Why Did the Warsaw Pact Intervene in Czechoslovakia in 1968 but Not in Poland in 1980?

The Cold War was a significant period that describes the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union during the period of WW2. Several decades the Cold War strongly influenced the world and in particular Australia and the United States. The period between 1945 and 1980 was a period of unrest when many significant world crisis; The Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam and the Berlin Wall occurred. After World War 2 the United States and the Soviet Union were seen as the world’s strongest nations and the Soviet had gained control over Eastern Europe and Eastern Germany. The United States, Britain and France controlled Western Europe and West Germany. However the SU was a communist country and the US was a capitalist country

The Czech Republic and Slovakia were now able to own their own businesses. They could move freely for jobs and homes. The countries are now able to vote as they wish. They did however change their language. All countries in the Soviet Union used to speak German. Now Czech is spoken in the Czech Republic and Slovak is spoken in Slovakia. The national anthem changed, both countries now have their own. In the Soviet Union the religion was Atheism, and now Czechoslovakia is free to believe whatever they want. The soviet Ruble was the currency in the Soviet Union and then it changed to the Czechoslovak Koruna and finally, when Czechoslovakia split, it changed to Czech Koruna in the Czech Republic and the Euro in Slovakia. The government in the Soviet Union was dictatorship. Now, a Parliamentary Republic is the form of government in Slovakia and Czech Republic. Although life after the Soviet Union collapsed was free, some people say it was easier to live in the Soviet Union because everything was already set and organized for you. They were not making many of their own decisions. However, when Czechoslovakia became free, the people realized that they had more freedom. They had to make decisions on their

Russia and Germany's Non-Aggression Pact led to Russian control of half of Poland. When WWII ended, Russia was still in control of Poland, and communism spread throughout Europe.

Consisting of 44 years of violence and civil unrest from 1947 to 1991, the Cold War was a huge turning-point in history. The Cold War however was a war of avoidance, not combat. Defence systems were heavily funded as deterrence to actual war, the belief being a risk of mutual annihilation would be too great to be the side to make the first move. However, the Cold War caused a large variety of conflict and civil unrest around the world, such as the Korean War, Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The War split the world into supporting either the United States, or the USSR (Soviet Union). Both superpowers were associated with two very different political systems; Capitalism and Communism. The Soviets were very concerned about the spread

The cold war made a significant change to Eastern Europe. After WWII the Soviet Union wanted to spread their ideologies of communism and in order for them to do that, they

Following World War II disputes between soviet and the Western democracies kicked up, particularly dealing with the fate of Eastern European states and the Soviets influential takeover. The communist takeover of Eastern Europe clashed with the democratic rebuilding of Western Europe forming what Winston Churchill described as a “Iron Curtain” a political, military and ideological barrier set by the Soviet Union served to set a metaphorical boundary between the Soviet expansion and the Western democracies. With the fall of the “Iron Curtain” “The Cold War was a period of East-West competition, tension, and conflict short of full-scale war, characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances or blocs.”

During the Cold War the powers of the Eastern and Western Bloc were states of tension after World War II. The war between the United States and the Soviet Union had lasted about half of the second century where there were many stages to finish this war. There are several documents and speeches that help explain and support what had occurred during the Cold War. It had brought heightened tensions and a series of international incidents that brought the world’s superpowers to the brink of disaster. The Cold War brought many effect around the world such as economic depression, divisions, and fear.

First, before the Second World War, the nation of Czechoslovakia had been a strong democracy in Central Europe, but beginning in the mid 1930s it faced challenges from both the West and the East. Until the Soviet’s invasion where they installed a whole new communist government in Prague. For the next twenty

Prior to the onset of WWII, conditions throughout occupied Poland & Belarus varied greatly. In some areas, especially in eastern Poland, which the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, and subsequently "formally" annexed, the situation was particularly volatile.1

The German invasion of Poland on September 1st 1939, was an experimental display of the most advanced and intense form of warfare the world had ever seen. With such a drastic use of power and with aspirations expanding so wide, the German “Wehrmacht”1, along with the Soviet Union and a small Slovak contingent, soon escalated a central European battle into a global conflict. The target of Poland, for such an experiment had been strategically chosen as a geographical and logistical advantage, a self-proclaimed repossession of pre-World War one land ownership, and an eastern front barrier with Germany’s newly established pact/ally (via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), the USSR.

