Second Front Tension Essay

‘For Marshall Planners, it (economic growth) was...the key to social harmony, to the survival of private-enterprise capitalism, and to the preservation of political democracy’ , additionally, by setting up European economies in the image of America’s capitalist, free-market economy, it became far more difficult for Communist beliefs in the state controlled market to prevail in the struggle for power that consumed many European countries. An analysis of America’s foreign policy by Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Ambassador, shows that the Soviet Union also saw the Marshall Plan as an attempt to impose America’s political views on the peoples of Europe ‘obvious indications of the US effort to establish world dominance’ . Novikov suggests that America is trying to become the leading world power ‘The foreign policy of the United States... is characterised in the post-war period by a striving for world supremacy’ , and emphasises the role of the American military to impose the policies of the White House on the world, ‘indications of the US effort to establish world dominance are also to be found in the increase in military potential in peacetime’ . This view is expressed by Soviet deputy foreign minister Andrei Vyshinsky where he states to the UN General Assembly that the Marshall Plan is an American attempt to ‘impose its will on other independent states’ . There was a strong feeling in the Soviet Union

The Cold War, a period of sustained political and military tension between the USA and the USSR, resulted in various viewpoints concerning the cause of the tension emerging. Until today the question remains unresolved, even after the 1991 release of Soviet archives. The main point of disagreement relates to the roles that ideology played in the events between 1945 and 1949. Was it the strongly opposing ideologies, capitalism and communism, or power and material interest that drove both superpowers to the decades of struggle for global supremacy.

18.1) Assess the view that the disagreements about the Second Front were the most significant cause of tension between Russian and the West between 1941 and 1945.

The United States entered World War Two in late 1941, and right away they were thrown into a conflict that involved making important decisions that would affect generations of people, in the United States and elsewhere, for years to come. A most notable decision by the Allies, namely the United States and Great Britain, was the combining of the American and British military chiefs of staff. This joint collaboration was appropriately titled the “Combined Chiefs of Staff”. They worked together as one body, and made war planning decisions and strategized together. This type of alliance was an innovation in war planning for the time, and the decisions made collaboratively by the two powers contributed greatly to the Allied victory in 1945. The relationships involved and the disputes that came up are worth noting, specifically the question of the Allies opening up a second front in the west, particularly titled “Operation Sledgehammer”. The relationship between President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, as well as General George Marshall of the United States and General Sir Alan Brooke of Great Britain were the main actors involved in this undertaking, and they will be the main individuals discussed and analyzed for the purposes of this paper. Ultimately Operation Sledgehammer was delayed and no action was taken upon it. Even though it caused rifts between the USSR, for reasons that will be explained, and the Allies far into the future, in retrospect they may have been

According to excerpts from Joseph Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism, “the transition from capitalism to socialism and the liberation of the working class from the yoke of capitalism cannot be effected by slow changes… but only… by revolution.” The USSR wasn’t content with the idea of capitalism. But the USSR thinks that a rapid revolution, violence, is the only way and it is natural and inevitable. They [the Soviet Union] believe that instead of fixing the struggle between the rich and poor, they want to struggle to go all the way through until we have a society that favors and takes care of the working class. However, the US believes that they should always keep the door open to them and be ready and willing to work together. “Today the ruling circles of the United States and Great Britain head one international grouping which has as its aim the consolidation of capitalism and the achievement of the domination of these countries over other peoples…” is an excerpt from “The Task of Our Time: United Against the Enslavement of the People” The US and Great Britain wanted other countries to become capitalists which was the opposite of what the USSR wanted to do. And the USSR wanted to spread communism and they were not in favor of capitalism. The USSR may say that the Cold War was a reaction to this because the US was the first

Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts -- and facts they are - this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up” (Document C). This quote set the precedent for containment and gives understanding as to why America reverted from its original policy of isolationism into an alternate strategy of preventing the spread of communist expansion. Moreover, George E. Kennan’s Long Telegram, or Document D, sketched “the roots of Soviet policy” and contained “warning of serious difficulties with the Soviet Union in the years ahead”. Kennan’s telegram portrayed the Soviets as aggressive and intent on world domination, suggesting that they would only respond to force and not

during the Cold War are very strained according to historians. There are a few documents that demonstrate their differences. In document D, Henry Luce states, “Americans were unable to accommodate themselves spiritually and practically to that fact. Hence they have failed to play their part as a world power-a failure which had had disastrous consequences for themselves and for all mankind.” Luce is saying that the USSR is unsure of the American’s ability to keep the power that they have. Luce is on the side of the USSR. In document F, Winston S. Churchill says, “Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies.” What Churchill was trying to say was that whatever the USSR is planning on doing in their future, which causes the U.S to distrust them. In document H, it states, “The Germans were able to carry out the invasion through these countries by reason of the fact that these countries had governments inimical to the Soviet Union.” This piece of evidence shows how the USSR got other countries to carry out their

