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Example research essay topic: Divided Into Four East And The West - 1,554 words

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The Cold war can be considered as one of the longest wars in history, it involved the two super powers of the time the USA and the USSR. (West and East). Both of these countries were governed under two very different ideologies, the USA had a democratic capitalist system while the USSR was a one-party communist state. The communist ideology is based on the idea that the rights of individual people are less important then the rights of society as a whole. On the other hand the USA capitalist ideology states that being free of government control is much more important that everyone being equal and alike.

Even though the industry of the USSR grew rapidly as they were under the control of the government, their average wage was much lower than that of the USA. These ideologies have had tensions between them for a very long time, even before the start of the cold war. The tension between capitalism and communism goes as far back as the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. It continued after the First World War when the USSR was not allowed to join the League of Nations or attend the Paris Peace Conference.

During the Paris Peace Conferences countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were created from former soviet land and this again caused the anger of the USSR. Then as the Second World War approached, the Soviets were not invited to be at the Munich Conference and in return they signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Hitler. During WWII the USSR did not receive any help from the allies until late 1942 when they had already joined the Western Alliance for two years. The red army and the American army were two of the major armies, which helped to defeat Hitler and free many countries from nazi-rule and reveal the horrors of the holocaust. Even if by this time it looked as the two representatives of the USA and the USSR, President Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin were allies at the end of the war their first disagreement and first major problem between the two countries came during the Yalta Conference. It was about Poland.

Stalin wanted to keep the parts of Poland that he had won in the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. He wanted Poland to expand westward into Eastern Germany. Which would create a buffer zone between Germany and the Soviet Union, thus securing Stalin's obsessive fear of another German invasion and also preventing the Expansion of capitalism into Russia. He also wanted Poland to have a pro-Soviet government. Poland also had another government in exile, ready to take over Poland, the Lublin Poles, but Britain and the USA supported a different group called the London Poles who were strongly against communism. At the Yalta conference, Churchill and Roosevelt forced him to agree that some of the London Poles would be included in the government and that there would be free elections for a new government as soon as possible.

Even so, The London Poles had hardly any say in their government. Stalin elected a pro-communist government for Poland, thus not doing what he had initially agreed at Yalta with the allies... In July 1945, a second conference was held, at Potsdam in Germany. Here the frail relationship between the east and the west was more apparent.

By July 1945, Soviet troops had liberated most of Eastern Europe from Nazi control, however instead of holding free democratic elections as was decided at Yalta, Soviet troops remained and occupied these liberated countries. During the five months that followed since Yalta, a number of changes had taken place, which would greatly change the relationship between the USA and the USSR. President Roosevelt had died, leaving Vice-President Truman to become President. Also Churchill had lost the British elections and Clement-Able was now the Premier. In addition during this time America had successfully tested the Atomic Bomb and Stalin's Armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. A Conference took place at Potsdam a Berlin Suburb where the Big three met once again.

There it was agreed that Germany and Berlin should be both divided into four zones, (Soviet, French, American and British), and the Allies would receive reparations from their own zones. Also Poland's Eastern border would be moved west into Poland, as Stalin wanted. The disagreements were about what to do with Germany, Reparations and Soviet Policy in Eastern Europe. Stalin believed that Germany should be crippled and not be allowed to recover, Britain and the USA did not agree as this had turned out to be the wrong solution during the Paris Peace Conference. This caused uneasiness between the East and the West, and made it slightly inevitable for the two alliances to fall out.

The countries of west Europe were free, but in the east the Soviets had taken over. This was a clear statement of West versus East. The Soviets made sure that between 1945 and 1948, every country in Eastern Europe had a government that was both communist and or very sympathetic towards the Soviets. Stalin said that all he was doing was creating a buffer zone between the Soviets and the Western World. Regarding what Stalin had said President Truman thought that this expansion into Eastern Europe was not for defence, but the first step of a plot for the Soviets to take over the world. Truman wanted to put a stop to the growth of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, but there were still Soviet troops in these countries, and there was little Truman could do.

When he was informed that Britain could not afford to maintain British troops in Greece and Turkey, Truman gave money to the UK so that they could keep troops stationed there. He also gave money to support the royalist side government in Greece and helped them to return to power. This policy was then called containment, which was the prevention of communist expansion. Containment (introduced by George Kennan in his long telegram) has been later on called the Truman Doctrine.

With the Truman Doctrine came the Marshall plan, this was an idea of General George Marshall. The idea was to give money to any country (including east block countries) in order to help it recover from the war. The amount that was estimated in order to help the recovery of Europe was approximately $ 17 billion. Stalin however forbade any communist countries from receiving Marshall Aid.

The Eastern part of Germany was not included in the Marshall Plan since Stalin did not allow any country under soviet control to receive any aid. In response to the Marshall Plan, the Soviets set up their own aid organizations: The Communist Information Bureau, (Cominform) an organization to strengthen relationships between communists nations, and the council for Mutual Economic Aid, which was a rival to the Marshall Plan, (Common). Berlin was deep inside the soviet zone and by this time was divided into four zones, similar to those zones that split Germany. On the 24 th June 1948, Stalin decided to blockade West Berlin by cutting off road and rail links.

To break this blockade, the Allies would have to send tanks to smash through the blockades and if they did this it would be seen as an act of war. To keep West Berlin going, the west airlifted supplies into the city. The airlift continued for ten months and kept the people from starving and freezing to death. This operation was named The Berlin Airlift. Stalin's blockade had made the Allies stand their ground, and take measures to strengthen their control of Germany and their opposition to the Soviet Union. The formation of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was a military alliance of the European powers and the USA and Canada.

It was a defensive alliance, if any of these countries were attacked, the allied members were supposed to help. NATO was seen as a direct threat by the Soviets, although by this time the USSR had developed its own Atomic Bomb. When NATO was expanded to include West Germany in 1955, the Soviet Union responded by setting up its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War may never had turned into a hot war, but the people at this time did not know this and every move by either side was seen as a possible cause for a hot war. Even though it can be said that both the USSR and the USA were equally to blame to a certain extent for the cold war, each side did what it thought was right during that time in order to preserve their ideology. In my opinion, eventually there would have been a war between the two different political systems.

Communists were bitterly opposed to Capitalism and vice versa. The tension between the two sides had begun to build up long before the collapse of Germany and the Yalta Conference etc. Its just that in these last few years the tension had incredibly build up, since both the USA and the USSR were superpowers which were struggling for control and support of the world. As the base of the cold war there were many instances, which both countries tried to become better or outdo each other. Each side was responding to the others sides in order to achieve power.


Free research essays on topics related to: east and the west, truman doctrine, soviet troops, atomic bomb, divided into four

Research essay sample on Divided Into Four East And The West

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