By Ivo Kokić
World War II represented successful cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The peak of this cooperation was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Yalta Conference, held in Crimea on February 4, 1945. After the war ended in May of that year, it became clear that Europe and the world were heading toward a new major conflict between political systems, once again rooted in ideology. This conflict involved two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—and their respective allies, and is better known as the Cold War.
It lasted from the end of World War II until the collapse of communism in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It never escalated into a direct military confrontation between the leading states of each bloc, but it was marked by numerous local conflicts, such as the Korean War. The peak of Cold War tensions was the Cuban Missile Crisis, which threatened to escalate into nuclear war. The research focus of this article is to present the balance of power in Europe and the world at the very outset of this latent conflict, with particular emphasis on the European continent.
Outcome of the War
The end of the war undoubtedly established Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union as the absolute victors. On the other hand, Germany was completely dismantled and, like Austria, ceased to exist as a state immediately after the war. Instead, it was divided into four occupation zones controlled by American, British, French, and Soviet forces. Berlin was divided in the same way, despite being located entirely within the Soviet zone.
It was not until 1949 that the three Western-controlled zones were unified into a separate state—the Federal Republic of Germany, better known as West Germany. France and Britain opposed this move, while the United States strongly advocated it.
Two Germanys
From the Soviet occupation zone emerged the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany. Although this division suggests that Germany was punished more harshly than after World War I, two important factors must be considered.
First, although Germany was punished more leniently after World War I, the sanctions imposed were disproportionate to the actual military situation at the end of the war. Second, at the end of World War II, German territory was completely occupied, giving the victors full legitimacy to impose stricter conditions.
More importantly, the sanctions after World War I hindered Germany’s economic development, whereas after World War II, the West—despite punitive measures—provided financial assistance to help rebuild the German economy.
Denazification
Germany also faced the difficult process of denazification, which was hard to define due to the complexity of determining who qualified as a Nazi. Approximately one in ten Germans was a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), totaling around eight million people. An additional ten million belonged to other Nazi organizations.
In the American occupation zone, a firm but ultimately unsustainable denazification effort was carried out, as thousands of civil servants lost their jobs, threatening the functioning of public administration. A similar situation occurred in the French zone, where three-quarters of German teachers were dismissed, only to be reinstated the following school year.
Postwar Crimes and Persecutions
The end of the war was marked by significant violations of the Third Geneva Convention, and civilians suffered greatly as well. The most severe reprisals occurred in Yugoslavia, where ten times more people were killed than in similar reprisals in Italy, and twenty times more than in France (relative to population size).
However, this was not universal. In Belgium and the Netherlands, only around 400 collaborators were executed. Romania, by 1948, had around 250,000 political prisoners, while in France about 39,000 (mostly short-term) sentences were handed down for collaboration.
Nearly the entire German population was expelled from newly established communist states, while Poles and Ukrainians were also displaced due to the redrawing of the Soviet-Polish border.
Political Pluralism in Europe
Despite Stalin’s vision of “people’s democracy” in Central and Eastern Europe, it soon became clear that this was merely a façade for dictatorship. These states increasingly adopted the Soviet political model, with Czechoslovakia being the last to experience such a democratic collapse in 1948.
In contrast, Western Europe experienced a revival of political pluralism. In the first postwar elections, communist parties often more than doubled their prewar support, while socialist parties gained even greater backing.
A striking example is Great Britain, where in the summer of 1945, Winston Churchill—a key wartime leader—lost the election. His Conservative Party was defeated by the Labour Party, largely due to voters’ fear of another economic crisis.
In West Germany, the dominant party became the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Konrad Adenauer. After winning the 1949 elections, Adenauer became chancellor and firmly aligned West Germany with the Western bloc. The CDU promoted Christian values, rejected the Nazi past, opposed communism, and advocated a blend of free-market economics with social welfare policies.
Fear of Communism
The wartime alliance between the West and the Soviet Union did not erase Western distrust of communism. The alliance had been a pragmatic response to a common enemy—Nazi Germany. As Churchill famously remarked on the day of Operation Barbarossa:
“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
With the onset of the Cold War, communism replaced Nazism as the primary perceived threat. Since the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Lenin’s rise to power, the West had viewed communism as a destructive force threatening the existing global order—even more so than fascism or Nazism.
Rapid Spread of Communism
At the beginning of the Cold War, communists were in power only in the Soviet Union and Mongolia. Within a few years, communism spread across half of Europe and reached its center. By the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, Mao Zedong came to power in China.
The Soviet Union also emerged from World War II as a recognized superpower, playing a decisive role in global affairs. This newfound authority alarmed Western nations, not only due to fears of pro-Soviet governments but also because of the growing influence of communist ideology.
In the United States, institutions such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation actively worked to suppress communist influence, particularly under the long-serving director J. Edgar Hoover. Many individuals faced accusations of communist sympathies, often without evidence.
Two Levels of Soviet Foreign Policy
By early 1946, the United States had formed a clear perception of Soviet policy. It was seen as operating on two levels: an official, public diplomacy, and covert operations that allowed Moscow to deny responsibility.
American analysts believed the Soviet Union might withdraw from the United Nations if it became an obstacle to Soviet expansion. Intelligence suggested that the USSR viewed the capitalist world as deeply divided—especially between Britain and the United States—and sought to exploit these divisions.
Soviet strategy aimed to strengthen its own power while weakening capitalist nations, encouraging internal divisions among Western allies and preparing for potential revolutionary movements. Interestingly, the USSR also saw “progressive democratic” elements in capitalist societies as tools to pressure their governments into adopting policies favorable to Soviet interests.
At the same time, Soviet leadership emphasized avoiding direct war, as it would hinder the development of socialism—although they believed that any anti-Soviet intervention would ultimately be disastrous for those who initiated it.
