Introduction
The period 1945-1990, referred to as the cold world war, arose because of national conflicting interests between the United States and the Soviet Union over the future of Europe.
Europe fought their final battles in the World War II, which left their economies in tatters with Eastern Europe under communist control. The cold war between United States and Soviet Union took the dimension of economic pressure, discriminating help, half-truths and assassinations.
Shallow military operations intensified in bid to avoid a nuclear war. With the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union swore against a repeat German invasion. Additionally, the Soviet Union’s intention was ensuring that the non-communist nations in Eastern Europe crashed. This is when the United States concern over Europe grew and thus increased her involvement.
Economic Intervention
Europe had embraced industrial revolution. There was high industrial development across the region prior to the World War II. The war brought the economy of Europe into waste, with many of its industries destroyed.
During the period of 1945-1990, many of the countries in Eastern Europe fell into communist hands of the USSR. United States came in seeking to help save the European economy under the Marshall Plan.
It aided the western part of Europe militarily and helped in rebuilding the economy. By the 1980’s the communist nations were rapidly falling while the economies of Western European countries were increasingly gaining power. This is highly attributable to the support of the USA.
With the help of America, many of the western nations moved to link together through economic integration. They formed the European Union that increased trade among them through shared infrastructure. They agreed on a common currency (the euro) and made trade agreements that set their economies on the path to recovery.
Britain had been weakened by the Second World War hence it could no longer support countries in Europe like Greece and Turkey. Therefore, Britain sought the intervention of the United States.
United States was strongly opposed to communism and to avoid European economies from falling in the hands of the Soviet Union they provided financial aid. They also played a major role in stabilizing the civil wars at the time.
America’s intervention through the Truman Doctrine saved the nations from soviet communism. In effect, America saved Europe from foreign policy failures and military humiliation.
America believed that once a country falls into communism it would also weaken the neighbors as there would be minimum interaction because of diverging trade systems.
Their support was evident when the Soviet Union pressured Turkey over the Dardanelles Strait concessions that would have allowed invasion from the west, through enunciation of the Truman Policy (Archie 2011).
When Stalin attempted to blockade West Berlin in a bid to take control and convert the Market System to a Communist System, USA aided Berlin with supplies and food (Berlin Airlift).
This enabled Europe to maintain control of its cities from the Soviet Union. Were it not for the vast amount of aid America gave to Europe, European economies would have fallen further with the Soviet Union invasion during the cold war (Archie 2011).
Effect of United States Political Policies
After the Second World War, United States and the Soviet Union were the only remaining super powers. During this period a greater part of Eastern Europe was in the hands of the communist, the boundaries of Europe were redrawn. This division resulted into two blocs, the eastern bloc, which was under communist rule, and western countries (Zinn 2003).
Western Europe and the United States unified and formed the NATO alliance while Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact. The two alliances, separated by what Winston Churchill termed as the Iron wall.
When the Soviet Union seized some of the western European nations, it blocked them from receiving all forms of aids. European NATO members had limited capacity to the point they could not transport even lightly armed troops to their defense. They employed American Satellite reconnaissance to spy on the enemy greatly (Archie 2011).
The European states could not have managed to impose their will on major crisis affecting the Mediterranean region or even calmed the Gulf crisis without the help of the United States.
The Americans had no major damages to recover from, as they were not direct casualties of the war. They used their resources to save nations from the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union (Archie 2011).
The political boundaries that European nations formed after the Second World War were because of integration that saw the formation of the European Union and council of Europe.
The success of the integration was as result of the economic liberation facilitated by the United States. After the fall of the Soviet Union, European economies stabilized and there was an increase in European Union membership from six to twelve states (Pearson 1998).
Military Aid
During the two World Wars, the economy of the United States did not suffer severely as compared to the European economies. America had enough resources to protect herself viciously.
Hence, after the war they had enough resources to help Europe get back to its feet. The advantage of nuclear weapons and the manufacture of technically superior weapons aided by advancement in Information Technology helped Western Europe to prevent invasion from the Soviet Union.
Although the Eastern Bloc produced numerous amounts of weapons, they were not sophisticated enough to fight of invasion (Zinn 2003).
America formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. It comprised United States, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Iceland, France, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, and Canada.
It was a joint military troop to provide defense against the soviet forces to Europe. It sourced most of its military resources from the United States. The troops also kept enemies off the European bounders and help in keeping calm during civil wars (Archie 2011).
Merger of East and West Germany
The Cold War started as nations struggled to gain power to control other nations. With the Soviet Union having gained control over Eastern and some parts of Central Europe, the United States was determined to stop any interference with Western Europe autonomy (Fedorov 2011).
Soviet Union’s acquisition of more nations ended in 1948 when they were defeated in a coup d’état in Czechoslovakia. They thus decided to concentrate with stabilizing their control in Germany. Western Europe, on the other hand, was not willing to cede control over Western Germany.
This was the genesis of conflict over the future of Germany as a unified state. The Soviet Union blocked all surface forms of transport to western Germany as they refused conversion into a communist state.
President Truman of United States quickly ordered planes to send the starving Germans food, coal and medicine. The planes kept supplying items constantly even in time spans of minutes to ensure that there were no shortages. Approximately, supplies worth 2.5 million were ferried in 280,000 thousands plane flights (Cold War Museum 2011).
