By February 1945, the allies were marching on Germany from the East and the Russians from the West. They knew the war was coming to an end. The big three – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met at Yalta in Russia to decide about Germany and their consequences. They agreed that Germany should be divided into four zones, controlled by the allies and Russia. Nazi leaders should get tried as war criminals. Germany was to pay for the reparations for the damage of the war. Russia would declare war on Japan. A United Nations Organisation should be set up to keep the peace.
After Germany was defeated in May 1945, the big three met again at Potsdam in July/August 1945. President Roosevelt had died and had been replaced by vice president Harry Truman. He was more suspicious of Stalin than Roosevelt. Churchill lost the election and had been replaced by Clement Atlee. Stalin stayed the same. Nothing much was agreed at the conference, although the Russians insisted on getting the Germany’s reparations.
As agreed in the Yalta conference Germany was split into 4 zones. It would be one economic and political unit with joint elections with all four zones. It was used so that in time Germany would be a free democratic country. The British and Americans joined their zones in January 1947 and the French zone was added in 1947 to make one Western zone. Stalin was very suspicious of their behaviour.
In 1947 communists in Greece were fighting for control of the country. The USA went to help them even though they had no interests in Greece. President Truman thought the Communism should be ‘contained’ so that it does not spread any further. This is called The Truman Doctrine. He saw the choice as a simple one, a communist world or a non-communist world. The Americans then gave supplies and support to any country which felt threatened by Communism.
In 1947 Europe was in a very difficult economic difficulty. It was the result of the war by severe winter. Truman was afraid that the poor people might turn to communism. In June 1947 the Americans came up with an idea with the ‘marshall plan’. It offered American aid to when it was needed in the East or West. George Marshall was the US Secretary of State. His plan was to repair war damage and build up industry. They provided 16 European countries with 17 billion dollars of aid over the next four years. Stalin thought this was an attempt at world domination. He wasn’t very pleased about it but it was good for America as it guaranteed export markets for American factories. It slowly increased living standards between East and West Europe.
The Soviets were in control of Berlin and therefore, Britain, France and the USA had to travel through the Soviet zone to reach their sectors of Berlin. In 1948 Russia cut off Berlin from West Germany. This was called the Berlin Blockade. The Russians blocked all methods of transport and there was barely any food. The Russians hoped that the West would give up and give the rest of Berlin to them. The Americans feared that if they let this through, then the Russians would want the rest of Germany too. They decided to airlift supplies into Berlin. By September an aircraft was landing in Berlin every 3 minutes. Even so, the supplies were heavily rationed. Stalin could not shoot these planes down because he was afraid of the American’s nuclear weapons. On May 12th 1949, the blockade was lifted.
As early as May 1945 Churchill shown his concern about the Soviets occupying Eastern Europe. He called it ‘The Iron Curtain’. At first the iron curtain was only a ‘barrier of ideas’. It stopped co-operation and the exchange of information but it did not stop the movement of people. In May 1952 Communist East Germany decided to block of its western border. They used barbed wire, mines, ditches, floodlights, watchtowers and soldiers. They said they were doing this to protect against spies, terrorists and smugglers but their real reason were that they were worried about the skilled workers leaving to settle in the west. Secondly, capitalist ideas might spread amongst their people. This physical barrier continued over the rest of Europe
Overall, there was a lot of mistrust between the Allies and the Russians even after the war. This caused the Cold War to develop. The Americans were afraid of the soviets expansion in Eastern Europe and the Soviets were afraid of Americans nuclear bomb. They didn’t actually fight against each other but they used tactics to get their point across.
