ORIGINS OF COLD WARTHE BERLIN BLOCKADE

FACTS ABOUT THE BERLIN BLOCKADE1. At the end of World War 2, on June, 5 1945, The Allied Control Council (ACC),

with representatives from each of the Allied powers, announced the division of Germany.

2. Germany was split into four zones of occupation (the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France) and split between the two blocs as communist controlled Eastern Germany and democratic Western Germany.

3. The "Iron Curtain" was the term that was used to describe the boundary that separated the communist dominated countries of the East and the free democratic countries of the West.

4. The Americans and the British tried to restore German prosperity in their sectors, but the Russians systematically looted their zone.

5. Disputes continued over German war reparations and tensions between the Soviets and Americans escalated with the Truman Doctrine on March 27, 1947 followed by the Marshall Plan a US-financed relief package that includes $1,390,600 worth of aid to Germany.

6. Pressure mounts in the city in April 1947 as Russia imposes a PARTIAL blockade of the city. Allied transport into the city has to apply for a permit and the USSR demand to inspect all western trains going into the city.

7. In June 1948 America, Britain and France united their zones into the new country of West Germany and announced plans for a new deutschmark to replace the former, worthless German currency. The new currency caused economic chaos in the Russian zone as East Germans clamored to get rid of their old money and change to the new currency.

8. On June 23, 1948 the Soviets cut power to West Berlin and then begin a full blockade of the city and all road, rail, tunnels and water access by barges from the Western zones to Berlin is stopped.

9. The Berlin blockade by the Soviets leaves the western half of the city in a perilous position as it is estimated that there is only enough food for 36 days. There were 2 million West Berliners. Military forces in the western sectors of the city numbered 8,973 Americans, 7,606 British and 6,100 French.

10.The US and the British responded to the blockade by supplying the western part of the city by air. The Berlin Airlift supplied vital necessities by aircraft to, from June 1948 to September 1949 to keep West Berlin alive and functioning.

11.The situation in the city, referred to as the Berlin Crisis, brought the United States and USSR to the brink of war.

12.On 12 May 1949, Joseph Stalin abandoned the blockade of the city.

The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the United States to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lay within Russian-occupied East Germany. Eventually, the western powers instituted an airlift that lasted nearly a year and delivered much-needed supplies and relief to West Berlin. Coming just three years after the end of World War II, the blockade was the first major clash of the Cold War and foreshadowed future conflict over the city of Berlin.

The agreement after World War 2 to divide Germany and Berlin into occupation zones, with Berlin located deep in the Russian zone, had come out of the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and had included no arrangements for access to Berlin. Since then, the relationship between the Soviet Union and the West had deteriorated steadily, as reflected in disputes at the United Nations, Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in March 1946, growing emphasis in U.S. foreign policy on containment of Russian expansion, Soviet hostility toward the Marshall Plan, and growing Western commitment to establishing a separate capitalist West Germany.

Nearly 700 aircraft were used during the Berlin Airlift, more than 100 of which belonged to civilian operators.

In late 1947, discussions on Germany broke down over Soviet charges that the Allies were violating the Potsdam Agreement, and on March 20, 1948, the Soviets withdrew from the Allied Control Council administering Berlin. Ten days later, guards on the East German border began slowing the entry of Western troop trains bound for Berlin. On June 7, the Western powers announced their intention to proceed with the creation of West Germany. On June 24, arguing that if Germany was to be partitioned, Berlin could no longer be the single German capital, the Soviets stopped all surface travel between West Germany and Berlin.

Within the United States there was some sentiment for accepting the Soviet logic; many were reluctant to risk war over maintaining ties to their recent enemies, the Berliners. But the Truman administration was convinced that losing Berlin would mean losing all of Germany. After a military challenge was considered and rejected, the Berlin airlift was initiated. Over the next 321 days, Western fliers made 272,000 flights into West Berlin, delivering

thousands of tons of supplies every day. The effort gained wide public sympathy, and on May 12, 1949, the Soviets, concluding that the blockade had failed, reopened the borders. East and West Germany were established as separate republics later that month.

PICTURE SOURCES

THE NAUGHTY DOCUMENT

FACTS ABOUT THE NAUGHTY DOCUMENYThere were other deals going on behind the scenes in this critical year.

Mistrusting Roosevelt's optimism in Europe, Churchill flew to Moscow in October 1944 to meet alone with Stalin.

Based on the previous experience of U.S. isolationism after the First World War, neither leader seriously believed that American troops would remain in Europe and after the war.

On the back of a scrap of paper, Churchill proposed the share of influence each nation would exert in post-war Europe.The USSR would get: 90% in Romania, 75% in Hungary and Bulgaria Yugoslavia would be split 50/50, but Britain would get 90% in Greece.

