There was a wide spread debate between USA and USSR regarding Germany. The issue gained significance during the cold war, though there were other factors which were responsible for the development of cold war, the Germany factor was an important one. The administration of Germany, the political system and the reparation money formed the crux of the cold war between USA and USSR. The tension between the two super powers was evident from the fact that Stalin decided to erect the Berlin wall in 1956.
The importance of Germany was great thorough out the Cold War because it was the it represented to both the Soviet Union on the one hand, and Great Britain and the United States on the other the casus belli for the Second World War, and therefore the course taken by Germany after the Second World War was of critical importance for both sides.
[...] In a similar way that the initial crisis over the fate of Germany after the Second World War precipitated the dividing first of Germany, then the rest of Europe into two distinct armed camps, the erection of the Berlin Wall caused a change in the progress and nature of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall appeared to cause a crisis in relations between the two superpowers; after its erection, the Americans brought a notoriously anti-Soviet general, Lucius C. Clay (who had ensured the success of the Berlin Blockade) out of retirement and sent him back to Berlin, who ordered his troops to train storming over mock walls. [...]
[...] The Cold War, although undoubtedly caused by, and contributed to by the importance of Germany to both sides, had its roots in an issue more fundamental than the issue of Germany. The United States and the Soviet Union were diametrically opposed in their political systems and their approaches to government, and this most basic difference, between democracies on the one hand, and the autocratic regime of Stalin on the other meant that a conflict was likely after the wartime Allies had defeated their common adversary. [...]
[...] Clifford, a White House aide, and by the Soviet ambassador, who reported that revived Germany would] use in a future war on its side.”[5] The threat of a resurgent Germany was coupled with the threat of a newly assertive Germany in its own right to make German considerations a significant factor in the development of the Cold War. The issues over how the German question was to be resolved crystallized the latent differences between the two sides in the Cold War, and forced the United States to adopt a more pragmatic approach to dealing with Soviet demands for the restructuring of Europe. [...]
[...] The desire of President Wilson to change the structure of the post-war world in the aftermath of the First World War in order to establish a League of Nations that would which would encourage global self- determination, open markets and collective security marked an ideological shift in United States foreign policy. This shift in American foreign policy was accompanied by a shift in Russian foreign policy, albeit a somewhat more dramatic one. Although territorial expansion both eastwards and southwards in order to insure that the countries on Russia's borders were secure was a feature of Russian foreign policy and diplomacy since before the October Revolution, the Bolshevik accession to power now meant that traditional Russian foreign policy aims were allied to the rhetoric of class war to be waged by the proletariat around the world. [...]
APA Style reference
For your bibliographyOnline reading
with our online readerContent validated
by our reading committee