When one can truly understand and uncover the meaning behind these articles and how they fit into one or more of the ‘boxes’ we call paradigms and perspectives. In order to dissect and analyze the case of the Cold War, especially its origins, one must not only skim through the text and uncover main ideas, but also must also relate the readings to these paradigms and establish one’s own ideals and opinions regarding the study of international relations. Personally, I believe the articles associated with the origins of the Cold War along with Professor Katzenstein’s lecture on the topic provide strong arguments for the use of a ‘middle fish’ perspective and a ‘big fish’ paradigm: domestic politics and realism, respectively. Through George Kennan’s personal accounts, experience and analysis at both the time of the Cold War’s inception and forty-plus years later after the fall of the Soviet Union, a point is made regarding the nature of Soviet expansion as an offensive maneuver, which he believed must be contained by a defensive strategy. This point of conflicting strategies by the U.S. and (especially) the Soviet Union provides the reader with a realist argument and perspective. Also, in his second piece, which details remarks made to the Council on Foreign Relations in 1994, Kennan explains that instead of whole-heartedly adopting

The USSR was worried about its security and loss of influence. By the ‘iron curtain’ it wanted to control the political structure of Eastern Europe and to prevent the re-establishment of a free and united Germany. USA and its western allies were concerned about this matter. They tried to pressurize USSR to undo the new hegemony; however, it couldn’t regain the control of central Europe except through a war against Soviet Union. The elimination of Soviet political and economic dominance from East and Central Europe was necessary for USA as it was keen to use the potential market. For some revisionists it was the country’s capitalist economy and it’s addiction to overproduction that compelled it to adopt expansionist policies. (Graebner, 1976) Alternative world hegemony might have regarded as a challenge for USA. America has dreamt of

The Sources of Soviet Conduct, a highly influential article written by George Keenan in 1946, states that the US must pursue afirm and consistent opposition to the Soviet Union. In Keenan's argument for this, he explores the two factors of ideology and circumstance which shaped the Soviet Union. This is used in order to explain the behaviour of the Soviet Union. Thus, the most effective method for the US to counteract this behaviour is then explained.

After WWII, the USA and the Soviet Union faced a conflict as they competed for global power. Neighboring countries, like Afghanistan, were dragged into the conflict causing millions of people to die. Due in part to the high cost of waging this war the Soviet Union fell only four years after the conflict.

First, in the Stalin speech in 1946, he stated “the only key to future world peace was for “monopoly capitalism” to be replaced by Communism around the world.” It became clear to the Supreme Court Justice William Douglas that Stalin was declaring another World War based in his ideology. (Fraser 697). Based on Stalin speech, the American embassy in Moscow, George Kennan sent the “Long Telegram”, which he explained his strategy of “containment” against Soviet Union, “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree]”; as a result, America’s only choice

The Soviet Union was becoming increasingly more and more worried about the influence of the West in Germany. It was convinced that Germany’s neutrality was vastly important to the security of Russia. In response to the talks on March 6, the Soviets temporarily restricted the movement of Western military supplies

The traditional, orthodox interpretation places the responsibility of the Cold War on Stalin’s personality and on communist ideology. It claims that as long as Stalin and the authoritarian government were in power, a cold war was unavoidable. It argues that Stalin violated agreements that he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet policy on Eastern European countries aiming at political domination and conspired to advocate communism throughout the world. As a result, United States officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with foreign policies such as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Yet revisionists argue that there was “no proof of Stalin promoting communism outside Russia” and that Stalin’s decisions were first and foremost, pro-Soviet and not of communist intentions. Up until 1947, it is evident through Marshall Plan as well as statements and interviews made by Stalin that he was still thinking of cooperation with the United States, Britain and France. Despite post-war conflicts and instability of Soviet-American relations, the USSR’s initial embrace of the Marshall Plan at its announcement expressed

Post-Cold War Period Causes of Conflict The end of the Cold War meant that the ideological conflict of dominance between East (Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) and West (USA and Western Europe) was over. Contrary to the expectations that world would be much safer in the post-Cold War, United States and Soviet Union were faced with new security issues that they did not know how to deal with. The objective of this essay is to show that with all these changes that occurred with the end of the Cold War, causes of the conflict indeed altered from the classic ones.