The twentieth-century world, Year 10: the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Blockade (East and West (Cold War) option)

Greece and Turkey

提示Both lay in the eastern Mediterranean region.

为什么Britain had announced that it would no longer support the Greek government in its civil war against the Greek Communist Party. Truman's request led to the idea that the USA would support free peoples resisting outside pressure.

Containment

提示It was the central idea of American Cold War policy under Truman.

为什么Containment accepted that communism already ruled in the USSR and its satellites, but aimed to stop it spreading any further. Truman committed the USA to this policy in 1947.

400

提示Fewer than half of one thousand.

为什么The sum was small beside the later Marshall Plan. Before the Second World War the USA had followed a policy of isolationism, so Truman's request marked a major change.

He saw it as a way for the USA to use its wealth to control other countries

提示He suspected there were strings attached to the dollars.

为什么The offer was open to every European country, including the USSR. Stalin feared American economic domination of his satellite states and was unwilling to open the Soviet system to outsiders.

A body to coordinate the communist parties of Europe under Soviet direction

提示Its full name began with Information Bureau.

为什么It was founded in 1947 and Stalin set it up, with Comecon, in response to the Marshall Plan. Yugoslavia was criticised by it in 1948 after Tito refused to obey Moscow.

The Deutschmark

提示It was introduced without informing the Soviets.

为什么The western powers introduced the Deutschmark without telling the Soviets, and it was extended to West Berlin. The USSR then blocked the western powers' railway, road and canal access to their sectors of Berlin.

June 1948; May 1949

提示It lasted for just under a year.

为什么The crisis started on 24 June 1948. The western powers kept West Berlin supplied by air, and on 12 May 1949 the Soviet forces lifted the blockade of land access.

It lay deep inside the Soviet zone of Germany, so the USSR controlled the routes in

提示Think about what surrounded the city on every side.

为什么Berlin was divided between the four powers, but the whole city lay inside the Soviet-controlled east of Germany. The western powers could not simply drive supplies in, so they used the air.

NATO

提示Its founding members included the USA, Canada and several European nations.

为什么The Berlin crisis helped push the western powers towards NATO. The alliance was founded in April 1949, while the blockade was still in force.

It split into two separate states, West Germany and communist East Germany

提示The old occupation zones became two countries.

为什么The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was established on 23 May 1949 and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) on 7 October 1949. Germany stayed divided until 1990.