After World War II, the last remaining Superpowers became the two most powerful countries in the world. These two nations being the United States and Soviet Union. But because of each country's strong and different views on things like economics and government, a Cold War was started. This war was a battle fought of ideas, not a physical clash. One of the main differences in ideas was communism. The Soviet Union were communist which basically meant the government was in charge of/controlled everything and everyone was paid relatively the same. The United States, on the other hand, were capitalists, which means the people of the US control the production of goods, what they did as work, etc. The Soviet Union had control over Eastern Europe and …show more content…
One of the main reasons was The Berlin Blockade. The Berlin Blockade was the Soviet Union's attempt to try and keep the superpowers controlling West Germany, the United States, France and Great Britain, out of Eastern Germany's counterpart. Basically, cut off Berlin's communication with the outside world. This was a problem for the United States, France, and Great Britain because without access to Berlin, they wouldn’t be able to come and help Berlin and Germany. It also meant that they wouldn’t be able to come and have any say in executive meetings in Berlin. In 1948, the Soviet Union basically tried to limit the other superpowers ability to travel to their sectors of Berlin. An excerpt from the speech Winston Churchill gave in 1945, when the boundary and isolation started to become a problem, explains what is about to start between the Soviet Union and other countries. He says that “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.(Churchill, 1945)” This new blockade caused worry to the superpowers controlling it. The Western side was losing its supplies because its superiors couldn't come in and help by sending things due to the surrounding …show more content…
“During the wall's existence there were around 5000 successful escapes into West Berlin. (RAF Museum Staff, 2013)” People in East Berlin would get really creative with how they would try to escape. According to the RAF Museum, it was reported that people started these escapes with things like people straight up climbing and jumping over the wall, people jumping out of buildings to get and eventually escalated to long tunnels, sliding along aerial wires, flying ultralights and even driving under a checkpoint barrier in a very low sports car. Unfortunately, there were about 200-240 reports of people being killed because they tried to escape. People, from both East and West Berlin, would help people from East Berlin escape even though it made their life. Thankfully, in the end there was a solution. The Berlin wall was taken down/ opened on November 9, 1989. This was due to the Communist Government falling and losing power throughout
A war does not necessarily require physical weapons to fight. From 1947 to 1991, military tension and ideological conflicts held place. Cold War is defined as a state of political hostility existing between countries, characterized by threats, violent propaganda, subversive activities, and other measures short of open warfare, in particular. The causes of the Cold War between United States and the Soviet Union were the mutual distrust that had taken place in World War II, intense rivalry between the two super powers, and conflicting ideologies. The two superpowers differed in views of political and economic principles and were eager to spread their ideologies to other countries. The United States were in favor of democracy and capitalism while the Soviet Union sought for the chances of influencing communism. Cold War did not involve the use of physical arms but was intensely fought. Propaganda, economic aids, Arms Race, and the creation of alliances were the main methods to fight the war. The use of propaganda played a crucial role in containment by criticizing the other power and raised the morale and spirit of their nation. The economic support for nations helped them recover from the desperate situation after World War II, which prevented the nations from falling under communism. Also, the Arms Race and forming alliances between the two main powers were important weapons for competition and rivalry in Cold War.
During the Cold War, the United States engaged in many aggressive policies both at home and abroad, in which to fight communism and the spread of communist ideas. Faced with a new challenge and new global responsibilities, the U.S. needed to retain what it had fought so strongly for in World War II. It needed to contain the communist ideas pouring from the Soviet Union while preventing communist influence at home, without triggering World War III. With the policies of containment, McCarthyism, and brinkmanship, the United States hoped to effectively stop the spread of communism and their newest threat, the Soviet Union. After the war, the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideas on how to rebuild.
In the year 1961, the building of the Berlin Wall called upon disasters in Germany. The United States controlled the west of Berlin while the German Democratic Republic held the East. Being stuck under the rule of day-to-day terror, people from East Berlin were making their way to the West Berlin. West Berlin is a safe spot and a free checkpoint in the middle of terror. To stop the movement of East Berliners, the East German government decided to build a barrier that limited and halted the East Berliners from leaving.
The Cold War was a post-World War II struggle between the United States. and its allies and the group of nations led by the Soviet Union. Direct military conflict did not occur between the two superpowers, but intense economic and diplomatic struggles erupted in the country. Different interests led to mutual suspicion and hostility in a rising philosophy. The United States played a major role in the ending of the Cold War.
Notably, before the walls creation, Germany was a political mess. It was a mess for many reasons, but the main being that “West Germany (governed by the Allied powers- the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) and East Germany (governed by the Soviet Union)” (“Cold War”). Of course, the Allied Powers and the Soviet Union were polar opposites; the Soviet Union was Communist while the Allies were anything but, and despised the very idea of Communism. Therefore, The Wall was constructed in 1961 by the East German government. The walls main purpose was to stop the emigration of East German citizens, because in “1953, the number of refugees doubled- more than 400,000 people left”, all of whom were heading to West Germany (Dowling). They wanted to stop the “skilled workers and professionals”, which were in high demand at this time, from leaving (“Berlin Wall”). These young men were valuable to the economy, because of the various products and services they could provide. However, they were trapped against their will in East Berlin;...
