Capitalism vs. Communism PDF

# Capitalism versus communism ## Chapter 1. Ideologies Clash Ultimately, what was significant about these conflicting ideologies was the certainty of each side that its ideology should dominate in as many other nations as possible. Each viewed the expansion of the other as a threat. Both the Comm...

# Capitalism versus communism ## Chapter 1. Ideologies Clash Ultimately, what was significant about these conflicting ideologies was the certainty of each side that its ideology should dominate in as many other nations as possible. Each viewed the expansion of the other as a threat. Both the Communist East and the capitalist West saw the need to expand its own power and this quickly translated into global aspiration. Ideological conviction and a desire for national security through increased global influence became driving obsessions for each side. ## Chapter 2. Tensions at Yalta By the beginning of 1945, the marriage of convenience, known as the Grand Alliance, between Britain, the USA, and the USSR against Nazi Germany was beginning to show cracks. The Western powers had opened a 'second front' in 1944 by invading Nazi-occupied France. As the Nazi regime began to face impossible pressure, Soviet forces swept into Poland during August 1944. From early 1945, the Soviet western front stretched from the Baltic to the Carpathian Mountains and by March 1945 they had crossed the Oder River. The Western powers were conscious of the fact that many Eastern European states had been liberated from Nazi occupation by the USSR. Franklin D. Roosevelt was committed to post-war reconstruction based on unity among the victorious powers. However, Stalin's guarantee of security through a network of Eastern European allies was in fundamental conflict with this view. This difference was the focus of tension between East and West in the weeks leading up to the Yalta Conferences. ## Chapter 3. The Yalta Conference 4-11 February 1945 In preparation for planning for the imminent end of the war, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill met in the Crimean city of Yalta. This conference represented the high point of inter-Allied cooperation. Its outcomes appeared to re-affirm the belief that the Grand Alliance was still alive and well, and that its members were committed to a lasting consensus in international relations in the post-war world. However, the objectives of the key players were not entirely in line. ### Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) Franklin D. Roosevelt had been US president since 1933. He ended the USA's isolationism when he entered the war in 1941. Roosevelt was a committed democrat but he was prepared to support the USSR in the Grand Alliance, and was optimistic that meaningful international cooperation could continue after the war had ended. ### Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940. He established a working relationship with Stalin but quickly became deeply suspicious of his intentions. Churchill was anxious in his post-war to ensure unity among the Western capitalist powers in the face of what came from the USSR. The Yalta Conference appeared to give cause for great optimism. There appeared to be very clear areas of agreement between the East and the West. However, the reality was that relations between Roosevelt and Churchill on the one hand and Stalin on the other were already deteriorating. ## Chapter 4. Relations between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill ### British and USSR relations in 1945 The Second World War had devastated the Soviet Union. A conservative estimate suggested 25 million Soviet dead, along with the mass destruction of towns and cities, agriculture and industry. Lasting security became a supreme objective for Stalin. He, and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, viewed the Soviet Union's Grand Alliance allies as fundamentally anti-USSR. Despite this, Stalin was a pragmatist. He wanted to keep open an avenue of cooperation with the West. Poland was a crucial issue in terms of East-West relations. ### The breakdown of the Grand Alliance ### The Potsdam Conference 17 July 1945 The war in Europe ended in May 1945. Hit 30 April. Despite this, the war against Japan to aiding the Western powers in their continued struggle against Japan, although this was not a prospect either the USA or the UK really relished. The members of the Grand Alliance, having agreed to meet again, were faced after the death of President Roosevelt in April with his replacement, Roosevelt's vice president, Harry S. Truman. Churchill, who initially attended the Potsdam Conference, had lost the General Election in Britain and was replaced on 26 July by the Leader of the Labour Party, Clement Attlee. The decisions made at Potsdam USA's atomic bomb had taken place. Truman hoped that this would prove to be the diplomatic leverage he needed to ensure Stalin stayed loyalist to agreements at Yalta. Stalin came to regard this as the USA using atomic digr to be intimidated by the USAs nuclear monopoly. The Potsdam Conference diplomacy and the determination of Stalin and Foreign Minister Molotov in its dealings with the USSR Potsdam Was characterised by a strategy of seeking to build a new international relations in the new world order, However, it-was agreed hale term blueprint laid out for either