Transcript PSIR206 PP Slides2 Spring 2014-15 File

Political History
of Europe II
Slides 2
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J. ROBERT WEGS & ROBERT LADRECH
CHAPTER 1: A BIPOLAR WORLD
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 The
distribution of power in the international
system is often described in terms of polarity.
 Multipolar System: typically 5-6 independent,
relatively equal, centres of power, (e.g. Concert
of Europe in C19th)
 Unipolar System: only 1, hegemonic,
overpowering international actor)
 Bipolar System: 2 principal centres of power,
(e.g. The Cold War)
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http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/russia/images/coldwar.gif
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 Wegs
& Ladrech recognize the important impact of
WWII on the previously dominant European balance
of power system.
 Germany & her allies had exhausted all resources
and suffered greatest devastation.
 France had been defeated & occupied by Germany
early in the War & suffered from economic &
political weaknesses & divisions.
 Britain, as the world’s greatest imperial power and
2nd largest creditor nation before WWII may have
seemed to have greater potential for leadership in
Europe, but it too had exhausted resources, its
export-dirven economy crippled, both economically
and financially no longer holding the capacity to
hold on to its vast colonial empire (that within 2
decades of the war had completely dissolved).
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 These
states no longer possessed the capability
of contributing to the classical balance of power
system and balancing the rising (and from their
perspective «expansionist») Soviet state.
Certainly the Soviet Union had been severely
damaged by WWII, but as Wegs & Ladrech
emphasize the shifting distribution of power in
Europe and more globally had begun to impact
the equilibrium long before WWII began.
 Relatively
speaking the Soviet Union & the USA
had been developing & industrializing at a much
faster pace than the old colonial states during
the interwar period (the US from even earlier),
even overtaking them.
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 Two
important factors had played a role in
clouding the power and potential leading role of
the Soviet Union and the US:
(1) US policy of isolation following WWI
(2) Soviet focus on domestic matters
 And,
while Britain did play a major role in the
immediate shaping of the post-WWII settlement,
it was soon evidently dependent (such as seen
during Suez 1956), on the leadership of the US.
As with other western European states, it saw
the US as the only force able to balance the
military and political threat, real &/or percieved
that the still standing military might and
potential expansion of the Soviet Union and
communism posed.
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
3 key conferences were held towards the end of
WWII between the «Big Three» powers fighting
Germany, (Britain, USA & USSR*); among the main
objectives was to negotiate the post-War settlement.
Main WWII Conferences of Allied Leaders
1 – Tehran Conference : 28 Nov – 1 Dec 1943
(Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill)
2 – Yalta Conference : 4 -11 Feb 1945
(Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill)
3 – Postdam Conference : 17 July – 2 Aug 1945
(Stalin, Truman, Churchill / Atlee)
* USSR = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
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The Soviets had enetered
World War II in June 1941
after Germany invaded,
and the USA in December
1941 after German ally
Japan attacked it’s naval
base of Pearl Harbour.By
late 1943 the war
appeared to be turning
against Hitler and his
allies. The meeting in
Tehran, Iran was the first
face-to-face of the main
3 allied leaders.
http://wwwtc.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/tmp_asset
s/conferences-eureka.jpg
http://i0.wp.com/www.defensemedianetwork.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/11/Tehran-Conference.jpg
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 The
most important outcome of the Tehran
Conference was agreement to open up a 2nd
front against Germany through an invasion of
France. This pleased Stalin, as the Soviet’s were
facing the main force of Germany by themselves
on the Eastern Front. It also pleased him as the
alternative of a new Allied front through an
Anglo-American invasion via the Balkans and
Greece (as supported by Churchill) would have
meant that the Soviet Union would not be the
only occupying (& therefore dominant) power in
Eastern Europe after the War.
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http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/img/getty/6/5/2642765.jpg
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Yalta, in Soviet Crimea was the scene of the 2nd major
WWII Conference again attended by Stalin, Roosevelt and
Churchill. Germany now was close to defeat with Soviet
armies already having liberated much of Eastern Europe &
closing in on Berlin.
 Here it was agreed that:
1) a «United Nations» organization to which all the
states would belong would
be established (with veto
rights for
Security Council permanent members)
2) The Soviet Union would join the war against Japan
(3 months after Germany’s defeat)
3) Germany would have 4 zones of occupation
(including a French zone from the UK/US zones – which
Churchill wanted as he feared US might not keep troops in
Europe for long)
4) Germany would pay reparations

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
In a somewhat similar way to his predecessor
Woodrow Wilson’s post-WWI faith in the League of
Nations, Roosevelt believed the establishment of the
UN would play a major role in the peaceful resolution
of international disputes. (The UN’s founding
conference was held in April 1945 in San Francisco).
Stalin was not very interested, particularly because
of the Soviet Union’s past experience with the League
of Nations (to which it had originally not been
accepted & from which it was in 1939 expelled for
invading Finland) & because of the western majority
that the organization would have). He ultimately
agreed to join, having guaranteed a veto right on the
Security Council and agreement that it would keep
the eastern Polish lands it had annexed in 1939 (with
Poland compensated in the West with German
territory).
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The Postdam Conference was
held in the Russian-occupied
zone of eastern Germany at
War’s end. This time the
participants were, apart from
Stalin different. The late
Roosevelt was replaced by
the new US President Truman
& Churchill was replaced in
the middle of the Conference
by Clement Atlee who had
just won the British elections
as leader of the Labour Party.
http://www.herodote.net/Images/ChurchillPotsdam.jpg
http://historiana.eu/assets/uploads/Potsdam_Conference.jpg
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