The end of World War II was the beginning of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Soviet Union had control over East Berlin, which was governed by a communist government and the United States had control over West Berlin, which was regulated by a democratic government. Both countries wanted full control over Berlin, so the Soviet Union set up a blockade on the West but was unsuccessful. The Berlin Wall was then built to stabilize the economy of East Berlin, which meant that fewer people could escape the east to live in the west. In the article “The fall of the Berlin Wall: what it meant to be there,” by Timothy Garton Ash, he highlights the feelings of no longer having a “iron curtain” segregating both sides of Berlin.
Even though Berlin lay deep within the Soviet sector, the Allies thought it would be the best to divide this capital. Therefore Berlin was also divided into four parts. Since the Soviet Union was in control of the eastern half of Germany, they made East Berlin the capital of East Germany. The other three counties were each in control of a small part of what was to be West Germany. The Allies decided that they would come together to form one country out of their three divided parts. Those three divided parts formed West Germany. After all the land was divided the Soviet Union controlled East Germany. Just like the Soviet Union, the economy in East Germany was struggling to get back on its feet after the war. While West Berlin became a lively urban area like many American cities, East Berlin became what many thought of as a ‘Mini-Moscow’. In East Germany there was literary almost nothing. The shelves in the stores were practically bare, and what was there was not in very good quality.
Each section was controlled by a different country; United States, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The Capital Berlin, being inside the Soviet controlled East Germany, was also divided into two sections, East and West Berlin. West Berlin was controlled by the United States and East Berlin was controlled by the Soviet Union. Starting on August 13 1961, Berliners woke up to a barrier separating the east from the west. East Germans had closed off the border with barbwire and guards. Many families were separated. Many jobs were lost. Two days after the border had been closed off, a wall had begun to get built.
Prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall, boarders between East and West Germany were closed in 1952 because of tension between Communists and Democratic superpowers and the only open crossing left in Berlin. West Germany was blockaded by the Soviets and only kept alive because of air drops made by the Western Allies (Time). The Soviets had to do something about the mass amount of people leaving Soviet East Berlin for West Berlin, and the non-communist world.
...s website explained facts about escape attempts from the Berlin Wall that I thought would be helpful to my paper.
The post-war world left the Soviets and the United States in an ideological power struggle. The origin of the cold war is hard to pinpoint. There were several issues and disagreements that led to it. The political differences between the 2 nations were absolute opposites. America was a democracy, a system that allows its citizens to choose the political party in which runs the government. The Communists were led by one of the most vicious dictators in human history, Joseph Stalin.
The Berlin Crisis reached its height in the fall of 1961. Between August and October of that year, the world watched as the United States and the Soviet Union faced off across a new Cold War barrier, the Berlin Wall. In some ways, the Wall was Khrushchev’s response to Kennedy’s conventional buildup at the end of July, and there were some in the West who saw it that way. However, as Hope Harrison has clearly shown, Khrushchev was not the dominant actor in the decision to raise the Wall, but rather acquiesced to pressure from East German leader Walter Ulbricht, who regarded the Wall as the first step to resolving East Germany’s political and economic difficulties. The most pressing of these difficulties was the refugee problem, which was at its height in the summer of 1961 as thousands of East Germans reacted to the increased tensions by fleeing westward. But Ulbricht also saw the Wall as a way to assert East German primacy in Berlin, and thus as a way to increase the pressure on the West to accept East German sovereignty over all of Berlin.
At the same time, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were involved in the Cold War. They were competing against one another, constantly trying to show that their country (and therefore their form of government and ideals) was the better choice. They were competing for influence over the rest of the world. Eventually the USSR and Communism lost, but far more important results came out of this competition instead.
Before the wall got built in1961, East German peoples could travel to West Berlin to visit there family’s. On May 8th, 1945 the World War II ended. June 24th, 1948 the Soviet Military started the Berlin Blockade. Germany was divided in four different parts after World War II. Each part was controlled by a different part of a country. Twenty- eight years and “Iron curtain” East and West Berlin got divided in the heart of Germany.
...blockade; he prevented all access to and from East Germany. Access to Berlin from the west was cut off in stages and culminating in the full blockade on June 24, 1948. To support out part of Berlin, the US started airlifting over 5,600 tons of supplies every day over the blockade. Stalin saw the US airlift response to the Berlin blockade as confrontational. The constant pressure from America and the British eventually forced Stalin to end the blockade in 1949. Russia was just defending itself by keeping Germany broken up. The US refused to acknowledge communism as a valid form of government. The US’s biased perspective of communism, tied with their responsibility to manipulate governments and economies all throughout Europe, initiated the Cold War. The US’s actions infuriated the Soviet Union, and their ideology made a global threat in the Soviet Union and communism.