The world after the end of World War II. Changes in the world after World War II. Beginning of the Cold War

World after World War II

The collapse of the anti-Hitler coalition and the split of Europe into Western and Eastern, “the German question ” in the second half of the 40s -- 50s, inter-American relations in the 40s.

The Second World War radically changed the world. Two allies in the anti-Hitler coalition - the USA and the USSR emerged from the war as superpowers. The United States subjugated Western Europe and the countries Far East who without their help could not restore their economies. They were the only owners of superweapons - atomic bomb, which the United States tested on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to keep Stalin in line. The Soviet Union placed its control over Eastern Europe and formed the camp of the socialist countries.

At the same time, the psychological shock from the radical nature of the changes that have taken place in the world was inherent in all state elites, including the ruling circles of the USA and the USSR. Neither the USA nor the USSR in the first post-war years they did not know and did not understand the limits of each other's tolerance, and, consequently, the limits of what was possible in relations with each other. The mutual distrust with which the two superpowers ended the war forced them to prepare for a possible clash, although their resource base was fundamentally different. While the European part of the USSR from its western borders to the Volga lay in ruins, America escaped destruction on its territory. Bombs and shells did not fall on the United States, did not destroy their cities and infrastructure. During the war years, the US GNP doubled, unemployment was completely eliminated. Despite the fact that in 1945, 6% of the world's population lived in the United States, they produced almost half of the world's industrial output and consumed 50% of the produced in the world of zhggry. US aircraft factories could produce 100,000 aircraft.

■ aircraft per year. Over 80% gold reserve capitalist peace lay in US banks. No country in the world has

■ Yul unquestioned power. On the territory of the United States, the headquarters World Bank and International Vasi Pogo Fund, established in 1945, share in their authorized capital | 111 A was such that it allowed them to determine the credit policy

11 k for these largest financial institutions in the world.

Already at the last stage of the war between the USSR and its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, friction began due to a different vision of the picture of the post-war world. These frictions soon "transformed the character of the Cold War" - the war for power in the world beyond national borders. "Cold War" - in the highest

■ Yupeni is a contradictory and confusing phenomenon. She included in

< бя гонку вооружений, вселявших ужас своей разрушительной | илой, экономическое противостояние вплоть до диверсий. Хотя ресурсы СССР в военном секторе были достаточными, чтобы противостоять США, в остальных секторах общее преимуществ но было на стороне США. Корни “холодной войны” следует ис­кать в недоверии, которое обрело характер великого страха, раз­дуваемого как на Западе, так и на Востоке. На наш взгляд, ини­циатива в раздувании войны принадлежала Западу, таким ноли- шкам, как У. Черчилль и Г. Трумэн, не желавшим учитывать национальные интересы народов Советского Союза и полагав­шим, что то, что дозволено им, не позволено другим. Они ут­верждали, что враждебность Советского Союза неискоренима, носит зловещий характер и может быть обуздана только силой.

After the war, the victorious powers began to coordinate the texts of peace treaties with the former allies of Nazi Germany: Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and on February 10, 1947, these treaties were signed in Paris. With the exception of territorial articles, the treaties were of the same type. Thus, the process of formation of post-war borders in Europe was completed. The borders of the CEE countries have undergone large-scale changes, while in Western Europe they have not been so significant.

Of the many Eastern European states in the official

order, ethnic Germans were evicted or secretly squeezed out. The flow of Jewish immigrants from the CEE countries reached out to Palestine and the countries of the West. A mass of Ukrainians, residents of Western Ukraine, soldiers and officers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of Stepan Bandsra, who fought against the Red Army, fled to the West. Part of the former Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Germans during the war years, or served in security, police, nationalist formations (personnel of the army of Vlasov, Voskoboynikov-Kosminsky, Muslim formations) also moved there. Many of them then moved to the USA, Australia, Canada, South America and Africa.

In general, territorial changes in the second half of the 40s. were of great importance for the stabilization of post-war Europe, although they could not ensure the final resolution of interstate conflicts in this part of the world.

