Poland in the 20th Century

Poland was also central to the sequence of events and reactions that brought on the Cold War between the United States and its Western allies on the one side and the Soviet Union on the other. Poland was a central issue on the table at Yalta, the conference that has gone down in popular American legend as the point at which a naive and ailing Franklin D. Roosevelt "gave away" Eastern Europe to the Soviets. It was also Poland that was the immediate trigger of Harry S Truman's tougher line towards the Soviet Union, and of the broadening fissure between the two superpowers which culminated in the overt outbreak of the Cold War a few years later: the Berlin Airlift, the deployment of U.S. "atomic bombers" to Britain, the Sovietinspired coup in Czechoslovakia, and similar events that would shape the world scene for the next four decades.

What were the central considerations that made Poland a flashpoint for relations between the superpowers? What did Soviet and American leaders perceive to be their respective national interest requirements with respect to Poland? What actions did they take (or fail to take) that shaped the development of th

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ic opinion, a resurgence of "messianic liberalism," the idea that America stood for and was the champion of values that were, or ought to be, global in scope (Mastny, 1979: 8486). The United States had not been a party to the original attempted defense of Poland against Nazi Germany in 1939, but the passion for a democratic world order was felt, if anything, even more strongly by Roosevelt and the Americans than by Churchill and the British. Over against these ideologydriven postwar goals was the more traditional balanceofpower approach to international relations and a new world order. Part of the balanceofpower concept was the "sphere of influence," the notion that each major power was, by the nature of things, a dominant force in its own "back yard." In balancing these ideological and pragmatic considerations, a profound and fundamental assymetry existed between the Soviet Union and the United States with respect to Poland. Poland, after wall, was in the Soviet Union's back yard, or even its front yard. In 1812, 1914, and 1941, enemy armies had advanced on the Russian heartland across the Polish plain. Sphereofinterest logic and basic security considerations therefore pushed the Soviets in precisel
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, War II, Soviet American, Nazi Germany, Katyn Forest, Churchill British, Sovietdominated Lublin, Soviet Union's, United Nations, soviet union, cold war, world war ii, world war, war ii, soviet american, eastern europe, poland central, fate poland, nazi germany, respect poland, postwar polish government, soviet american policies,
Approximate Word count = 1850
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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