It's July 1941 and 4 million German troops have just invaded the Soviet Union,
despite Germany and Russia having previously agreed a non-aggression pact. What?
1941-45: Ideological Differences between East and West
The recent invasion of fascist Germany into the Soviet Union means that Russia has now joined
the war (WWII for the uninitiated) and fallen on the same side as the allies. An alliance,
known as 'The Grand Alliance', between the Soviet Union, the USA and Britain, is formed, with their
leaders collectively being known as 'the big three'. The Alliance meets 3 times during the war:
in Tehran in 1943, Yalta in February 1945 and Potsdam in July 1945. This, however,
presents some problems, some problems which become ever-more apparent as the war comes to a close.
The problem here is that Soviet Russia has a very different political ideology to the close allies
of Britain and the USA. Britain and the USA are capitalist, meaning that they support people being
able to privately own 'property' (property not being houses, but the things that people use to
make the things that people need to live such as factories or farms) and to profit from this.
The Soviet Union, however, is 'communist', meaning, well... this is a little more complicated
to explain, because communism is an end goal of a 'classless, moneyless, stateless society',
and so people mean a lot of different things when they say communist. And there are many people
who identify as communist but strongly oppose the Soviet Union and everything is stood for.
It's a really big rabbit hole essentially and hotly debated,
so let's put it this way. The Soviet Union is a dictatorship where everything is owned by the
state and they really hate capitalism there. So you can see how this might cause some issues.
Roosevelt, the current US president, and Churchill, the British Prime Minister,
are both deeply suspicious of Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union,
and this plays a major role in shaping world relations from 1941. The difference in their
personal political beliefs furthers this breakdown of relations as the war draws to a close.
Moreover, during the 1930s, both the USA and Britain had been very critical of the
methods used to industrialist Russia, as these had come at great human expense.
The only real thing that holds the alliance together is their shared opposition to fascism,
and this means that it becomes impossible to agree on how post-war Europe should be governed.
The alliance hadn't made any real change in how the countries viewed one another.
The second world war has also brought around a significant shift in world politics,
with 'old powers' like Britain and France becoming less important
and two new 'superpowers' emerging: the USA and the Soviet Union.
The USA and Britain remain suspicious of the Soviet Union, and Stalin realises
that the West don't want to take steps that will make Russia stronger in the long run.
1941-45: Ideological Differences between East and West
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