Immediately after the war, uniform political structures were formally created in all four zones of occupation of Germany, which were supposed to implement the decisions of the Control Council created by the victorious powers. But already in 1946, its activities were paralyzed due to disagreements, mainly between the USSR, on the one hand, and the USA with England, on the other. This led to the fact that the development of the German lands in the western and eastern zones went in different ways. The Potsdam decisions were interpreted by the leadership of each of the zones in its own way. While in the eastern sector of the occupation reforms began aimed at the elimination of large property and the creation of "people's property", in the western sectors, on the contrary, the state property of the Reich was transferred to private ownership.

On January 1, 1947, England and the USA united their sectors of the occupation of Germany and Bizonia was created. On April 8, 1949, France annexed its zone of occupation to it. The initiator and engine of the process of unification of the German lands was the United States, which created a counterbalance to the USSR in Western Europe,

The split of Germany, which became inevitable because of the differences between the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, has taken place.

64 >1and differences on the German question were a particular phenomenon of the growing global confrontation between West and East, or the world of capitalism and the world of socialism. Immediately after the war, Stalin turned to Turkey with a proposal to establish common control over the EU. maritime border, bearing in mind primarily the zone of the Black Sea straits. Turkey, having enlisted the support of the United States, refused, and Stalin retreated, not being able to prohibit the entry of military ships of non-Black Sea countries into its waters. At the same time in Greece there was Civil War between communists and supporters of the conservative regime. The left forces were assisted by Yugoslavia (JB Tito), while the right received the support of England. The Soviet Union kept aloof from the conflict, but this did not prevent England from accusing Stalin of striving to bring the Communist Party to power in Greece and in February

1947 to ask the US to prevent this.

American President Truman has long been looking for an excuse to declare an ideological war on communism. Back in 1946 - early 1947. economic prerequisites for such a war appeared, and they were connected not only with the German question. In early 1947, 23 countries signed an agreement on trade and customs duties. If any of the countries reduced customs duties for imports from another country, then these same rules should automatically apply to all who signed the agreement. The USSR did not enter into this agreement and forbade its allies to sign it. In the Eastern European countries, state control and state monopoly on foreign trade was introduced. Thus, the USSR closed the markets of the CEE countries for the United States and the policy of the "Iron Curtain" 1 began with the implantation of the Stalinist model of social and economic life. The events in Greece and Turkey gave Truman a political reason to declare war for democracy and against the dictatorship and coercion imposed Soviet Union. This is how the Truman Doctrine was born. In June 1947, US Secretary of State George Marshall unveiled a plan for the reconstruction of Europe, which covered 17 European

Pey states. The USSR and the CEE countries refused to accept it. Attempts by Poland and Czechoslovakia to join him were severely suppressed by Moscow. Only I.B. Tito, who broke into

1948 with Stalinist model, received US assistance.

In 1948, a single currency was introduced in West Germany and powerful financial injections into its economy began as part of the “Marshall Plan”. In the USSR, the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition were suspected of intending to revive German militarism, all the more so because large-scale subversive work was carried out against East Germany by the US and West German secret services (the Hellen Bureau). In June 1948, the USSR closed all access roads to West Berlin, which was inside Soviet zone occupation. Thus began the Berlin Crisis. In response to the blockade, Truman ordered the air supply to West Berlin and the transfer of B-29 aircraft, carriers of atomic warheads, to England. The Allies forced the declaration of West Germany as a Federal Republic. The USSR responded by declaring its zone of occupation as the German Democratic Republic. The division of Germany became a fait accompli.

During the “Berlin Crisis”, with the support of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and the Benelux countries signed the Brussels Pact, or the Western Military Alliance, which became the prologue of NATO. In April 1949, the United States and a number of other states joined this pact, which became 12. The created alliance was called the Atlantic Pact, or NATO. Thus, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO became steps in the formation of the Western Bloc.

In 1949, only 4 years after Hiroshima. The USSR tested its atomic bomb. Thus, the United States has lost its monopoly on atomic weapons much sooner than they expected. But, on the other hand, the Soviet Union at that time did not yet have means of delivering atomic warheads over long distances.

