Berlin wall and Berlin airlift

Even though at Yalta Stalin told Roosevelt that he would allow free elections in his section of Germany and all areas of Soviet Union occupation. In 1945 the U.S. noticed that Stalin broke his promise. This lead president Truman to think that the U.S. goals contrasted with the Soviet Union’s goals. He wanted the spread of free elections to combat Nazism. He wanted to create what he called a new world order where all nations have democracy. During the Yalta conference the Allies, Stalin, and the U.S. agreed that the income they would get to repay for the war would be taken from their individual sections of Germany. Stalin created Satellite nations in East Europe to protect from attacks from West Europe. The Soviet Union was a leading economic power after world war 2. The U.S. was the economic leader of the world, but Stalin thought hardship during the war lead to justification of the Soviet Union expanding its influence over East Europe. The way Stalin created satellite nations was by installing communist governments into other nations to take them over. In 1946, Stalin declared that communism and capitalism couldn’t both exist so war would happen. The U.S. reacted by creating a policy of containment which was suggested by George Kennan in February 1946. The containment would utilize preventative measures to keep communism from spreading. In March 1946 Winston Churchill made a speech in the U.S. saying that an iron curtain of communism fell over part of Europe as Soviet Control. When Stalin found out about this speech he announced that this was war. The Cold war then happened from 1945 to 1991. The Soviet Union broke up in 1991. The U.S. president Truman created the Truman doctrine in March 12, 1947 which declared that it was the U.S. duty to help free people resisting attempts of control over them by a minority battle groups or outsiders. On 6-1947 the Secretary of State George Marshal suggested that the U.S. would help all European nations that needed it. West Europe started to lose interest in communism. The U.S., Great Britain, and France combined their Germany control zones. Even though they owned the west part of Germany, there were no agreements saying that free access to Berlin would be given, so Stalin used this to try to take over Berlin. On June 1948 Stalin closed the highway and rail routes to West Berlin. This kept food and supplies from entering the city. This made it so there was only enough food in west Berlin to last five weeks.

This lead to the Berlin airlift to fly food and supplies to West Berlin. During this 327 day time air planes landed and left every 3 minutes roughly during a 24 hour a day schedule. The Berlin airlift was organized by American and British leaders. After 277,000 flights 2.3 million tons of supplies were delivered. West Berlin survived because of this, and Stalin got rid of the restriction on travel through Berlin.