COLD WAR
“Imagine an alternative timeline,
a universe where diplomacy
fails. The balloon has gone up
and, engines revving, the 3rd
Soviet Shock Army is on the edge
of the Iron Curtain, sights firmly
on Europe”
of you born after 1980 it’s either a historical
footnote or a complete mystery – so what’s
it all about then?
In a nutshell it boiled down to an East/
West struggle between the capitalist
nations of the West and the communist
nations of the East. As allies during World
War Two, the Americans and British had
made a Faustian pact with the Russian
leader Stalin to divide post-war Europe
into zones of control, under the auspices
of Moscow and Washington (with us
Brits having that ’special relationship’
with the USA). To further cut the corners
of history I’ll briefly say that ‘liberated’
nations of WWII like Poland, Yugoslavia and
Czechoslovakia were effectively sold down
the river by the West, in order to keep
Uncle Joe Stalin happy and create a safe
‘buffer zone’ of Soviet-controlled satellite
states (known as the Warsaw Pact). This
was a measure the Russians insisted on to
protect the Motherland from yet another
world war.
Most problematic of all,
however, was Germany.
Demonised by both sides
the unlucky Germans found
their country split down the
middle into West Germany
and Soviet-controlled East
Germany. As if that were
not enough of a headache,
neither side wanted to
relinquish control of the
traditional capital of Berlin,
so that was further divided
up like some unhealthy
birthday cake into a French,
US and British ‘West Berlin’
and the Soviet Communist controlled
‘East Berlin’ – the fact that Berlin was over
100km into the Soviet side of Germany was
just one more problem to contend with.
You’d probably think everyone was
happy at that, but unfortunately Russian
Communism and Western Democracy
really can’t see eye to eye. Both sides
faced off against each other across Europe
– with Germany in the spotlight. While
the continental forces stockpiled arms
and invented newer and better ways of
killing each other, both sides put almost as
much effort into trying to pull all the other
countries of the world into their gang.
Many post-war countries had seen
the way the old order of things almost
destroyed the world, and welcomed
Communism as the new way forwards.
But the USA couldn’t stand by and let that
happen. It believed that if one country
accepted Moscow’s leadership then their
neighbour was bound to follow (the socalled domino effect). So with both sides
squaring up across Europe and unwilling
to risk an all-out battle just yet, numerous
small wars across the globe were funded
by the world super powers… Welcome to
the Cold War.
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