Stalin wanted to keep the parts of Poland that he had won in the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. He wanted Poland to expand westward into Eastern Germany. Which would create a buffer zone between Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalin did not want to be attacked by the Germans again, after Germany had attacked them twice in the 30 years before then. He also wanted Poland to have a pro-Soviet government.
Stalin also had another government in exile, ready to be taken over, the Lublin Poles. But Britain and the USA supported a different group called the London Poles, who were strongly against communism. These poles had helped organise the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, aiming to gain part of Poland, before Stalin’s army took over the whole country. Stalin wanted all the Germans out of Poland so that the Lublin Poles would have the country under complete control. By 1945 this had happened. Roosevelt and Churchill did not want Stalin to have control over Poland. At the Yalta conference, they forced him to agree that some of the London Poles would be included in the government and that there would be free elections for a new government ‘as soon as possible’
Yalta showed how difficult it was for the Allies to reach an agreement. In July 1945, a second conference was held, at Potsdam in Germany. Here, the broken relationship between the east and the west was more apparent. By July 1945, Soviet troops had liberated the whole of Eastern Europe from Nazi control, however, instead of free democratic elections, decided on at Yalta, Soviet troops remained in these liberated countries.
Winston Churchill made his famous Fulton Speech in March 1946, it explained how an iron curtain, a division between East and West Europe had been set. This separation was by soviet policy. The west of Europe was free, but in the east, the Soviets had taken over. This was a clear statement of West versus East. Stalin accused Churchill of trying to stir up a war against the Soviets. The Soviets made sure that between 1945 and 1948, every country in Eastern Europe had a government that was both communist and were sympathetic towards the Soviets. Stalin said that all he was doing was creating a buffer zone between the Soviets and the Western World.
Was the Cold War Inevitable? The different political systems, this was always going to be a reason for the East and the West to fall out. Communists were bitterly opposed to Capitalists and vice versa. Also the events at the Potsdam Conference were nobody’s fault really. The Soviets wanted Germany to be economically flattened, USA and Britain knew that this wasn’t the case; Germany had to be picked up and on its feet again, just with restrictions and rules. These points made the Potsdam conference a slightly inevitable cause of the Cold War.
Finally, were the East and the West as much to blame as each other? Was it a compilation of both sides’ actions? Would some points even had been considered if the other sides actions before hadn’t taken place? Both The Soviets and The Allies were suspicious of each other, they both thought that their way was right, and they were willing to fight for it. If Russia hadn’t expanded into Eastern Europe, would the Cold War have actually ever been mentioned in a history lesson? Personally, I believe that both the East and the West were to blame and that each side encouraged each other to retaliate in its actions. The Berlin Blockade caused the Allies to harden up and stand their ground, this made them tougher and stronger than before. Each side after WW2 wanted to win diplomatic victories over their opponents. Post Revisionist Historians also believe that it was partly both alliances that caused the Cold War. Modern historians also tend to think this. M. Leffler wrote in 1992 about how the USA were responding to things that the Soviets were doing, but these actions that the Soviets were taking were in response to Western actions. Each side was responding to responses to their own actions. My thoughts are shared with Lefflers, both sides were to blame. Each in their own way.