Greece was vital to the British position in the Mediterranean; close to Egypt and the strategic Suez Canal, through which came the trade which kept the Empire alive. From eastern African through the Middle East; the Near East; and at the heart of this Empire, India the Crown Jewel, and beyond it, the Far East, where Singapore was now British again.

Although Churchill wanted a non-communist Poland, the truth was that Poland was simply off the agenda, and Churchill was more concerned with safeguarding British power.

Churchill remarked "might it not be thought rather cynical if it’s seen we've disposed of these issues so fateful to millions of people in such an offhand manner. Let us burn the paper!"

But Stalin urged Churchill to hold on to the historic scrapbook paper which Churchill called a "naughty document." "For the first time on record, to wish is guests Godspeed."

On this day in 1944, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin begin a nine-day conference in Moscow, during which the war with Germany and the future of Europe are discussed.

Germany’s defeat now seemed inevitable, and Stalin was prepared to commit the USSR to intervening in the war against Japan once Germany

had formally surrendered. This optimistic outlook enabled a significant portion of the talks to center on the relative spheres of influence of the two superpowers in a postwar European environment. Churchill ceded the disposition of Romania, which Stalin’s troops were liberating from German control even as the conference commenced, to the Soviet Union. But the British prime minister was keen on keeping the Red Army away from Greece. “Britain must be the leading Mediterranean power.” They made a deal: Romania for Greece.

Churchill was more accommodating elsewhere, willing to divvy up the spoils of war. Yugoslavia could be cut down the middle, east for Russia, and west for the West. Churchill also laid out a plan by which the German populations of East Prussia and Silesia would be moved into the interior of Germany, with East Prussia split between the USSR and Poland, and Silesia handed over to Poland as compensation for territories Stalin already occupied and intended to keep.

But Churchill was insistent on one issue that would be harder to negotiate in 50-50 terms-freedom. Churchill wanted every nation to be free to select the government most amenable to its people, especially smaller, more vulnerable nations. “Let them work out their own fortunes during the years that lie ahead.” Churchill was frank about the West’s fear of expansionist communism. But none of what was discussed was carved in stone or even put on paper–a fact that would be all too obvious as the Cold War commenced.

PERSPECTIVES OF HISTORIANS

Post- Revisionist

Post-revisionists do stress that neither the USA nor the USSR can be held solely responsible for the origins of the Cold War. One of the key figures for this group was American historian John Lewis Gaddis. He declared in 1983 that there was a growing "consensus" of opinion that followed the "Post-revisionist" line of argument.

John Lewis Gaddis - "The Cold War grew out of a complicated interaction of external and internal developments inside both the United States and the Soviet Union. The external situation − circumstances beyond the control of either power − left Americans and Russians facing one another across

prostrated Europe at the end of World War Two. Internal influences in the Soviet Union − the search for security, the role of ideology, massive post-war reconstruction needs, the personality of Stalin − together with those in the United States − the need for self-determination, fear of Communism, the illusion of omnipotence fostered by American economic strength and the atomic bomb − made the resulting confrontation a hostile one. Leaders of both superpowers south peace, but in doing so yielded to considerations, which, while they did not precipitate war, made resolution of differences impossible."—John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941−47 (Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 359−61

John Lewis Gaddis and Walter LaFeber both agreed at this time that misperceptions played an important part at the beginning of the Cold War. Both superpowers overestimated the strength and threat of the other, and much of the growing tension of the 1940s was a result of a pattern of "action and reaction." Both sides were "improvising," rather than following a well-defined plan of action. Stalin's search for security was not deterred initially by strong lines being drawn, while at the same time the West did not fully recognize the Soviets' motives.

ORTHODOX

The "Orthodox" or "Traditional" view generally holds that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Cold War.

Arthur M. Schlesinger - "Marxism-Leninism gave the Russian leaders a view of the world according to which all societies were inexorably destined to proceed along appointed roads by appointed stages until they achieved the classless nirvana. Moreover, given the resistance of the Capitalists to this development, the existence of any non-Communist state was by definition a threat to the Soviet Union. ... An Analysis of the origins of the Cold War which leaves out these factors − the intransigence of Leninist ideology, the sinister dynamics of a totalitarian society and the madness of Stalin − is obviously incomplete."

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr, 'Origins of the Cold War', Foreign Affairs, October 1967, pp. 49−50

REVISIONIST

Revisionist historians have shifted some of the fault for the cold war to American rigidity.

Martin Walker - "It is just possible, had Roosevelt lived, and had there been no stricken Europe between them, no Western European Allies still festooned in embarrassing colonial entanglements, and in a most prickly pride, that the cold war might not have got under way. But Roosevelt was dead, the Americans had the monopoly of the bomb and Europe sprawled between the victors, to be occupied, rescued or fought over."

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