Why did relations between the USA and the USSR change in the peroid from the end of the Second World War to the begginning of the Berlin Blockade?

Relations changed between the USA and the USSR between 1945-1948, mainly because the USA was capitalist while the USSR was communist, this created a mutual but potentially fatal feud between the two.

In may 1945 the victorious allies got on well because they had just defeated Nazi Germany. This was great for the rest of the world because the two most powerful states at the time were on each other’s side. However, by 1948 the situation was completely different, the allies were close to war due to the debate of Germany, Berlin, and also the Berlin blockade.

Relations between the USA and the USSR had never been good. This can be seen as far back as the agreements at Potsdam. However this was a time of good friendship and mutual agreement. These agreements occurred in the summer of 1945. This meeting was mainly to discuss the future of Germany and Berlin, which was inevitably divided into 4 sectors, one for the USSR, France, Britain and the USA. This also included many other agreements such as the dissolving of the Nazi party and even more dramatic the change of Germany into being a democracy.

Also which had stirred the bad relations was that Stalin dictator of the USSR had been slowly but efficiently obtaining small satellite countries thanks to Stalin’s Red Army, which were situated on the Eastern side of Europe. This in turn meant that Stalin now occupied most of Eastern Europe except Yugoslavia Albania and Greece, in a quest to protect the heart of the USSR from another invasion to reoccur. This was called the Buffer Zone.

Next in the long history between the West and East, was that the prime Minister of the U.K, Winston Churchill, made a speech addressing this problem. There were mixed reactions to this. To begin with, the speech was generally outlining what was actually going on in the East so that Westerners would get a good Perspective of the goings on in the East of the continent. On the other hand it just wound up Stalin even greater, which then created more tension. These were known nowadays as the Post war tensions of 45-46.

The first of the tensions was the Iron Curtain speech previously explained and next was the awful dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945. This opened a new and potentially dreadful chapter in the history of the world. It was dropped in an attempt to show to rest of the world the power and huge capability that the USA had over destroying what ever they saw as a threat to themselves. The bomb was especially aimed at the mind of Joseph Stalin. This act of mass violence against the Japanese meant that ...

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Second was the large amount of distrust between the two super powers. This involved the imposition of communism rule across most of Eastern Europe and also the issue of Germany and how it would eventually be organised and politically governed.

Thirdly which contributed to the mistrust of the superpowers were the coalition governments that were set up. They included communists and non-communists. Since Eastern Europe was mainly agricultural, with land worked by peasants, most non-communists came from the political parties who represented peasants and small farmers.

To conclude the inevitable mistrust of the West and the East the parties that were non-communist were gradually forced out of power by the Red Army. Methods included intimidation, this was strongly backed by Moscow. By 1949 all countries, behind the Iron Curtain were just one party communist state, taking orders from Moscow.

Next was the policy of the Truman Doctrine, created by the president at the time Harry Truman and the Marshall Aid policy named after the Secretary of State George.C.Marshall. These both had very effective aims in helping war stricken Europe to recover after the war. Firstly the Truman Doctrine was published in order to help the countries of Europe recover from the effects of the Second World War. The president had seen devastation, and he wanted the USA to play a part in recovery. Marshall aid was announced the following month.

Truman was also trying to stop another countries in Europe not becoming communist. Already the Iron Curtain had cut Europe into two, he did want that to go any further. Truman hoped that he might be able to persuade some of the countries in Eastern Europe to break away from communism. Marshall Aid was also intended to help here.

While the Truman Doctrine didn’t actually mention the Soviet Union, it was obviously that it was intended as a warning to Stalin that Truman was not going to let him get away with any more attempts to increase soviet influence in Europe. Truman had said that he was going to get ‘ tough with Russia’. Stalin reacted badly by criticising the Truman Doctrine and accusing the USA of trying to dominate the world.

Secondly was the Marshall Aid policy, this was an attempt to rebuild Europe after the Second World War, it put the ideas of the Truman Doctrine into affect. In June 1947, president Harry Truman offered grants of American money to all European countries. Truman intended that Marshall Aid would be made available to all countries in Europe but eventually only countries in the West accepted it. The most important point was that Marshall Aid had to be spent in ways that would help develop capitalism.

This would have given the USA the opportunity to influence the countries of the East and especially undermine Stalin and communism, which was exactly what Truman had hoped, would happen. In the end, 17 countries received a total of US$13.75 billion, which allowed them to recover from the war much more quickly than the countries of Eastern Europe.

Both of these policies defined would equal out to be ‘Containment’ this means overall to stop the rapid spread of communism and also alliances and financial packages in order to meet the USA’s aim.

These were implements created by the Americans, so obviously the Russians were down and now had to try and get even. This was made a reality by Stalin trying to seek permanent control of his satellite states, and also keep control of Eastern Europe.

He obtained this by making firstly the Iron curtain and by 1948 to put pressure on the western allies to remove their forces, Joseph Stalin ordered that all traffic be stopped. Before, the workers in the capital Berlin could travel from one place to another, so most saw the benefits of western Berlin compared to their owned way of life and were slightly swaying the capitalist way, Stalin found this out so obviously stopped all commuting from homes to work across the zones. He even closed the canals rail routes, but could not prevent the supplies to West Berlin by air supplies.

All this was probably the most effective amount of occurrences that severely added to the relations of the superpowers not getting on at all.

The main aims of the Western allies was not to prevent Germany from being a normal country again but to rebuild the country and its economy, Stalin’s East German aims could not be any different. He stated that he wanted Germany to be weak and never threat any one again. The westerners took their ideas to the very extreme by merging their zones to create‘ Bizonia.’ This made what used to be known as East and West Germany.

Their idea of rebuilding the country as an economic force was also taken to the extreme by them all agreeing to create a German currency for the West only called the ‘Deutsche Mark’ this would be the same as what is known nowadays.

This act now had ruined all attempts of the world getting along and had completely separated the western side of Germany to the Eastern side, and completely separated the Western side of Berlin from Eastern Berlin.

This in other words, created the ‘Berlin Blockade’ The Berlin Blockade however was one of many factors, which caused the superpowers not to get on at all. Overall a complete block off of the capital to all outsiders, in all forms of communication, except for one, the air.

Why did Stalin Blockade Berlin? Well because of one, bizonia, he felt let down over the failure of the agreements at Potsdam, two, to keep Germany weak, three, he found West alliances were rebuilding West Berlins economy and finally because East Berlin saw the improvements of West Berlin.

What did the Allies do about it? One, They created NATO a new security, two, they flew supplies into West Berlin, three, USA made an immediate stand and were going to fight for West Berlin.

In total 8,000 tonnes of provisions, every day were flown into West Berlin which was twice the amount needed. A total of 277,264 flights were completed, until it eventually ended in the September of 1949.

The Long-term consequences of the Berlin Blockade were that after the whole conflict as it were, the allies decided to create the Federal Republic Of Germany (FDR). The Capital city was Bonn. This country was often now known as West Germany.

The Soviet sector was renamed by Moscow. It was called, the German Demoractic Republic (DDR). Its Capital city was Berlin. It was often called East Germany.

It can be said that relations between the USA and the USSR changed in the period from the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the Berlin Blockade because of many different factors. There was a huge threat of nuclear war near to the end of The Cold War but it thank god did not result to that. Though on the other hand in this day and age they are very close to being permanent friends for a very long time, yet even after all that had occurred between the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the Berlin Blockade.

JAMES WOODS