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In order to ensure containment, the US introduced Marshall Aid. He accused the Soviet Union of trying to control Eastern Europe. Churchill had announced that an iron curtain has descended across the continent of Europe. This attitude was an echo of a speech made by Winston Churchill’s in Fulton, Missouri, USA in 1946. He believed that the world was becoming increasingly divided and accused the Soviets of running and encouraging dictatorial regimes and of stifling the world economy. This became known as the Truman Doctrine. This meant that the USA had to abandon its isolationist tendencies and become more involved in European affairs.īy 1947, Britain had announced that it no longer had the military or economic means to provide aid to the Greek and Turkish governments in their struggle against communist rebels, who were trying to take control of their respective countries.ĭuring a speech in March 1947, US President Truman announced a policy of containment (the realisation that if communism could not be eradicated, it must be prevented from spreading further). The decline of Great Britain as a world power after World War Two left a power vacuum. The USA was opposed to this as they envisaged the creation of democratic states and free trade.ĭisagreements at Yalta and Potsdam between Stalin and the other Allies, mainly over how Eastern Europe was to be administered and restructured, caused further distrust and suspicion. This ‘barrier’ was to be created from the lands invaded by the Red Army on its march toward Berlin. He wanted to create a geographical buffer of friendly Eastern European countries to safeguard against future aggression from the west. This led Stalin to search for increased security for his country in the future. Stalin suspected that the USA and Britain were leaving Germany and the Soviet Union to fight, so that both countries would be weakened. This delay allowed Hitler to concentrate his forces against the Soviets. Stalin was angry because the USA and Britain had taken so long to open up a 'Second Front' to fight against German forces in Western Europe. The Allies were unsure of Stalin’s loyalty as he had allied himself with Hitler in 1939, through the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The impact of World War TwoĮvents during World War Two further alienated the emerging superpowers. In contrast, a communist state is administered from the centre, with control of the economy and society strictly in the hands of the Communist Party-led government.īoth sides wanted countries to conform to their adopted ideologies for their own gains. In a capitalist state, the economy is largely free from state control, while the government is democratically elected and freedom of speech is cherished. The political and economic systems of the capitalist USA and communist USSR were incompatible. The Bolsheviks had withdrawn Russia from World War One, leaving Britain and France to fight alone.Īfter World War One, the White Army, Tsarist supporters who fought the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, were supported militarily by the Western powers of Britain and the USA. The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, which replaced Russia's Provisional Government with a "dictatorship of the proletariat", had established a communist state. Prior to World War Two some events led to the alienation of the emerging superpowers from each other:
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