Eastern Bloc

The beginning of the Cold War created a new era of division, power, and communist ideals. During this fight for control, one of the biggest construction endeavors in history took place, known as the Berlin Wall. This blockade was built by the Soviet Union and East Berlin soldiers in order to cease the flow of emigrants into the West. The formulation of the Berlin Wall led to a separation of the people, a fight for freedom in government, a struggle for survival, and a political battle between…

3 - How Stalin aimed to establish Soviet Security with the ‘Iron Curtain’ and Eastern buffer zones surrounding the USSR As the Second World War had drawn to an end Stalin had two main immediate aims; the economic recovery and reconstruction of Soviet territory backed by reparations, which was already partly covered in the previous segments. The other was to establish a Soviet Sphere of influence in the occupied Eastern European countries, as a means of making a ‘buffer zone’ against future…

new frenzy for ‘containment.' Galvanized by being blamed for the start of the Cold War, and the humiliation of the Berlin encounter, Stalin increased his military and strategic planning to additionally secure his borders by moving more troops in Eastern Europe, took political measures to solidify communist efforts, attempted to establish an economic recovery plan for the Soviet Union (COMECON/Malatov Plan), secured his home bases with the purges and imprisonment of ‘traitor enemies,' and…

application of the Yalta declaration on liberated Europe” (Moradiellos 81). The problem with this list was that the agenda and the proposals were based on the problems that were created by the political and military hegemony of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. The Soviets proposed the following issues: “the discussion on Germany but specified as vital questions the issues of war reparations and the division of the German navy […] the future of the Italian colonies in Africa and the…

The Berlin Wall was both a force and stigma in Germany because it divided the communist East from the democratic West. The Berlin Wall was also paramount during the Cold War because even though it was intended to divide the Germans, it later united them. From the time that The Wall was erected to the time that it fell there were many radical cultural changes within the country of Germany and revolts from all around the globe. When The Wall fell, it was not only a turning point, but also marked…

The U.S. believed that the USSR was attempting to cause all of Eastern Europe to become communist because of this America stopped providing aid to the USSR. Stalin then invited all non-communist leaders from Poland and then replaced them with communists after imprisoning the leaders. Stalin then expanded his control with satellite countries becoming part of the Soviet Bloc . The Iron Curtain was then put up as by the USSR to separate them self from the other countries…

affected the outcome of specific political events. The Berlin Wall can be seen as a symbol of the dispute of a city. On a larger scale a symbol of the United States and the capitalist-democratic west and the Soviet Union and its allies with the Communist bloc of nations. The Berlin Wall was and is a powerful representation of the Cold War (1945-1961). Between 1949 and 1961, millions of East Germans fled to West Berlin in order to escape the Communist occupation. Fearing the mass emigration of…

The 1960s was absolutely rife with incidents and events which could easily have erupted into WW3. The decade-spanning Vietnam War which in 1968 was intensified with the launch of the North 's Tet Offensive and an increasing amount of anti-war sentiment from the US Public; various African post-colonial independence movements throughout the decade; the 1961 Berlin Crisis that saw Soviet and American tanks face off across the East-West Berlin border; the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion against newly…

Studying the Cold War is a monumental and often confusing task due to the various countries, politicians, wars, and foreign policies involved. Furthermore, Historians will find little assistance from dense textbooks or find it nearly impossible to track and incorporate the mandatory primary sources to develop his own sense of the Cold War. Luckily, David S. Painter’s text The Cold War: An International History provides an accurate and compact overview of the Cold War through a holistic…

“Ich bin ein Berliner”: I am a Berliner. This sentence pronounced by John Fitzgerald Kennedy: the President of the United States of America on the 26th day of June in 1963 during his speech in Rathaus Schӧneberg the city hall of West Berlin would shape history. Those words that would later name the speech, may have prevented the Soviet Union from becoming stronger and maybe start a war that would have killed millions of people, those words have encouraged the West Berliners to keep fighting for…