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Political History of Europe II Slides 2 1 J. ROBERT WEGS & ROBERT LADRECH CHAPTER 1: A BIPOLAR WORLD 2 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) 3 http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/russia/images/coldwar.gif 4 5 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). 6 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. 7 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. 8 9 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 10 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 11 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. 12 http://content.answcdn.com/main/content/img/getty/6/5/2642765.jpg 13 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 14 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). 15 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 16 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. 17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oder-neisse.gif 18 19 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. 20 http://www.newworker.org/peet_john/plan1.jpg 21 http://www.worldology.com/Europe/images/wwii_1945_germany_losses.jpg 22 23 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» 24 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 25 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. 26 http://img.radio.cz/pictures/historie/churchill_zelezn a_opona.jpg http://www.modestoradiomuseum.org/imag es/iron%20curtain%20countries%20map.jpg 27 Video of Churchill’s «Iron Curtain» speech @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2PUIQpAEAQ 28 29 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. 30 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… 31 32 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). 33