England after the Second World War. The world after World War II: a time of change
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 of the Far East, which could not restore their economies without their help. They were the only owners of a superweapon - the atomic bomb, which the United States tested on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to keep Stalin in check. Soviet Union Iodine put his control over Eastern Europe and formed the camp of socialist countries.
At the same time, the psychological shock from the radicality of the changes that took 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 knew or understood the limits of each other’s tolerance, and therefore, 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 radically 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 and did not destroy its cities and infrastructure. During the war years, US GNP doubled and 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 all global industrial output and consumed 50% of the world's industrial output. V world of zhgrgy. US aircraft factories could produce 100 thousand.
■ aircraft per year. More than 80% gold stock capitalist peace was in US banks. No country in the world had
■ yul unquestionable power. The headquarters of the World Bank and the International Banking Fund, created in 1945, are located in the United States; a share in their authorized capital | 111 A was such that it allowed them to determine the credit policy
11k from these largest financial institutions in the world.
Already at the last stage of the war, friction began between the USSR and its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition due to different visions of the picture of the post-war world. These tensions soon transformed the character of the Cold War - a war for power in the world beyond national borders. The Cold War was of 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 agree on 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 agreements were of the same type. This completed the process of formation of post-war borders in Europe. The borders of CEE countries have undergone large-scale changes, while in Western Europe they have not been so significant.
Of many Eastern European states in the official
Ethnic Germans were evicted or secretly squeezed out. The flow of Jewish immigrants from CEE countries reached Palestine and Western countries. A mass of Ukrainians, residents of Western Ukraine, soldiers and officers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of Stepan Bandsra, which fought against the Red Army, fled to the West. Some of the former Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Germans during the war, or served in security, police, and nationalist formations (personnel of the army of Vlasov, Voskoboynikov-Kosminsky, and 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 provide a final resolution of interstate contradictions in this part of the world.
Immediately after the war, formally, unified political structures were 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 and England, on the other. This led to the fact that the development of German lands in the western and eastern zones took different paths. The leadership of each zone interpreted the Potsdam decisions in its own way. While reforms began in the eastern sector of the occupation aimed at eliminating large property and creating “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 United States united their sectors of occupation of Germany and Bisonia was created. On April 8, 1949, France annexed its occupation zone to it. The initiator and driver of the process of unification of German lands was the United States, which created Western Europe counterbalance to the USSR,
The split of Germany, which became inevitable due to differences between the former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition, was completed.
64 >1and the differences on the German question were a particular phenomenon of the growing global confrontation between the West and the East, or the world of capitalism and the world of socialism. Immediately after the war, Stalin turned to Turkey with a proposal to establish general control over the EU maritime border, referring primarily to the zone of the Black Sea straits. Turkey, having secured the support of the United States, refused, and Stalin retreated, not having the opportunity to ban the entry of military vessels of non-Black Sea countries into his waters. At the same time in Greece there was Civil War between communists and supporters of the conservative regime. The left forces received assistance from Yugoslavia (I.B. Tito), while the right received support from England. The Soviet Union kept aloof from the conflict, but this did not stop England from accusing Stalin of seeking to bring the Communist Party to power in Greece and in February
1947 to ask the US to prevent this.
American President Truman had long been looking for a pretext to declare an ideological war on communism. Back in 1946 - early 1947. economic prerequisites for such a war appeared, and they were associated not only with the German question. In early 1947, 23 countries signed an agreement on trade and customs duties. If any country reduced customs duties on imports from another country, then the same rules would automatically apply to all signatories to the agreement. The USSR did not enter into this agreement and forbade its allies to sign it. In Eastern European countries, state control and a state monopoly on foreign trade were introduced. Thus, the USSR closed the markets of the CEE countries to the USA and the policy of the “Iron Curtain” 1 began with the imposition of the Stalinist model of social and economic life. Events in Greece and Turkey gave a political reason for Truman to declare war for democracy and freedom, the embodiment of which he declared the USA, fighting against dictatorship and coercion imposed by the Soviet Union. This is how the “Truman Doctrine” appeared. In June 1947, US Secretary of State George Marshall unveiled a plan for the restoration of Europe, which covered 17 European countries.
