TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE YALTA AND POTSDAM CONFERENCES CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE?

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TO WHAT EXTENT DID THE YALTA AND POTSDAM CONFERENCES CONTRIBUTE TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLD WAR IN EUROPE? (45)

   To provide an answer to this question one must look back to the origins of the cold war as these conferences are said to be some of the main factors which must be considered in the beginning of the war. It may seem that I am beating around the bush and not saying what some historians think. Some would say that the conferences were a main cause of the war, but there is the view that the conferences provided opportunities for causes of the war. The conferences acted as a mere battleground for the grand alliance to disagree and fall out. But it cannot be denied that the conferences did aid the development of the cold war, but to what extent is debatable.

   The story of the origins of the cold war is fundamentally one of how and why the grand alliance disintegrated. There were, it is true, a number of general conditions and contexts that pointed in the direction of such a break-up. Ideological differences and a history of difficulties in Soviet-Western relations are just two of them. During the war a large measure of agreement on post-war issues had been achieved but important unresolved disputes remained. At the end of the war there emerged numerous practical problems of working together in liberated Europe, above all in Germany. The fact that the Americans had the atomic bomb and the Russians did not was also problematical, as was the extent of the Soviet need for human and material resources to rebuild their war-devastated economy. Some historians argue that these factors made some kind of cold war inevitable. At the time, however, none of these problems was seen as insurmountable, given mutual respect and good will. When the war ended there was good will aplenty – at least on most people’s part. But not for long. It soon became evident that there were fundamental differences of policy and perspective between the Soviet Union and its grand alliance partners. The three most important areas of dispute concerned Eastern Europe, Germany and the political and economic reconstruction of Europe.

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   The ‘Grand Alliance’, a grandiose concept popularised by Winston Churchill in the 1950s, is the most common name for the wartime coalition of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. It was forced into being by Nazi Germany, which attacked Russia in June 1941 and declared war on the United States in December 1941. During the early period of its existence (1941-43) the alliance was primarily a war coalition, one dominated by military issues and priorities. However, with victory assured, decision-makers in London, Washington and Moscow began to turn their attention to the forthcoming peace settlement. From 1943 ...

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