Two Sides of the Cold War:
The two basic sides to the cold war were technically Communism and Capitalism, communism being backed by the USSR and Capitalism being backed by the USA. Capitalism is the belief that everyone has the opportunity to create a business for themselves and keep any profit that they make as a reward for hard work. Communism is the belief that no private person should be able to profit off the work of other citizens, and that everyone should be equal. Yalta and Potsdam: Yalta was a wartime allied conference, featuring the “big three” (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) which dealt mainly with the settlement of post war Europe. Allegedly FD Roosevelt was too ill to withstand Stalin’s demands, and his successor, Harry Truman, took a tougher line. Harry Truman became president of the US after FDR died from a stroke in April, 1945. The Potsdam conference, featuring Churchill, Stalin, and Truman was meant to decide the future of Germany and post war Europe in general. In effect, Germany was divided, with the western powers controlling West Germany and the USSR controlling East Germany. |
Marshall Plan:On June 5, 1947 Secretary of State George Marshall announced the European Recovery Plan. To avoid antagonizing the Soviet Union, Marshall announced that the purpose of sending aid to Western Europe was completely humanitarian, and even offered aid to the communist states in the east. Congress approved Truman's request of $17 billion over four years to be sent to Great Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium. The Marshall Plan created an economic miracle in Western Europe. By the target date of the program four years later, Western European industries were producing twice as much as they had been the year before war broke out. The aid also produced record levels of trade with American firms, fueling a post war economic boom in the United States. Lastly and much to Truman's delight, none of these nations of western Europe faced a serious threat of communist takeover for the duration of the Cold War.
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NATO and the Iron Curtain: The original NATO included Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The USSR created the Warsaw pact with other communist countries.
NATO and the Warsaw pact created a divide across Europe. This created the infamous "Iron Curtain." It was called this because the unites States had no way of finding out what was going on in the USSR when the iron curtain went up. This is one of the things that caused the fear in the US during the cold war.
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Berlin Air Lift:After WWII, All of Germany was divided up between the allies> However, Berlin itself was also divided. This made for complications when the Iron Curtain went up. The soviets made it impossible for the Allies to just drive supplies into Berlin for Allied citizens staying in the town. In response, the Allies had to airlift supplies into the town. The USSR knew that if they shot down any of the planes they would start a war, so Stalin had the chance to decide if he wanted another war or not. In the end no planes were shot down and the cold war stayed cold.
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