Germany had been defeated, Roosevelt had died, and Churchill had lost the 1945 election, so there were open disagreements. Truman thought Roosevelt was too lenient with Stalin and communism. During the conference, he discovered that an American test of the atomic bomb had been successful. This meant that he no longer needed Soviet help in the war against Japan. Truman also felt that Stalin could not maintain the agreement reached at the Yalta Conference that there would be free and fair elections in Eastern Europe. What were the differences between the Yalta and Potsdam conferences? The Stasi intercepted letters, bed bug rooms, tapped phone lines and encouraged people to report friends or family who said something negative about the communist regime. Their presence created a great sense of distrust, as no one knew if a friend, relative or colleague was secretly an agent or informant of the Stasi. They punished the dissidents with prison and physical and psychological torture. This showed how much the East German communist government wanted to control the people. In February 1945, the Big Three – Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin – met again in Yalta in crimea of the USSR.
At the Vienna Summit in June 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev insisted that the United States relinquish control of West Berlin and allow it to become part of Soviet-controlled East Germany. U.S. President John F. Kennedy said he could not accept such a request. Although the Yalta meeting was reasonably friendly, there were many disagreements in Potsdam that were the result of some important changes that have taken place since the Yalta Conference. In Germany today, small sections of the wall are reminiscent of the time when the city was divided. A series of cobblestones mark the border where the wall once stood. In April 1949, twelve countries joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The founding members were Great Britain, America, France, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal. Each side has also tried to show its technological superiority in the space race. The Soviets sent the first humans into space, but the Americans succeeded in the first moon landing. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear Armageddon was a daily fear.
In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev reformed the Soviet Union when it faced economic problems and some countries demanded independence. In 1961, Berlin was located in the Soviet-controlled area of the GDR and was divided into East and West Berlin. The agreement reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945 stipulated that the division of Germany should be temporary until free and fair elections could be held. In 1961, it was clear that this would not happen. Berlin would become a focal point of the Cold War. Make sure you know the different key events: freedom has a lot of difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to build a wall to keep our people inside to prevent them from leaving us. The Berlin Wall marked a change in Soviet attitude towards Berlin. They had previously sought to make Berlin part of the Eastern bloc. The wall was a recognition that West Berlin would remain capitalist. The Berlin Wall was a great propaganda victory for the West.
He suggested that communism should build a wall to keep people under their control. Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union), Franklin Roosevelt (United States) and Winston Churchill (United Kingdom) decided to divide Germany into four zones. The Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France would each control an area. The German capital Berlin, located in the Soviet zone, would also be divided into four parts. These wars took place in Korea, Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan and other countries. The United States and the Soviets spent huge sums on their military and nuclear weapons, trying to outdo themselves and create an arms race. The world came close to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Allies agreed to divide Germany into zones and demand reparations for war losses. On August 13, 1961, a barbed wire fence was erected on the border between East and West Berlin.
This fence was quickly replaced by a high concrete wall patrolled by armed guards. This photo gives a glimpse of the human experience of the Berlin Wall. Due to the division of the city, friends, family and relatives were separated and could not cross the border to meet. There were many people in East Berlin who were desperately looking for a more prosperous life in the West. Between 1961 and 1989, thousands of people living in the East successfully fled to the West. But during that time, at least 140 people have lost their lives trying to bridge the gap. The Marshall Plan has been very effective in helping the western parts of Germany to achieve a strong economic recovery. The countries that controlled the western zones – America, Britain and France – introduced a new currency, the D-Mark, to calm the economy. But it angered Stalin. At the Yalta conference, it was agreed that they would work towards the reunification of Germany – and the new currency in the American, French and British zones made this less likely. Truman was annoyed by the amount of reparations and the fact that a communist government had been formed in Poland.
Truman did not tell Stalin that he had the atomic bomb. After World War II, a 45-year struggle for world hegemony emerged: the Cold War. One side was led by the United States, the other by the Soviet Union – the two superpowers. The Soviet Union led a camp with other Eastern European countries such as Hungary and Poland, while the United States was allied with countries such as France and Britain. Berlin, the capital of Germany, would also be temporarily divided into four zones administered by the same countries. This created a problem for the United States, the United Kingdom and France to reach their areas in Berlin, they had to travel 100 miles to the Soviet zone. A system was set up where countries could apply for loans from America. In total, about US$13 billion in grants and loans were provided across Europe. Stalin forbade all Eastern bloc countries to accept the offer of aid, saying the Marshall Plan was a way for America to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. An excerpt from President John F. Kennedy`s address to the people of Berlin on June 26, 1963. The United States entered World War II against Germany and Japan in 1941, creating a troubled alliance between the United States, Britain, and the USSR.
This alliance would eventually fail and break into the Cold War. America was concerned about the spread of communism and feared that the Soviet Union would exploit poverty in Eastern European countries, which were still recovering from the effects of World War II. There were also fears that Western countries like France or Italy would turn to communism if they wanted to recover from the war. In retaliation, General Clay, who was in charge of U.S. forces in Berlin, sent tanks to the border crossing. The incident quickly escalated, and it didn`t take long for american and Soviet tanks to face each other, just 75 meters apart. .