The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shocked most of the world by signing a non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany in August, 1939. The agreement removed the last barrier to Hitler's conquest of Poland and enabled him to concentrate his forces to defeat France and Britain on the ground in 1940 while swallowing up virtually all of western and southeastern Europe.
His invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, still inexplicable to many military authorities and historians, necessitated the U.S.S.R's alliance with not only Hitler's surviving foe across the English Channel but also the latter's chief arms supplier, the United States. With the U.S. entry into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor six months later, the three nations shared a compelling interest in the outcome of a life-and-death struggle with Germany.
The Mutual Benefits of Alliance
Bucking a largely isolationist American public and Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had converted a Depression-wracked industry into the "arsenal of democracy" aimed at supporting Hitler's enemies. Britain, pounded by the Luftwaffe and bereft of armaments abandoned in France, desperately needed the military supplies produced in America. So, too, did the Soviet Union after the German blitzkrieg penetrated close to Moscow by the Autumn of 1941.
Shipments to both countries had to go through submarine-infested waters and, in the case of the U.S.S.R, around the top of Nazi-occupied Europe in hazardous Arctic weather conditions to the northern port of Murmansk. Despite tremendous shipping losses, particularly well into 1943, enough supplies got through to sustain the allies and enable them to take the offensive, the British in tandem with American forces in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, and the Russians in beginning the liberation of their own occupied lands and eastern Europe.
For their part, both on defense and offense, the Soviets until the summer of 1943 constituted the only significant military force opposing the Germans in continental Europe, inflicting tremendous casualties and requiring the deployment of the greater part of German forces in the east. From 1942 on, the Soviet government pressed repeatedly for a U.S.-British invasion of western Europe to relieve the unrelenting pressure on them, and once the D-Day landings were accomplished in June 1944, the allied victory was inevitable
The Alliance Disintegrates
But even as the hard-fought triumph was taking shape, the seeds of antagonism had been sown. Soviet distrust of the west went back to the infancy of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Within months afterward, a British-French-American expeditionary force had landed in northern Russia with the apparent aim of rallying the defeated Czarist elements to return to the then active war against Germany. Soviet espionage against its allies in the midst of World War II had succeeded in uncovering some of the secrets of the atomic bomb.
even before the war ended, Russian dictator Stalin was soon seen to be reneging on agreements reached with Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Churchill for free elections in countries liberated by the U.S.S.R. Emphasizing his nation's demonstrated vulnerability to invasion from the west, Stalin insisted on friendly regimes on his borders and began promoting Communist-led coalitions with the backing of his occupation troops.
Added to this was Soviet arms support to leftist insurgents in Greece followed early in 1948 by a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, which had appeared to be aligning itself with the west. The U.S. responded with military aid to the Greek government and massive economic assistance to western Europe ( the Marshall Plan), to prevent its subversion by the U.S.S.R.
When the U.S. was forced to supply Berlin by air for almost a year after the Soviets blocked highway transportation in June 1948, there was no doubt that the two most powerful World War II allies were now locked in a bitter and dangerous struggle. It would go on for 40 more years.
Unwarranted mutual suspicions or the inevitable clash of communism and capitalism. We'll never know for sure.
Reference: americanhistory.si.edu
David Hornestay - DavidH began a career as a freelancer after 34 years in government management. Keeping a hand in as a consultant in federal human ...
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