In February 1945, the Yalta Conference was held. At this point, Germany had not yet been defeated and Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, (the Big Three,) agreed to split Germany into four zones and that Germany would have to pay reparations. The USSR insisted that “due to the substantial losses it had sustained, it deserved compensation.” (pg. 455) Also, a government of ‘national unity’ was so be set up in Poland, that compromised both communists and non-communists. Furthermore, Russia agreed to help against Japan when Germany was defeated.
Although it unified, it also brought about separation, with the division of Germany and of Berlin. After World War 2 Russia unified all surrounding countries with communism. It began with the setting up of satellite states surrounding Russia later becoming commonly known as the ‘Iron Curtain’. They were set up to protect Russia because they believed the allies would invade, just as they did after the First World War. Russia’s main national interest after setting up other communist republics was to further spread communism.
Despite this, it was a srelief o the United States, as the pain of one wall was minimal to that of a third world war. In the years between 1945 and 1961 there was an overwhelming sense of concern and tension that built between the United States and the Soviet Union. At the Yalta conference on the 4th February 1945, Germany was demilitarized and divided into four zones, each controlled by the USSR, USA, Britain and France. In May 1952, guards erected barbed wire and observation watch-towers along the border of East Germany because of the concern in the number of skilled workers fleeing to the West and that non-communist ideas would spread. The West hesitated to stop this because the people of Britain and America did not want to consider another war.
This developed until a confrontation, from Western and Eastern Europe, in a nuclear arms race. Moreover, the decisions made by the ‘Big Three’ at the international conferences in Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam between 1943 and 1945 contributed to the deterioration of relations between American and the USSR. At the Yalta conference, February 1945, Germany had not been defeated so it was split into four zones of occupation by Britain, France, America, Russia and free elections were allowed in Eastern Europe: the Declaration of the Liberated. Also, Russia joined the UN and promised to help defeat Japan after Germany was defeated. Later that year in Potsdam, many open disagreements took place because Germany had lost the war so Russia had promised to fulfil, Churchill had lost the 1945 election and Roosevelt died so Truman, who replaced him was angered by the large scale reparations imposed on Germany and the setting up of a communist government in Poland.
Though this treat he was able to have his way at the Yalta conference. Truman thought of America as the World’s atomic power and was assured by Cabinet advisers; America would reign supreme in the arms race. However Joseph Stalin was also attempting to build Russia’s power in this arms race too. Truman began to get tough on Russia in 1946 when there were strong protests in the Iran against Russian Troops. The Soviets had denied sharing control of the Turkish Straits as they had claimed they would not have.
Having a series of puppet states in Eastern Europe would give the metropole invaluable security, ensuring that the states which bordered it were friendly and would support it in a theoretical invasion. Stalin must have been mindful of the Quisling governments which enthusiastically aided the Nazis in invading the Soviet Union – the Croats and the Hungarians in particular. Another reason for the Soviet desire to dominate Eastern Europe was an ideological one. Stalin was a committed communist in the vein of Marx and Lenin, and he knew well the key Communist tenet of proletarian internationalism. The workers of the world had to be “liberated” from bourgeois exploitation.
The blame for the Cold War cannot be placed on one person -- it developed as a series of chain reactions as a struggle for power. It can be argued that the Cold War was inevitable, and therefore no one's fault, due to the differences in the capitalist and communist ideologies. It was only the need for protection that had caused the two countries to sink their differences temporarily during the Second World War. Yet many of the tensions that existed in the Cold War can be attributed to Stalin's policy of Soviet expansion. Stalin's foreign policies contributed an enormous amount to the tensions of the Cold War.
Under Stalin’s leadership, many oppressive and rigid policies were put in place. After his death, there was a significant incentive to revise them as they had weakened Soviet standing, both abroad and at home. The United States had outpaced the Soviet Union in the nuclear arms race (Mc Dougall 2000). The Soviet Union was surrounded by United States bases located all over Europe. As a result, the Soviet Union had to buy time so as to catch up with its rival.
What was the short term significance of the Iron Curtain speech? The iron curtain speech, made by former Great British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the 5th March 1946, was met with both hostility and support. However it's short term impact is limited because both the USSR and the USA, the two main powers in the world at the time, already had very strong beliefs and views that would arguably require a more hard hitting event to change, after all Churchill was no longer Prime Minister so his political views carried less weight. It could be argued that the speech had more of an effect on America, who had a strong alliance with Great Britain after World War 2, and the American president, Truman, who was witness to the speech. The main effect was to crystallise Truman's desire to take a very hard line, anti-communism approach to the Soviet Union and for Stalin it symbolised an increase in opposition to the USSR.
That would make Germany weaker and put a buffer zone between Germany and the Soviet Union, Germany had invaded the Soviet Union twice in 30 years and Stalin wanted to ensure that it would not happen again. He also wanted to guarantee that Poland had a pro-Soviet government. Stalin already had a government who were in exile: the Lublin Poles. But Roosevelt and Churchill supported another group, the strongly anti-Communist ‘London Poles’. These Poles had helped organize the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, aiming to gain part of Poland before Stalin’s Red Army took full control of the country.