the future of Germany Or the pararmeters cf resulted in some agreement but, significantly, there was no medium- or long term plan for the future of Germany. * Germany was to be completely disarmed and demilitarised de-Nazification was to be carried out. War crimes would be judged, former Nazi Party members were to be removed from public office, lhs education system was to be purged of all Nazi influences decentralisation of the political system was to be undertaken and local responsibility developed freedom of speech and a free press were to be restored as was religious tolerance * Germany was to become a single economic unit with common policies, industry and finance * The USSR was to receive reparations from its own zone and an addict 25 percent from the Western zones. The Potsdam Conference did nothing to re-enforce the notion of international cooperation aimed at reconstructing a long-term future for post-war Euror It did nothing to lay the foundations of a viable and non-confrontational relationship between the communist East and the capitalist West. It failed to address the growing suspicion and uncertainty that had developed between the USA and the Soviet Union. ## Chapter 5. Relations between Truman, Stalin, and Attlee ### Truman Like Roosevelt, Truman wanted a post-war world based on national self-determination, an open world trading system based on international economic cooperation, and world economic reconstruction through the creation of the IMF and the World Bank. This would minimise the possibility of the USA returning to conditions experienced during the Great Depression. It would fulfill the USA's ideological imperatives and it would ensure the USA's geostrategic interests by limiting the expansion of the territorial influence of other states, particularly the USSR. ### The Great Depression After 1929, most of the world faced an economic crisis that for most countries began with the Wall Street Crash in the USA, After the USA faced its crisis in confidence, it requested that foreign firms and governments repay their loans immediately causing other countries to plunge into even deeper crises. Some countries, such as Italy and the Soviet Union were the exceptions. They were somewhat protected by their economic policies of autarky (these are essentially closed economies that do not participate in international, Chapter 1. Truman quickly came to regard confrontation rather than cooperation as the basis for relations with Stalin. He hoped that the USA's possession of composition of provisional governments in Eastern Europe. He feared the nuclear technology would be the key to ensuring Stalin's cooperation over the leaders, and the rise of pro-communist provisional governments. The US growth of Soviet power in Eastern Europe, the removal of anti-communist ambassador to Moscow warned Truman of the effects of Soviet expansionism, potential for agreement. Describing it as a barbarian invasion of Europe, but thought that there was still potential for. ## Chapter 6. Stalin By Potsdam, Stalin was convinced that the USA and its allies were potential rivals for dominance in Europe. This reinforced his obsession with Soviet security, which necessitated the Red Army's continued presence in Eastern Europe and the intensification of the program of installing pro-communist regimes in these liberated states. The time for cooperation from Stalin had now passed. What was agreed on Germany was acceptable to Stalin but he had a clear and unspoken alternative agenda for the rest of Europe. Stalin needed to ensure that Eastern European states formed the basis of the USSR's long-term security system. That required these states having comparable political and economic systems to those of the USSR. Strength came through unity and a common identity. Stalin soon came to see the USA as having an anti-Soviet agenda, as demonstrated in Source 1. ### Source 5 Taken from Stalin's note to Molotov in September 1945. In this note, Stalin described what he believed to be the USA's hidden agenda. First, to direct our attention from [East Asia], where the United States assumes a role of tomorrow's friend of Japan. Second, to receive from the USSR a formal acceptance of the United States' playing the same role in European affairs as the USSR, so that the United States may hereafter, in league with Britain, take the future of E Europe into its Own hands; third, to devalue the treaties of alliance that the USSR has already reached with European states; fourth, to pull the rug out from under any future treaties of alliance between the USSR and Romania, Finland, etc. ### Attlee Events since Yalta had confirmed to Britain that Stalin was expansionist in Europe. For Britain, Germany's geostrategic significance in Europe was supreme. It was vital that the USA act as the primary defender of the Western zones of Germany against any Soviet threat. British foreign policy from this point became clearly focused on an anti-communist Soviet stance, Attlee supported the terms of the Potsdam Agreement but he was also conscious that they weakened Germany, at least in the short term. A further concern was that Potsdam offered no long-term plan for the future of Germany, which became particularly urgent in the context of Stalin's absolute failure to implement his agreements on Poland and the Declaration on Liberated Europe made at Yalta