History

History Revision

The Grand Alliance

The Grand Alliance was created in 1941 to defeat the Nazis. It was a marriage of convenience between communists and capitalists united only in their opposition to Hitler. Between 1943 and 1945, the leaders of the Grand Alliance met at three international conferences: Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.

The Tehran conference

The decisions made at Tehran was that the USSR should have a sphere of influence, this meant an area where communism was respected and guaranteed that the USSR would not have threatening neighbours.

The Yalta conference

The decisions made at Yalta were:

• Stalin agreed that Russian troops would help America defeat Japan once Hitler had been defeated.
• Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to the establishment of a communist government in Poland.
• The 'Declaration of Liberated Europe' committed the USSR, America, and Britain to to work for democracy in Europe.
• The Allies agreed to establish the United Nations, an organisation committed to maintaining peace.
• The 'Big three' restates their agreement that the USSR should have 'a sphere of influence' in Eastern Europe.

The Potsdam conference

The decisions made at Potsdam weere to ban the Nazi Party and to prosecute surviving Nazis as war criminals. they also agreed to reduce the size of Germany by Approximately a quarter. Finally, they agreed to divide Germany temporarily in to four zones allocated to France, Britain, America, and the USSR.

The war of words

During 1946, it became increasingly clear that Europe had been divided between Capitalism in the West lead by Churchill and Communism in the East, led by Stalin. This responded with the war of words, showing that the former allies now viewed each other with tremendous suspicion.

Churchill had made a speech about this it was called 'the iron curtain speech', it basically said that due to the division of two sides…