‘A cold war between East and West was inevitable after 1945.’ Do you agree?
Up until May 7th 1945 Germany had been Europe’s main defence against Russian hegemony. Once the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany was complete, this defence no longer existed and the USSR held onto the territorial gains it had made during its monumental war effort. Germany’s fate had not yet been decided but in the meantime it had been divided into four areas by the former Allies. The tension between the remaining post war Superpowers, the United States and The Soviet Union were ever increasing. Britain became economically and militarily dependant on the US as its empire floundered. British rhetoric and ‘scaremongering was born of Britain’s desire to keep America involved in Europe.’ Stalin began to consolidate the Soviet area and the anti-Western language of the Soviet regime became just as scathing as Churchill’s. The ‘Iron Curtain’ was now in place and America, Britain and Russia were coming to realise that their respective ideologies were for the most part irreconcilable. Although it is often said that nothing is inevitable, there are times when the consequences of decisions and policies gather momentum and become an unstoppable force. By considering their differences and how the individual iron willed leaders involved expressed their intentions and shaped their stances against each other it will become apparent that the consequences and the forces that the East and the West put in motion made the Cold War inevitable after 1945.
By 1946-47 the Western leaders who ‘emerged on the winning side’ of World War Two had realised that what Lenin had said was true. ‘As long as Capitalism and Socialism exist, we cannot live in peace; in the end, one or the other will triumph. A funeral dirge will be sung either over the Soviet Republic or over Capitalism’ and therefore that Soviet policy was not