The Heart of the Matter

Why should the Western Countries begin to fear Joseph Stalin’s actions within the year 1945?
Looking within the Cold War, many people believe and wonder over the origins and the causes of the Cold War and the actions of which preceded it and caused such anger between Truman, Churchill and Stalin.

It was established before the date of where the Cold War had first started, that there was growing conflict between the world leaders of Winston Churchill (Prime Minister of Great Britain} Harry S Truman (President of the USA) & Joseph Stalin (Leader of the USSR) within a meeting held within the dates of July 17th to August 2nd, 1945. This meeting was called the Potsdam Conference, which the three leaders discussed post-World War II action within Europe.

One of the greatest reasons in which why Stalin had decided to start a Cold War, was because of conflict over treatment of post-WWII Germany. After World War II and the defeat of Adolf Hitler, Germany was once more placed in economical disaster just like after the aftermath of World War I. It was during the Potsdam Conference that talk and conversation between Stalin, Truman and Churchill. It was there that much conflict came of it.
Truman and Churchill could see the reasons into why Germany had first began to follow Adolf Hitler and to why World War II was first started; Germany was in a state of poverty and economical sickness, and Hitler used their desire for rebirth and power in his rise towards power and started World War II. Truman and Church were planning to rebuild Germany from poverty to prevent another war.
However, Joseph Stalin had disagreed greatly over this and had other plans for Germany. His reasons for this was because of the atrocities that Germany had committed against Russia during World War I and World War II. The Russian Imperial Family had a very close connection to the German Royal family. And to the rest of the world, the Germans did little or nothing to stop this tragic event happening, the event being the kidnapping, captivity and murder of the Romanov family. The Russians blamed lots of people of this for the event i.e Jews, Anti-monarchists and the Germans. Because of this, the USSR had desired to keep the German state under oppression and rulership of the USSR and the other allies. After the loss of so many of the Russian population during the invasion of Russia by the Germans, Stalin wanted to keep Russia safe and he wanted the rest of the world to know that Russia would not let this ever happen again. However, what he had forgotten was that through oppression that Germany rebelled and this caused the start of the Second World War.

Another reason for the origins of the Cold War, was because of the creation of what the public and Churchill termed, ‘The Iron Curtain’. The Iron Curtain in more formal terms, was supposed to be the political and the ideological barrier made against Western countries to seal itself and dependent eastern countries from help from other non-communist realms.
The term of the Iron Curtain comes from a speech made by Winston Churchill concerning this barrier as addressed within this paragraph:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "Iron Curtain" has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.”

The reasons for why the Iron Curtain was first raised, at first was a mystery to Truman and to Churchill. But the reason contact between countries such as Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany was cut was because the governments of those countries had became puppet governments, with the Soviet Union as the puppet master. And the reasons to the status of the countries puppet government was one of the reasons to why the Cold War was started.

From fear of Russia being invaded again by Germany had being done within the events of World War I and World War II, Joseph Stalin had decided to invade these countries and put them under communist rule to eliminate these chances and for the countries, such as Poland and East Germany, to act as a buffer line for the USSR government against possible chances of invasion and war from rivalling realms.
By invading these countries and placing the sovereign governments under the state of puppet government, countries that were neighbouring to the USSR realm such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany would become as known within the glossary Encyclopaedia Britannica, a Buffer State or Buffer Zone.
Now, a buffer state is practically and politically a country lying right in between two countries under conflict and/or war and whose whole purpose is to prevent any conflict between them. With the USSR gaining these countries, this would mean that the country would be safe and if under conflict, rivals would have to enter these countries first and have the buffer states be damaged with the puppeteer country undamaged and safe from rivals.

However, when Joseph Stalin made the decision to invade and news of the countries statuses had gotten out to the UK and USA government, he in the end had broken the Polish-British Common Defence Pact, made within the 25th of August 1939.
This pact, having being made in response to Nazi Germany’s defiance the Munich Agreement (another law set up concerning annexation of Czechoslovakia) was supposed to be as a promise of protection from the UK. As said within the pact:

“... in the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorised me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter as do His Majesty's Government.”