In 1945 after WWII the United States and the Soviet Union became divided as far as how they felt Europe should be divided. This began the period of conflict called the Cold War. The Cold War was “a state of political hostility between countries characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare”(dictionary.com).The USSR believed in communism, where the US believed in democracy. The US was between two potentially hostile nations, the US designed a Buffer Zone to prevent any overt acts of aggression.At the end of WWI,I almost all of the eastern European countries were occupied by Russia these countries were known as Satellite States. The distrust between the two nations began at the Yalta Conference which included the three big powers: Churchill (Great Britain),Stalin (Soviet Union), and Roosevelt (United States of America). Stalin wanted more control as far how Europe progressed after WWII, where Roosevelt believed Europe should hold free election and determine their political system and rivalry between the two superpowers and began the Cold War. Some might blame the Americans for the causing for the Cold War because of the American’s wanted to occupy the countries, but the Soviet Union bares the responsibility for the Cold War because of their actions in Eastern Europe, by the military expansionism of Stalin and his successors, and the principles presented in the Iron Curtain Speech .

1947 through 1991 was the time period of the Cold War; the Cold War was a result caused by the tension of the after math of what had happened with world war 2 .The tension that was there wasn 't just any kind of tension it was military tension between the power of the eastern bloc and the power of the western bloc. The Cold War wasn 't only one war but it was decades of "little"wars and intimidation. Germany was busy after the war, there where so much tension between the Soviet Union and the western allies because they had feared each other because they had thought a new war could arise. Minister Churchill then decided that he would put what would be an iron curtain across Europe. The Cold War had so many little conflicts within it like the Chinese revolution, the Palestine liberation organisation, and so many more hundreds if you would that happened in the Cold War time.

Soon after the end of the World War Two (WW II), a new period of tensions began in the world with once again Europe at the very heart of the tensions. It was the Cold War. It “was a state of political and military tension between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact). It “split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences: the former being a single-party Marxist–Leninist state, and the latter being a capitalist state with generally free elections.” Although it was not the same scale as the WWII in terms of destructions and casualties, the Cold War did however bring the world to the brink of total nuclear war. While both superpowers avoided confronting each other directly on the military field, they had an open and intensive competition in the area of culture and consumerism.

The citizens of Czechoslovakia had not known freedom in decades. During much of World War II the nation was occupied by the Nazis and later by the Red Army as it drove the Nazis back to Berlin. When they Red Army moved into an area, communist regimes were set up to govern the area, and establish satellite nations. There were numerous uprisings throughout the decade that were violently suppressed by the communist governments with help from the USSR. After Alexander Dubcek tried to grant reforms to the people of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the USSR and most members of the Warsaw Pact sent their military forces to intervene and suppress any unrest or reforms. Things grew somewhat violent and brutal, as any demonstrators were either or beaten,

The Cold War In 1945, the United States and Soviet Union were allies, triumphant in World War II, which ended with total victory for Soviet and American forces over Adolf Hitler's Nazi empire in Europe. Within a few years, yet, wartime allies became mortal enemies, locked in a global struggle—military, political, economic, ideological—to prevail in a new "Cold War. Was it the Soviets, who reneged on their agreements to allow the people of Eastern Europe to determine their own fates by imposing totalitarian rule on territories unlucky enough to fall behind the "Iron Curtain?" Or was it the Americans, who ignored the Soviets' legitimate security concerns, sought to intimidate the world with the atomic bomb, and pushed to expand their own international influence and market dominance? The tensions that would later grow into Cold War became evident as early as 1943, when the "Big Three" allied leaders—American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin—met in Tehran to coordinate strategy. Poland, which sits in an unfortunate position on the map, squeezed between frequent enemies Russia and Germany, became a topic for heated debate. The Poles, then under German occupation, had not one but two governments-in-exile—one Communist, one anticommunist—hoping to take over the country upon its liberation from the Nazis. The Big Three disagreed over which Polish faction should b allowed to take control after the war, with