USSR and USA: Spheres of Interest

USSR and USA: Spheres of Interest

• Both the USSR and the USA sought to establish areas of control or domination in Europe.
• These areas were known as spheres of interest or influence.
• The USA aimed for influence in Western Europe e.g. Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy.
• The USSR sought domination in Eastern Europe e.g. Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.
• Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia were disputed areas.

Installation of Soviet-Friendly Governments

• Between 1945 and 1946, the USSR established control over several Eastern European states.
• The USSR had occupied these states during World War II, and many troops remained.
• Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania were the countries the USSR gained control over.
• In 1948, the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia seized power, bringing it into the Soviet sphere.
• The USSR exerted influence through communist leaders and governments, and indirect economic control.
• This resulted in these countries becoming known as 'satellite states'.
• Yugoslavia, under Marshal Tito, maintained some independence.
• At the Potsdam Conference in July-August 1945, the Allies (US, USSR, and Britain) divided Germany into four zones of occupation.
• The USA, Britain, and France controlled the western zones, and the USSR controlled the eastern zone.
• Berlin was also divided into four zones.
• The Western countries were granted three air corridors to fly over the Soviet zone to Berlin.
• Germany was intended to be treated as an economic unit and eventually reunited, but the USSR turned its zone into a separate unit with communist policies.
• The USSR feared the revival of Germany as a powerful state.

The USA's Policy of Containment

• The USA's policy of containment was shaped by two events.
• In 1946, George F. Kennan wrote a telegram stating that Soviet foreign policy was based on the belief that the USA was a permanent enemy.
• Kennan suggested a "long-term, patient but vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies".
• In March 1946, Winston Churchill said an "iron curtain has descended across the Continent [of Europe]".
• Churchill stated, "The fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrines" was all the Soviet Russians wanted.
• The speech influenced American and Western perceptions of the Soviet Union.
• The policy of containment was the USA and its allies holding back the power and expansion of the Soviet Union.

The Truman Doctrine

• In 1947, Britain could no longer support the Greek government against the Greek Communists.
• President Harry S. Truman decided the USA must aid Greece and Turkey, which faced pressure from the USSR.
• Truman said it was the USA's policy to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation".
• Support would primarily be economic and financial, but potentially military. Economic and financial was sufficient.
• The USA moved away from its traditional isolationism policy.

The Marshall Plan

• By early 1947, Western Europe faced an economic and psychological crisis.
• The US government worried poor economic conditions might lead to political upheaval and communism.
• In June 1947, George C. Marshall announced a policy "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos".
• The US aimed to revive the world economy so that it could allow free institutions to exist.
• The US provided substantial economic and financial aid to European countries to prevent communism, known as the Marshall Plan.
• The Soviet Union forbade its Eastern European satellite states from participating to avoid American influence and leaving the Soviet Bloc.
• The Marshall Plan distributed nearly 13 billion dollars over four years to Western and Central European countries.

Berlin Crises from 1948 to 1961

• In Berlin, the Western powers and the USSR directly confronted each other.
• Between 1948 and 1961, the city was the center of crises.

The Berlin Blockade (1948 - 1949)

• In June 1948, the USA, Britain, and France agreed to unify their German zones and introduce the Deutschmark.
• The Soviet Union responded by stopping all traffic to West Berlin and cutting off postal and electricity services, known as the Berlin Blockade.
• Stalin wanted to remove the Western powers from Berlin, but they decided to supply West Berlin via air, called Berlin Airlift.
• The Western powers had acquired three air corridors from 1945.
• Nearly 300,000 flights delivered 2.5 million tons of cargo.

The Berlin Wall, 1961

• In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade without conditions; the psychological and physical victory was for the West.
• In September 1949, the German Federal Republic (West Germany) was established, unifying the Western zones.
• The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was declared the following month.
• The division of Germany into two states became complete.
• West Germany and West Berlin's economies recovered with Western aid, while East Germany's economy declined because of lack of capital and Soviet reparations demands.
• Hundreds of thousands of East Germans migrated to West Germany.
• On August 12–13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier was erected between West Berlin and East Germany, later replaced by the Berlin Wall.
• The Berlin Wall stopped the flow of refugees, but it did lead to stability.
• The Soviet Union did not attempt to remove the Western powers from Berlin again, and the West accepted the division.

Opposing military alliances

• From 1947-1948, Western European countries feared the Communists.
• They understood American military support was needed.
• The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in April 1949 between the US, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal.
• An attack on one state was seen as on all.
• An organisation was set up to co-ordinate the armed forces; North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Its headquarters were in Paris (later in Brussels).
• From the Western European point of view, the treaty ensured the US would provide military support if attacked from the outside.

The Warsaw Pact

• In 1954, West Germany was allowed to rearm as part of NATO.
• In response, the Soviet Union set up the Warsaw Pact in 1955, a military alliance of communist states, including Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
• The Warsaw Pact had a unified military command in Moscow.
• Two formal military alliances now existed in opposition – NATO (led by the US) and the Warsaw Pact (led by the Soviet Union).
• They existed in Europe along the border represented by the Iron Curtain.