What Joseph Stalin had done by invading Poland, was essentially break this pact and therefore, cause conflict with the British and the French government and therefore putting those two governments into a position of where they would have to take action onto their promise. And within Germany, a economic crisis was going on. The Russians saw an attempt to set up a West German republic as a threat to Russia, the Russians blockaded Berlin and would not allow any food or any material in. This was called the Berlin Blockade. The Allies started to fly resources into Berlin and this was described as the Berlin Airlift.

In the date of 1948 and had to the date of 1949, going on for 318 days, had there being a plan for the allies to send over 200,000 flights to lift over cargo such as food, fuel, medicines, clothing, water, building materials and other needed supplies. At the end, they had lifted over 1,500,000 tons of supplies to help end the blockade in Berlin.

All while the USSR had being given another reason to fear the western bloc, from America’s final gain of nuclear weapons.

It was in the year of 1952 that the world had completely changed with the dropping of the H-bomb; smaller than the bomb of which had caused Hiroshima bombing but to the fear of the USSR government and to many others, it was 2500 powerful and more dangerous. USA produced a bomber - the B52 - that could fly 6,000 miles and deliver a nuclear pay-load. Such a development required massive financial backing from the government - something which America could afford to do and which Russia could not. Russia concentrated on producing bigger bombs - a far more cost effective procedure.
In October 1957, the world was introduced to the fear of a missile attack when Sputnik was launched. This was to lead to ICBM’s : Inter-continental ballistic missiles. As a result, America built the DEW line around the Artic - Defence and Early Warning system. At the end of the 1950’s, American Intelligence estimated that in a Russian missile attack, 20 million Americans would die and 22 million would be injured.
During the 1960’s, the Russians put their money into producing more missiles regardless of quality while America built fewer but better quality missiles - the Atlas could go 5,000 miles at a speed of 16,000 mph. By 1961, there were enough bombs to destroy the world. And to prevent a nuclear attack against the USSR, Russia started to move ICBM to other countries this was to stop the USA deciding to strike first against Russia. When Russia was moving some its ICBM, an event that brought the world close to a Nuclear war, this event called the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Around the date of October 1962, an American U-2 plane had secretly documented the building of nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba, made by the Soviet Union. Obviously and understandably distressed and not wanting to start a nuclear war, President Kennedy did not want Soviet Union and Cuba to come upon the fact that he knew about the nuclear weapons. Keeping it secret from the public and from outside governments, Kennedy had made the decision to meet with his advisors to discuss action concerning the problem.

After a period of several days that consisted of long and very difficult meetings, for the safety of America had Kennedy decided to place a blockade, or more simply a ring of naval ships, around the missile area to prevent anymore military weapons being placed within Cuba. With this, he had decided to go and request the removal of the missiles and the destruction of the sites. Although at this time Stalin had died, his influence on the other hand remained on with the new leaders of the USSR.

It was during this time that the superpowers that seen the the horrific possibility of a nuclear war occurring and publicly agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba. In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Although the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba, they escalated the building of their military arsenal; the missile crisis was over, the arms race was not.

In 1963, there were signs of a lessening of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. In his commencement address at American University, President Kennedy urged Americans to reexamine Cold War stereotypes and myths and called for a strategy of peace that would make the world safe for diversity. Two actions also signaled a warming in relations between the superpowers: the establishment of a teletype "Hotline" between the Kremlin and the White House and the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on July 25, 1963.

Sources:
1. Sparknotes; The Cold War 1945 – 1963 http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/coldwar/section1.rhtml 2. History Learning Site.co.uk; Causes of Cold War in 1945 http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/causes%20of%20the%20cold%20war.htm 3. EDSITEment; The Origins of the Cold War, 1945 – 1949 http://edsitement.neh.gov/curriculum-unit/origins-cold-war-1945-1949 4. Encyclopaedia Britannica; Iron Curtain http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/294419/Iron-Curtain 5. John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum site; Cuban Missile Crisis http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-Missile-Crisis.aspx 6.