Berlin Airlift Case Study

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1. How did the Soviet Union manage to take control of Eastern Europe after World War Two? The Soviet Union managed to take control of Eastern Europe in a cyclical process shortly after Roosevelt’s unexpected death from cerebral hemorrhage. This was because Stalin felt empowered to do whatever he pleased since Roosevelt was no longer there as a critical threat. For almost every Eastern European state that the Soviet Union took control of, it always began with the Communist Party sharing power in the government for one to two years. Soon afterwards, it enabled the Communist Party to quickly establish one-party Communist governments in these various Eastern European states. As a result, the Communist government was firmly established in East Germany, …show more content…

By doing the so, the U.S. would take adavtange of this poortunity to fight the spread of communism. Although the doctrine was meant to fight against hunger, desperation, poverty, and chaos, its true intention was to persuade the European nations to side with the U.S., rather than the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the U.S. believed that economic turmoil resulted from the increasing communism aggression. Therefore, money provided by the Marshall Plan was not merely kindness, but a way to decrease the economic turmoil, which in turn would decrease the communist influence. 4. Why was the Berlin Airlift viewed as a victory for the United States? For the United States, the Berlin Airlift was viewed as a victory because despite the problems that the Soviet Union tried the cause, the U.S. overcame it by airlifting 13,000 tons of supplies daily into Berlin. At the same time, there was no direct military confrontation that may start a war between the two major world powers. Moreover, the U.S. ended up getting mostly of what it wanted by irritating the Soviet Union to lift the blockade by 1949 in result from the constant aid that East Berlin was still receiving. In a way, the U.S. beat the Soviet Union since it passively “forced” them abide to the U.S.’s objectives of uniting Germany in a better condition than