That would make Germany weaker and put a buffer zone between Germany and the Soviet Union, Germany had invaded the Soviet Union twice in 30 years and Stalin wanted to ensure that it would not happen again. He also wanted to guarantee that Poland had a pro-Soviet government. Stalin already had a government who were in exile: the Lublin Poles. But Roosevelt and Churchill supported another group, the strongly anti-Communist ‘London Poles’. These Poles had helped organize the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, aiming to gain part of Poland before Stalin’s Red Army took full control of the country.
However, they never did it and broke their promise. They ended up not sending as many troops as they had initially agreed and this caused Stalin having to put more troops out from Russia than he needed to. This caused relationships between the USA and the Soviet Union to change because Stalin lost trust in them and believed that if they had broken promises once, they were more than likely to break them again. The second conference was in Yalta, Russia. It was held in February 1945.
Valuable weapons were lost and the army was running short of ammunition and medical supplies. The Russian army started deserting their posts. The situation in Russia got worse and the Russian people rebelled in 1917 and the Tsar was overthrown. The overtaking Government surrendered to the Germans after two days of being in power. The Germans transferred all of the soldiers in the Eastern Front over to the Western front to fight the British and the French.
The Allies were surprised by the Nazi attack. Actually, the Nazi wanted to spread the confusion within the Allies and some German soldiers were dressed as American soldiers. The allies could not use their air force because of the cloudy weather. The battle was launched by the Nazi, but by December 22, the situation began to turn around in favor of the Allied forces as the Nazi began to run out of fuel. Despite the Nazi efforts to win the battle, by late January the Nazi were out of fuel and had to abandon their tanks.
The modern world is still living with the consequences of World War II, the most powerful conflict in history. In the bloodshed, seventeen million military personnel died in the war. Moreover, civilian deaths in the Soviet Union and China alone totaled 30 million. Like any other major historical event, World War II has been reenacted in Hollywood movies. Likewise, like any historical movie, Pearl Harbor has generated debate about its historical accuracies or rather its historical inaccuracies.
[10] | Jan 11 | 1(b) Explain why the USSR blockaded West Berlin in 1948. [8] | June 10 | 1(b) Explain why the USA was hostile towards the Soviet Union in the years 1945 to 1949. [4] | Jan 10 | Q.2 (a) What was
This was terribly inconsiderate of the military as the other 82% of the nation was left to starve as the military was the government’s top priority. This led to extreme cases of hunger across Russia which soon became famine. Food shortages were at their worst in the towns and cities, Petrograd suffered particularly badly due to the remoteness from the food-producing regions. Secondly, transportation was a key pre- existing war condition; it was the disruption of the transport system rather than the decline in food production that was the major cause Russia’s wartime shortages. The attempt to transport millions of troops and masses of supplies to the war fronts created unbearable pressure on the Russian transport system, and it bucked under the pressure.
In an attempt to increase their wages, industrial workers went on strike. The Tsar’s indecisiveness, the reality of him continuing the war against Germany although there were many thousands of casualties and the rest of Russia was starving due to the bad transportation systems, and the fact that he had broken his promises from the October Manifesto after the
Before the PG came into power, the already dire economic, agrarian and social problems were getting worse and worse as the war continued and as a result, the majority of Russians opposed the war effort. This meant that from the beginning of their reign, the PGs decision to carry on with the war made them unpopular as food shortages and the economy got worse and worse. For example, by 1917, the price of bread had doubled while the rations halved from their original figures in 1914. This discontent was proven as early as April the 20th as a riot broke onto the streets demanding that Milyukov, the head of Russian foreign affairs and key war minister, was sacked. This was significant as it meant that in the times of potential danger for the PG, they couldn’t rely on the people to support them.
Soviet and US relations changed dramatically between 1945 and 1947, there were many reasons to explain why and how this happened. Firstly, one reason was the end of WW2. During the Second World War, America and the USSR were members of the Grand Alliance in order to oppose Hitler, but when this war finished there was nothing to bring the Communists and Capitalists together. Therefore, the two countries went from allies to progressing enemies after Germany was defeated. This developed until a confrontation, from Western and Eastern Europe, in a nuclear arms race.