In the 50s. international relations began to acquire a certain orderliness and predictability. Western Europe entered this decade with a plan to unify the economies. The first step on this path was the plan of the French Foreign Minister

66 p.m.x of R. Schumann's cases on the creation of the European Union of coal and steel, adopted in 1950 by the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany K. Adenauer. The second pillar of the new European order was the attempt to give away the European Defense Community. Disputes around him allowed the United States to again actively intervene in European affairs and on May 26, 1952, to achieve the signing of the German, or Bonn, Treaty, which abolished the occupation statute and

■ inserted the FRG sovereignty. Thus, it was not possible to create a defensive alliance, but a sovereign FRG appeared, which caused extreme concern of the USSR, which proposed in the spring of 1952 to create a single neutral Germany. The proposal was framed by Stalin's note, which was rejected by K. Adenauer, who preferred to unite the FRG with the West. The German chancellor was not free to make this decision, he acted taking into account the recommendations of the United States. England and France, with which corresponding agreements were signed in Paris. According to them, on May 5, 1955, the FRG was admitted to NATO. In response, the USSR and its allies, including the GDR, created a military-political association - the Warsaw Pact.

The creation of two military blocs and the launch by the Soviet Union of the first satellite of the Earth with the help of a carrier rocket, which showed the vulnerability of the territory of all Western powers and the United States, reduced the intensity of military rhetoric and made the situation in the world more stable.

The end of World War II coincided in the Western Hemisphere with the acceleration of the formation of a continental system of military-political guarantees, which was initiated at the first Consultative Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American States in Panama in 1939 on the proclamation of a 300-mile zone of “naval security” around the entire American continent from Canada in the north to Cape Horn in the south. At the Chapultspec Conference on Problems of War and Peace on March 3, 1945 in Mexico City, the United States and Latin American countries agreed to build relations between themselves on the basis of the formula “an attack on one is an attack on all”, signing the so-called Chapultepsk Act. This is how the political and legal foundations of the future system of collective security and defense in the Western Hemisphere were formed.

On September 2, 1947, in their development, at the inter-American conference in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, the Inter-American Mutual Assistance Treaty (“Rio Pact”) was signed, which entered into force in December 1948. The United States and 19 Latin American states that signed the agreement, pledged to assist each other in the event of an attack against them "from within and without the continent", within the security zone of the Western Hemisphere from Greenland to Antarctica. The Rio Pact has become a model for creating similar regional pacts in other regions of the world, primarily in Europe (NATO). Its provisions formed a smallpox signed on April 30, 1948 at the 9th Pan-American Conference in the capital of Colombia, Bogota, the charter of the new Organization of American States (OGA), the creation of which accelerated the formation of a regional subsystem international relations.

Among the factors that contributed to the rallying of Latin American countries under the banner of Pan-Americanism, it should be noted, first of all, the Second World War, when almost all the states of the region, although not without hesitation, primarily from Argentina, took the side of the USA and the Axis powers. After the war, the enthusiasm of Latin Americans for the development of inter-American relations was based on the understanding that it was impossible to develop without ties both with their neighbors and with the United States, whose economic and military influence had become pervasive in the Western Hemisphere.

But the ruling elites of Latin American countries did not accept the growth of American influence in their internal affairs, trying to limit it. They wanted, on the one hand, to eliminate the threat of Washington's return to the open interventionism of the first decades of the 20th century, and on the other hand, to find the optimal combination of respect for the sovereignty of Latin American countries and elements of Washington's "patronizing" towards them, which were characteristic even in the pre-war period in the policy of the “good neighbor” - President F.D. Roosevelt. The countries of Latin America agreed to the signing of the inter-American documents because they expected to use them to restrain or at least regulate

to rove the "American onslaught". Moderate optimism in this sense was inspired by the decision-making procedure in the OAS, which was based on the principle of "one country - one vote". With such a mechanism, Latin American countries could always get a majority when considering controversial issues.

Despite fears for their sovereignty, the countries of Latin America were attracted by the deepening of ties with the United States. Interaction with the advanced American economy contributed to their economic development. For many countries, the US has been the main market for agricultural products and commodities. In addition, Washington's desire to reform Latin American countries "in its own image and likeness" stimulated the development of democratic tendencies in Latin America and contributed to the "softening" of dictatorial and authoritarian)