History, Essay
The Red Army that marched into the German territory also swiftly conquered other surrounding vicinities like Latvia and Estonia, among others and absorbed them into the Soviet Union. Within a short span, the communist forces were successful in conquering even the Romanian as well as the Bulgarian governments with almost no effort.
Towards the end of 1945, it was almost clear that the Lublin Regime that had the complete support of the Soviet Union had gained total control of Poland, thus resulting in the breach of Yalta promise that upholds free and unconstrained elections in those provinces. Within no time, even countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia also became the victims of the Soviet communism. On the other hand, Tito, an independent communist leader was ruling over Yugoslavia. As a simultaneous move, Stalin was in pursuit of creating a communist regime in the Soviet province that was part of the occupied Germany.
American diplomats envisaged a region shrunken by war seeking a strong leadership as well as of all or any sort of aid, eventually creating an environment that is viable for revolution. However the moot questions are: How many governments are likely to experience a downfall? Will the Soviet Union succeed in conquering the whole of Germany? Or will it only be Italy and France that would suffer? One individual who was strongly determined to alter this global world order.
Dissemination of the American values and its culture has been a persistent objective of the United States since the times of the advent of the First World War. This motive and wish of spreading democracy and also boosting a capitalistic global system, helped in fueling both the Second World War as well as also the Cold War. In this pursuit of the United States in creating an increasingly safe world more conducive to the existence of democracy, the United States commenced its own struggle with communism. Supplementary efforts in this pursuit also included extending a helping hand to several European nations that were desperately in need of help after falling apart as an aftermath of the Cold War.
Examples that had backed the above efforts of the United States in the form of offering a helping hand were precisely the Truman Doctrine as well as the Marshall Plan. This imperturbably altered the foreign policy of the United States with specific relevance to the Soviet Union. The United States was no longer was interested in pursuing further positive associations with the Soviet Union or even recommend alliance. Instead, America sought a policy of containment in relation to the expansion of the U.S.S.R and its expansion in other parts of the world.
Greece and Turkey were the first dominions that were falling prey to the crisis, which the Soviet Union had not directly occupied till then. Both these nations were on the brink of being conquered by the guerrilla arrangements that the Soviet Union has been supporting. “Truman decided to draw a line in the sand and in March of the year 1947, he asked Congress to appropriate $400 million to send to these two nations in the form of military and economic assistance.” Within a span of two years of this move of Truman, the communist threat had already passed, and both Greece and Turkey were securely under the influence of the West.
George Kennan, a mid-level representative of the State Department proposed the Policy of Containment. Since the people of the United States were exhausted and tired of the already occurred war and had no further intentions to deploy the American troops into the Eastern Europe, rolling back the expansions made by the Red Army would have become a daunting and impossible mission to be achieved.
Yet, in provinces where communism was a serious threat for expansion, the aid offered by the United States had a strong possibility of avoiding a seizure. By robustly tracking this particular policy, America was confident and almost sure of containing the expansion of communism within its existing borders. The policy was popularly referred to as the Truman Doctrine, as it was President Truman, who delineated these intents and objectives with his appeal for financial support that was required to be offered to the nations of Greece and Turkey.
Post the conclusion of the Second World War, Western Europe was completely distraught and shattered. The war had been so devastating that it caused massive damage to the agricultural fields and also damaged infrastructure, eventually resulting in maximum partial of Europe desperate for aid.
On 5th June, 1947, the then Secretary of State of United States George Marshall declared a new program aimed at recovering and rebuilding the war-hit Europe and this was named the European Recovery Program, which also in due course became to be known as the Marshall Plan.
With an intention of not alienating the Soviet Union, Marshall also declared that the motive behind offering aid to Europe was essentially a humanitarian move, and the plan also offered aid to a few Easter communist states. “Congress approved Truman's request of $17 billion over four years to be sent to Great Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.”
The Marshall Plan built an economic marvel and created a kind of sensation in Western Europe. Within the targeted deadline of the recovery plan, which was almost four years after its initiation, several industries in Western Europe were seen manufacturing twice the merchandise that had formerly been producing, precisely one year before the outbreak of the World War.
There were also many critics of the Marshall Plan back in the United States, who were upset about the costs that the nation has incurred because of this recovery program. However, their claims were disregarded because, American had apparently known to have spent more on alcohol during the implementation of the Marshall Plan than what it had offered as financial aid to Western Europe.
The financial support offered by the United States also resulted in record levels of trade between many European and American organizations, consequently resulting in the American economy prospering like never before, post the war. Finally, to the utter delight of President Truman, none of Western European nations were exposed to any kind of serious threat of communist expansion or conquer during the Cold War era.
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