pei states. The USSR and CEE countries refused to accept it. Attempts by Poland and Czechoslovakia to join it were harshly suppressed by Moscow. Only I.B. Tito, who tore 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 under the Marshall Plan. In the USSR, former allies in the anti-Hitler coalition were suspected of intentions to revive German militarism, especially since large-scale subversive work was carried out against East Germany by the intelligence services of the United States and West Germany (the Hellen Bureau). In June 1948, the USSR closed all access roads to West Berlin, which was located inside the Soviet zone of occupation. This is how the “Berlin Crisis” began. In response to the blockade, Truman ordered the establishment of 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 Partition 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 Western Military Alliance, which became the prologue to 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 the 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 lost its monopoly on atomic weapons much earlier than they expected. But, on the other hand, at that time the Soviet Union 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 its economies. The first step on this path was the plan of the French Foreign Minister
66 pm.h of R. Schumann’s affairs on the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, 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 back the European Defense Community. The disputes surrounding it allowed the United States to again actively intervene in European affairs and, on May 26, 1952, achieve the signing of the German, or Bonn, Treaty, which abolished the occupation statute and other
■ the Federal Republic of Germany has inserted sovereignty. Thus, it was not possible to create a defensive alliance, but a sovereign Germany emerged, which caused extreme concern for the USSR, which proposed in the spring of 1952 to create a single neutral Germany. The proposal was formalized by a note from Stalin, which was rejected by K. Adenauer, who preferred to unite Germany with the West. The German Chancellor was not free when making 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 these agreements, on May 5, 1955, Germany 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 Earth satellite from a launch vehicle, 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 began at the first Consultative Meeting of the American Foreign Ministers 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 Chapultepec Conference on War and Peace on March 3, 1945 in Mexico City, the United States and Latin American countries agreed to build relations among themselves based on the formula “an attack on one is an attack on all,” by signing the so-called Chapultepex 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 Treaty of Mutual Assistance (“Rio Pact”) was signed, which entered into force in December 1948. The United States and 19 Latin American states that signed the treaty pledged to provide assistance to each other in the event of an attack committed against them “from within and without the continent”, within the security zone of the Western Hemisphere from Greenland to Antarctica. The “Rio Pact” became a model for the creation of similar regional pacts in other regions of the world, primarily in Europe (NATO). Its provisions formed the basis of the charter of the new Organization of American States (OLA), signed on April 30, 1948 at the 9th Pan-American Conference in the capital of Colombia, Bogotá, the creation of which accelerated the formation of a regional subsystem of international relations.
Among the factors that contributed to the unity 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 on the part of Argentina, sided with the United States and the Axis powers. After the war, Latin American enthusiasm for developing inter-American relations was based on the understanding that it was impossible to develop without ties both to their neighbors and to the United States, whose economic and military influence had become all-pervasive in the Western Hemisphere.
But the ruling elites of Latin American countries did not come to terms with the growing American influence on their internal affairs, trying to limit it. They wanted, on the one hand, to eliminate the threat of Washington returning to open interventionism of the first decades of the 20th century, and on the other, to find the optimal combination of respect for the sovereignty of Latin American countries and elements of “patronage” towards them on the part of Washington, which were characteristic back in pre-war period in the policy of “good neighbor” - President F.D. Roosevelt. The countries of Latin America agreed to sign inter-American documents because they hoped with their help to contain or at least regulate
to begin 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 obtain a majority when considering controversial issues.
Despite concerns for their sovereignty, Latin American countries were attracted by deepening ties with the United States. Interaction with the advanced American economy contributed to their economic development. For many countries, the United States was the main market for agricultural products and raw materials. In addition, Washington’s desire to reform Latin American countries “in its own image” stimulated the development of democratic tendencies in Latin America and contributed to the “softening” of dictatorial and authoritarian)