History · A Level: The origins and development of the Cold War, 1941-1950. The idea in plain words, the rules to remember, the mistake to avoid and a worked example, written and checked by Mega Lecture.
After 1945 the Red Army stayed in Eastern Europe. Communist parties, backed by Moscow, took control step by step, removing rivals one slice at a time. This is called salami tactics. Stalin saw a buffer zone against another invasion. The West saw broken promises of free elections.
Each side now explained the other as aggressive. Kennan's Long Telegram and Churchill's Iron Curtain speech shaped the Western view; the Novikov Telegram gave the Soviet one.
Germany was the hardest problem: the USSR wanted reparations and a weak Germany, while the USA and Britain wanted recovery. Crises in Iran, Turkey and Greece convinced Washington that Soviet pressure had to be resisted.
Do not date the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia to 1945. It was the last to fall, in February 1948, and until then it had a real multi-party government.
Answer: They are mirror images: each shows one side reading the other's actions as a threat, which hardened policy on both sides.
Type what you are stuck on. The helper finds the explanation, worked examples and the notes to read, free and instant.
← Tensions in the wartime alliance and peace-making, 1941-1945The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Blockade →Take a History test