The creation of the Berlin wall led to the isolation of Eastern Europe that had many of its countries under the communist. There was an order by President Stalin to shoot anyone who climbs over the wall. This led to strained relations in Europe. There was growing disparity between the two German factions (Cold War Museum 2011).
Eastern Germany suffered immensely as they could not access the Marshall aid. After building the Berlin wall and successfully isolating east and West Germany, Berlin became the center of the Cold War. It was divided into four parts with the allied nations (France, Britain, and America) controlling a part each and Russia controlling the other.
The allied forces believed that for Europe to develop there was need for unity. This led to the congregation of the three parts of Berlin controlled by allied nations and isolation of the part controlled by the Soviet Union.
This was a threat to Stalin as the underdeveloped Germans could clearly see the difference of their side to the allied side. He decided to block out the allied nations by cutting out any canal, road, or rail transport to the allied portion of Berlin, faking that he was reconstructing the road (Wilentz, 2008).
The allied forces realized that Soviet Union could not attack them because of the fear of the nuclear weapon that they possessed (Cold War Museum 2011). They used air transport to provide their zones with supplies, as Stalin could not attack their planes.
As time went by, the western nations, especially United States, outnumbered communist in resource endowment. This led to their eventual defeat.
There was increased unrest in Eastern Germany that saw the bringing down of the Berlin wall. This allowed the Germans free movement and with the weakening of communist power East Germany slowly moved to a democratic type of government.
Unification of East and West Germany is mostly as result of the development in West Germany. United States stood firm and insisted that a communist system was not fit for economic development.
They played a crucial role in changing the system through the Marshall Plan and implementation of the Truman doctrine. The United States, thus, played a major role in unifying Germany (Pearson 1998).
Many of the people under communist rule looked for ways to move to West Germany. With time, those left behind revoked against the Soviet communist government. Germany was one of the wealthy nations in Europe.
It had the highest GDP and was thus the backbone of the European economy. With the communist invasion and the creation of the Berlin wall that hindered German development the Soviet invasion had to cease. East German communist collapsed in 1990 and this saw the unification of East and West German (LaFeber 2002).
Merger of Eastern and Western Europe
With the fall of the Soviet Union, the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union changed. When Mikhail Gorbachev took over as the secretary general of the Communist Party of Soviet Union, he realized the futility of continuing with the cold War.
He then sought to hold concessions with the United States. This was because of the increased power the United States had acquired over nuclear power and his realization of his countries weakening economy. He thus sought to be more cooperative and ordered unilateral decrease of the strength of Soviet Union troops (Pearson 1998).
Improved United States relations with Soviet Union resulted into policies of openness and friendlier environments to their neighbors. Thus, there was a more cohesive approach to international commerce.
The new policies Gorbachev made included his intention not to enforce the Brezhnev Doctrine that prohibited countries in Eastern Europe from defecting from the Soviet sphere of influence (Lüthi 2008).
Eastern European states having gained their freedom from the communist, started democratic movements. They moved from communist systems to capitalist systems, these were the systems in operation in Western Europe. There was widespread democracy with many regions gaining their freedom and the Soviet regime ending in Romania in 1989 (Pearson 1998).
In Western Europe, America and other allied powers returned the authority, they had to the hands of the Germans. In 1949, there was formation of first federal republic of Germany and in August, after the elections, self-governance granted.
This was the beginning of liberation in Europe with the help of United States (Zinn 2003). United States through President George H.W. Bush helped Germany in overcoming objection of the Soviet Union from membership into NATO.
President Bush held talks with President Gorbachev and Chancellor Kohl. Signing of treaty on the final settlement with respect to Germany was on September 12. The treaty also mandated the withdrawal of all the military forces of the Soviet Union from Germany.
Germany renounced the use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological weapons for the peace of the world. This saw the end of the cold war (Cold War Museum 2011).
Social Impact
Western Europe had to be on the same side with the United States to gain their favor on protection from the Soviet Union. This included all the western countries affiliated to United States.
This new relationship saw the formation of organizations like NATO and European Union hence drawing the borderline of whom the Europeans could associate. They had to be friends with those that were friends of the United States, otherwise risk invasion by the Soviet Union (Zinn 2003).
The division of Germany into East and West led to many Germans fleeing Eastern Germany and becoming refugees because the living conditions had deteriorated. Many of them were women and children.
They German people faced slave labor from countries that Germany had destroyed during the reign of the Nazi. The refugees that managed to get their way to Western Germany though the Marshall plan got supplies to sustain them.
The western economy also received aid from America to help the refugees start their new lives and contribute to the economy (Cold War Museum 2011). With the communist invasion and the creation of the Berlin wall that hindered German development the Soviet invasion had to cease.
East German communist collapsed in 1990 and this saw the unification of East and West Germany as noted by Zinn (2003).
Reference List
Archie, B, 2011, Reform, Coup and Collapse: The End of the Soviet State. Web.
Cold War Museum, 2011, The cold War studies. Web.
Fedorov, A, 2011, Russian Image on the Western Screen: Trends, Stereotypes, Myths, Illusions, New York, Lambert Academic Publishing.
LaFeber, W 2002, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-2002, London McGraw-Hill.
Lüthi, L 2008, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
Pearson, R 1998, The Rise and fall of the Soviet Empire, London, Macmillan.
Wilentz, S 2008, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008, New York, U.S, Harper.
Zinn, H 2003, A People’s History of the United States, New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics.