Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Potsdam Conference

1. Read Source 17 (p 68). At Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt had agreed with Stalin that eastern Europe would be a Soviet ‘sphere of influence’. Do you think Source 17 is what they had in mind?    
"This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social
system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army has power to do so. It cannot
be otherwise." This obviously does not agree with the fact that the Soviet Union would solely be guiding the countries in eastern Europe, but would more so be controlling them to the greatest power that his army had power to.
2. Would they agree with Stalin’s views expressed in Sources 17 and 18? Explain your answer.       
No, they would not agree with Stalin's views because what Stalin is basically stating in both sources that he is going to try to take charge of eastern Europe. This would not be seen as good by Churchill and Roosevelt because these two were thinking more that Stalin would be simply guiding eastern Europe, not taking it over. 
3.  Explain how each of the three developments described in the text might affect relationships at Potsdam
First of all, the fact that Stalin's armies were controlling most of eastern Europe was obviously a problem. Stalin was claiming that this was a method of protection for future attacks, but in reality he was setting up a large communist government/rule all over soviet Russia as well as Easter Europe. This could affect the relationships at Potsdam because Churchill and Truman were obviously uncomfortable with this and didn't want this to be happening, making it an awkward situation. Secondly, because  America had President Truman as president after Roosevelt died, it made a very uncomfortable situation for Stalin at Potsdam because Truman was much more anti-communist compared to Roosevelt. Lastly, since America had developed the atomic bomb, this could have made both Churchill as well as Stalin feel very inferior because all of a sudden America was a huge threat with this massive source of power. 

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