Wednesday, March 5, 2014
The Iron Curtain
In a speech delivered by Churchill, the prime minister of Great Britain, he explained Europe's situation following World War II. The Allies had divided Germany up after they had been defeated. The USSR got part, and the rest of the Allies got a different part. The USSR specifically had the entire Eastern part of Europe. With the Allies no longer united against a common enemy, more disagreements developed. With Russia being communist, and the rest of the Allies capitalist, they disagreed on many points, and this divided Europe. Churchill's speech spoke of how it was like an Iron Curtain had been drawn between the USSR and the rest of the Western Europe. In the speech, he made it sound as if the USSR had been the ones to instigate this Iron Curtain, and that they were the ones to blame for it. In 1946, Europe was already very divided between the communists and the capitalists.
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The Iron Curtain Speech was also one of the things that began the Cold War. It showed where America stood in the battle between capitalism and gave their direct opinion of the matter. It also acted as a warning to other capitalist countries about the danger the Soviet Union, exclaiming how they had taken these countries and could potentially capture more in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe speech had showed how Western Europe and their allies felt about the USSR. After World War II everything went awry, naturally everyone should start feeling at peace but tension still lingered between Western Europe and the USSR. Do you think the speech predicted the Cold War?
ReplyDeleteChurchill also talked about how all of the territories behind the curtain were subject to Soviet influence, and as a result, the Iron Curtain needed to be broken up. This showed that the U.S. did not trust the USSR.
ReplyDeleteDo you think that this speech was necessary to give, or do you think that it was obvious to people that the two countries were very separate? I think the people/government very well knew that there was controversy in beliefs. I also believe that the Iron Curtain Speech kind of provoked the Cold War as it somewhat sparked the beginning of the obvious separation and disagreements to come.
ReplyDeleteI dont think the speech was such a good idea because it did escalate what was already evident. This speech did create more tension between the three countries and this acknowledged that. I guess it was good in the fact that they established that there were problems and a that there is a curtain that divided them. By reestablishing the fact that there is a line, they were able to state their thoughts on communism and made sure other countries knew that.
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