Title: The Cold War
Headings: The Cold War
The Cold War
Why did the Soviets establish control over most of Eastern Europe at the
end of World War II?

Content: It also created a stark contrast between the recovering economies of western Europe and the depressed economies of eastern Europe. Most importantly, it brought about a rapid return to prosperity in western Europe and built the foundations for a booming Atlantic economy in the next two decades. It also set the stage for the the establishment of the European Common Market, begun in
the 1950,s. A "brain drain" from eastern to western Germany through Berlin led to the Berlin blockade and the Berlin airlift, a confrontation between east and west which brought the two sides to the brink of military conflict and led to the re-asssignment of U.S. troops to west Germany. By 1948, the United States was the leader of a coalition of western nations, opposed to the Soviet Union, and forming a military alliance. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, committed the United States to go to war if any of the member nations were attacked. The lines of the Cold War were now drawn. How did the Cold War develop in Asia? A quite separate development in Asia, a civil war between the nationalist and communist Chinese, resulted in a communist victory in 1949. This brought to power a government which effectively unified China and restored it to a position of complete independence after a century of European colonial domination.