During our history class se started seeing the outbreak of the Cold War between Russia and the USA. Our teacher gave us a task to follow on the diferentes conferences after the War, and what were the causes of this War.
1.Why did the wartime alliances fell apart?
The main reason why wartime alliances fell apart was because their enemy in common, Germany, was defeated, and the countries had nothing to do with each other. Also they had previous annoyances from the past. One of them was the anger that the USSR had with Britain and the USA because they wanted to destroy the Russian Revolution, and also the racism against the communists in the Red Scare. Also Stalin’s belief that they didn´t give all the help they could in WW2 forced this tense string of hatry. On the other hand Britain was
very angry because of the sign of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
- What were the major differences between the superpowers?
The USA and the USSR were the superpowers after WW2. One of the main differences was that the USA was capitalist and that the USSR was communist. Another difference was the amount of losses in war time: the USA lost 297.000 soldiers and the USSR 20 million. The last but not least was what both countries wanted for Germany. On the one hand Stalin wanted to cripple her to protect the USSr against future attacks, and on the other hand the USA wanted to protect democracy and help Germany recover.
- The importance of the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences
The Yalta and the Potsdam conferences were very important because firstly they would determine the future of Germany after her defeat. Also, the aim of both conferences was to reestablish world peace among the countries and also the future of the countries that would be liberated.
- The roles of Stalin and Truman
Stalin was the leader of the USSR, he wanted to cripple Germany as harsh as possible. He was suspicious of the policy of Appeasement imposed by Britain and France and so he wanted a ‘buffer’ of friendly states to protect his country from any invasions.
Truman was the vice president which assumed as president when Roosevelt died in April, 1945. He intervened in the second conference: the Potsdam conference. This president was much more anti-communist than Roosevelt and so he was very cautious when taking decisions. Truman was determined on not making the same mistake of punishing Germany harshly as they had done after WW1 because they would recover and want revenge once again.
So both had completely different views and opinions and that is why they disagreed on most of the terms. We can say that the Potsdam conference was a failure compared to the Yalta conference.