,
War II,
Cold War,
Eastern Europe,
World War,
British Empire,
England France,
Iron Curtain,
USSR America,
soviet union,
world war,
world war ii,
war ii,
cold war,
eastern europe,
britain france,
berlin wall,
iron curtain,
space race,
sectors berlin,
united soviet union,
believed world war,
role world affairs,
germany world war,
|