In February 1945, when WW2 had almost finished the Yalta Conference was held and there it was decided that Germany was to be divided into four zones and Berlin would be as well. It seemed like a very good solution, however this caused many problems as time went on. There started to be argues about the future government of Germany, USA, France and Britain wanted elections to be held, but the communist were not in favor of this decision. Then, they had agreed that eastern Germany (EG) would send agricultural supplies to Western Germany (WG) and WG would send industrial supplies to EG. WG complied with this agreement but EG did not, and this made capitalists very angry and disappointed so they also stopped sending their products.
All these arguments and suspicions created around Germany contributed to the building up of suspicion and the growing bad relations between both sides. By 1947 USA and USSR did not understand each other at all.
In 1948 France, Britain and USA join their German zones to form Western Germany and started receiving vast support from the Marshall plan. The USSR saw this as a threat because they were so afraid that a new attack against them could take place, just as it had happen before with the Nazis. Later in the same year they introduced a common currency in western Germany and this made the Russians so angry that they left the allied control council and started the Berlin Blockade. This was a very important event. It was a very tense time in the Cold War, and the west had to do something about it, so in 1949 USA launched the Berlin airlift and Russia had to stop the blockade. More arguments and tension created because of Germany.
The NATO was created in 1949 and WG joined it in 1955. Russia now felt even more insecure and threatened. They were afraid that a “New Germany” would attack them. Then WG and EG were officially set up.
During all these years Germany had a very important role in the development of the Cold War because it was the “key” to most of the tension and arguments in the Cold War because of the arguments on the new government, the problems with Berlin and the blockade and the growing fear the Russians had of a revival of Nazi Germany, however around 1950 Germany’s role in the development of the cold war started to loose importance and the attention was centered in the Korean War (1950 – 1953), the Suez crisis and the invasion of Hungary (1956) and the Cuban missile crisis (1959) and arguments over Germany started to be of lesser importance.
As a conclusion I would say that the role of Germany in the origin of the cold war was important because by signing the Nazi-soviet pact with Russia, the USA felt very suspicious and this contributed to the necessary suspicion for the Cold War to start. Moreover, it had a very important role in the development of the cold war until 1950. Germany was the main reason of the disagreements, the arguments, the tension and the anger of both, USA and USSR, therefore made the Cold War more important and gave it a good reason to go on; however with the start of the Korean War Germany’s role declined and Germany was no longer the center of attention of the Cold War. So its role was very important only in the early years of the Cold war, then it was not so crucial.
Carla Valdizán
Number of words: 735