The Division of Europe
The Origins of the Cold War
The Soviet Union and the United States began to quarrel as soon as the threat of Germany disappeared and hostility between the Eastern and Western superpowers was a logical outgrowth of military developments, wartime agreements, and long-standing differences
The Americans and British had made military victory their highest priority and avoided discussion of Stalin’s war aims and shape of the eventual peace settlement
The United States and Britain did not try to take advantage of the Soviet Union’s position in 1942, because they feared that bargaining would encourage Stalin to consider making separate peace with Hitler (focused on unconditional surrender)
The conference that Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill held in the Iranian capital of Teheran in November 1943 proved of crucial importance in …show more content…
Churchill fearing military dangers of a direct attack, argued that American and British forces should follow up their Italian campaign with an indirect attack on Germany through the Balkans but Roosevelt agreed with Stalin that an American-British frontal assault through France would be better (Roosevelt decides to appease Stalin)
This meant that the Soviet and the American-British armies would come together in defeated Germany along a north-south line and that only Soviet troops would liberate eastern Europe (basic shape of postwar Europe was emerging already)
When the Big Three met again in February 1945 at Yalta on the Black Sea in southern Russia, the Red Army had occupied Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, part of Yugoslavia, and much of Czechoslovakia while the American-British forces had yet to cross the Rhine into Germany; on the other hand, United States was far from defeating Japan
After Yalta Germany was to be divided into zones of occupation and pay big reparations to Soviet Union and at American insistence, Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan
Eastern European governments were to be freely elected but