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.
The Nazi Soviet Pact states that the Soviets and Germany would not fight with each other in the event of an outbreak of war in Europe. Russia was then guaranteed a part of Poland. After the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Hitler’s next target was Poland. However, he feared a two-front war with Britain and France in the West and Soviet Union in the east. Negotiation thus took place between Germany and Russia.
Truman made some decisions that ultimately had a huge effect in the build up to the cold war. When plans were made for the division of power after WWII, Truman originally opposed America ganging up against Russia and said he would keep the agreements that were made with them. But Truman wanted to appear decisive and tough and he was not prepared to accept any deal if he could not get the majority of it his way. When Truman went to the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, he went there only to advance American Interest and he believed that the atomic bomb was the way to do this. Though this treat he was able to have his way at the Yalta conference.
Why did the cold war start? The cold war is the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union over ideologies, through other countries, without direct armed conflicts, which was first used by a English author and journalist called George Orwell at the end of The World War II. This essay is going to focus on main reasons for the beginning of the cold war. One major cause of the cold war was a distrust of the Soviets by the United States and the same distrust of the United States from the Soviet Union. Though the need to defeat the Germans had made USSR a partner in the Allied forces from 1941 onwards, Stalin had displayed the tendency that he wanted to dominate the world, and he used dictatorial powers and military powers towards people of his own country as well as others.
Clemenceau had wanted Germany weakened to the point where it would never be a danger to France ever again. He was angry that France got the Saar coalfields for only 15 years, and he was angry that the Rhineland was merely demilitarised – France had wanted it made into a powerless independent country, and Germany split up. Also, reparations were not high enough for Clemenceau. He wanted reparations so high that Germany would be crippled and paying for ever. Wilson (President of the USA) was dissatisfied also.
This gave Stalin a most important comeback and it was only the beginning of Stalin’s quest for the power of Russia. Lenin’s testament was send to the CC in May 1924 but it was not released to the party. If it had been it would have ended Stalin’s career. Zinoviev and Kamenev convinced the CC not to release it, because of the following causes it could have; the testament was not very positive about the party, Zinoviev and Kamenev thought that Stalin was no real threat to them and they wanted his help to get rid of Trotsky, and that the testament would help Trotsky. Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin were now ahead in the struggle to conquer the power.
“A compromise that satisfied nobody.” How far do you agree with this verdict on the treaty of versailles?’’ The treaty of versailles was the peace settlement signed after the WWI between the allied powers and Germany which aimed to make Germany accept the responsibility of causing the war and therefore pay for its consequences. It took six months of negotiations to conclude the treaty as nations had different aims. France urged to cripple Germany thoroughly through maximum reparations and disarmament while Britain and USA were on a more lenient stance. As a result, the final treaty failed to satisfy their individual aims completely. The peace treaty did not satisfy France as it was not harsh enough in the eyes of France.
By 1947 Europe was still dragging itself out of the Second World War and the two superpowers were already having severe disagreements concerning the next step for the continent. With both sides accusing the other of aggressive tactics it is small wonder as to what eventually became the norm in Europe. The Soviet Union had indeed used aggression in its own conquest of Eastern Europe especially Poland because of Stalin’s basic paranoia of the West. The Americans however, did not always play by the rules they set out either, which were outlined by the death of Franklin Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman’s hard-line tactics towards the Soviet state. The Soviet Union emerged from the war with 27,000,000 million civilian and military causalities something which Stalin was keen to use as a bargaining tool in the talk at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.
Stalin and the US created a brief alliance because they were both concerned with stopping Hitler. When the war ended, the U.S., Britain, France, and Russia each controlled a portion of Germany. Soviet Russia did not want to allow their portion to be unified into a post-War Germany for fear that the Germans would again be an aggressive and powerful invader. In 1948 the Soviets blockaded East Berlin and the Germans in the West side of the city were starved of food. The Allies (us) started a massive airlift to feed the trapped Germans so they would not starve.
However, you shouldn't make the assumption that devotion to ideology was all that was behind Cold War animosity; countries tend to be more complaint trading partners with countries that share their political systems and both Stalin and the Cold War Era presidents in the US knew this. The tension eventually built, but no one wanted to go to actual war again after the colossal massacre of WWII, hence the term Cold War. 2. Describe and explain the ideological differences between the United Stated and the Soviet Union. In 1917, Russia became a communist country with an agenda of converting the world to communism.