Germany had finally surrendered unconditionally on 8
May 1945. The objective of Postdam was essentially to
decide the punishment and fate of defeated Germany,
but differences and distrust among the victors were
rapidly becomming evident.
Postdam confirmed that Germany & Berlin, (likewise for
Austria & Vienna), would be divided into 4 occupation
zones; that it would be demilitarized & democratized;
that Nazi War criminals would be put on trial; it’s eastern
border withdrawn to the Oder-Neisse line (making
Germany ¼ smaller than before the War), & millions of
Germans in this region (& other German inhabited
regions annexed by the Nazis), forced to migrate, &; the
occupying powers allowed to remove property and
industrial facilities from their own occupation zones as
reparations.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oder-neisse.gif
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


Even before the close of WWII differences were emerging
between the Allies over the future of Germany, in particular what
her borders should be & how / how much she should pay
reparations. Churchill & Roosevelt were agreed with Stalin and
the French that any future war-making capacity shouldn’t be
allowed for Germany, but they ultimately opposed the breakingup of Germany into various parts, believing that it would if so
divided and weakened come under the Soviet orbit.
Stalin, on the other hand, was already suspicious that the US and
Britain were trying to weaken the USSR in advance of the postWWII settlement by delaying the opening of a western front
against Germany & allowing Germany to concentrate its forces in
the war against the Soviets in the East. He feared these states
would try to maintain a united German ally threatening to Soviet
control of Eastern Europe.
In a similar manner, the French and Soviets wanted very heavy
reparations from the Germans (in essence keeping Germany
crippled for a long time), whereas the British and Americans
wanted to be relatively more lenient on this matter, so that
Germany could recover.
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http://www.newworker.org/peet_john/plan1.jpg
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http://www.worldology.com/Europe/images/wwii_1945_germany_losses.jpg
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 At
Yalta, the 3 leaders had approved a
«Declaration of Liberated Europe» in which
they agreed to:
«jointly assist the people in any European
liberated state or former Axis state in
Europe […] to form interim governmental
authorities broadly representative of all
democratic elements in the population
and pledged to the earliest possible
establishment through free elections of
Governments responsive to the will of
the people»
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
Stalin appears to have viewed the «Declaration of
Liberated Europe»’s call for «free elections of
Governments responsive to the will of the people» as
mostly a public relations exercise by the UK & US &
had begun by the end of 1946 to intervene more
heavily in the domestic politics of Eastern European
states via their communist parties. (This intervention
escalated still further with the start of the Truman
Doctrine & Marshall Aid). For example, when
elections in Eastern Germany did not go well for the
communists, opposition was effectively eradicated.

Meanwhile, in China the communists continued to
gain strength and the economic situation in Europe
remained in 1946 awful, and communist parties even
in western Europe (especially the larger parties of
Italy and France) appeared as «fifth columns»*
waiting for the opportunity of total economic
collapse to take-over power.
* «A clandestine subversive organization working within a country to further an invading
enemy's military and political aims.» http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fifth+column
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 On
a visit to the US in March 1946
Churchill, (with his host Truman beside
him), gave a famous speech in which he
warned the still relatively less suspicious
American public of the threatening spread
of Soviet influence and communism and
stated that:
«From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste
in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has
descended across the continent.»
 He
was in essence pointing to the final
political, military and ideological division
of Europe that was within a year to
become a much more evident reality.
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http://img.radio.cz/pictures/historie/churchill_zelezn
a_opona.jpg
http://www.modestoradiomuseum.org/imag
es/iron%20curtain%20countries%20map.jpg
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Video of Churchill’s «Iron Curtain» speech @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2PUIQpAEAQ
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In February of 1948 a Soviet-backed communist coup
was carried out in Czechoslovakia, the eastern
European state with the strongest tradition of
democratic institutions, symbolic also in that Britain
and France had allowed its territory to be annexed
by Hitler in 1938 only to find that his territorial
goals of expansion were not satisfied. The leading
western states now held (in March) a conference in
London where they decided to proceed with the
integration of the 3 western zones of Germany
despite Soviet opposition.
 Stalin preferred to keep Germany «neutralized &
weak». When in June the West moved forward to
introduce a strong single currency in their zones,
Stalin now responded by blocking all west German
traffic to & from Berlin. Tensions escalated.

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 For
one year, in what became known as the
«Berlin Blockade Airlift» the British and
American airforces supplied all the needs of the
western zones of Berlin in an unprecedented
airlift that most, including Stalin, had probably
not thought possible. He did not attack these
planes, both because the air-corriddors through
which they travelled had been agreed earlier,
but also because he recognized this would lead
to a dangerous escalation likely to all-out war.
With airlift becomming more & more efficient,
with the superiority of the West in terms of
airforces, and the US monopoly on nuclear
weapons still there, Stalin was not prepared to
risk this and eventually backed down, ending
the blockade in May 1949. Nevertheless, the
iron curtain had by now been firmly drawn…
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
A united German Federal Republic (GFR – W Germany) was
formed out of the 3 western occupation zones in May 1949
to which the USSR replied with the establishment in Oct. 49
of the German Democratic Republic (GDR – E Germany)

The US Congress ended its long-standing reluctance to join
alliances and in April 1949 the US-led N(orth) A(talantic)
T(reaty) O(rganization) was established together with 11
European members in April 1949, securing the western
military presence in western Europe.

Containment, first outlined by foreign policy advisor
George Kennan in 1946, had become by now official US
policy… to contain the expansionism of the Soviet Union
and communism.

The Soviet Union was to respond in 1955 following the
integration of W Germany into NATO with the establishment
of the Warsaw Pact with 7 other European members.
(Albania, though not Yugoslavia, originally joined though it
left in the 1960’s as a result of the Sino-Soviet split).
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