THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE essays

THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE essays The end of the war in Europe revealed signs of growing mistrust between the USA and the USSR. Issues such as the Polish question, confrontation in Iran, containment, the Marshall plan, the Czechoslovakian Crisis, the Berlin Blockade, NATO, Cominform, Tito in Yugoslavia, the Korean War, Khrushchevs reforms, the Hungarian Revolution, the Berlin Wall and Cuba all accounted for the situation between the USA and USSR to turn into suspicion and confrontation. From the beginning, disagreements over wartime strategy foreshadowed post-war conflict, especially between the Soviets on the one hand and the British and Americans on the other. At the liberation of Italy in 1944, the Soviet Union was excluded from the Allied Control Council, heightening the suspicions of Stalin. At Teheran in 1943, then at Yalta and at Potsdam in 1945, the Allies worked out the broad outline for a settlement once Germany was defeated. Three issues defied resolution: the boundaries of Poland; the types of government s in Eastern Europe; and the future of Germany. The determination of each of the major powers to act unilaterally prevented the resolution of these major issues at Potsdam. The dispute over the boundaries of Poland festered throughout 1945, and fostered dissension between the Americans and the Soviets. Eastern Europe, it was agreed, fell clearly within the Soviet sphere of influence, but would be allowed to determine its own political future through free elections. Stalins promise was an empty one: free elections failed to materialize in areas dominated by the Red Army. The most contentious area of all was Germany, where the United States and the Soviet Union faced each other squarely in their respective occupation zones. No common goal for Germany existed. The British and the Americans wanted a politically unified and industrially self-sufficient country; the French and the Soviets wanted a politically weak Germany. In 1946, the West ceased the...