Question by rumbaquickstep: Why did the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe increase America’s fear of communism?
I’m writing an essay of fear of communism in the USA from 1945-50, and I can’t find any info on why the Soviet occupation increased that fear! Any ideas?
I don’t need it to link to current politics by the way
Answers and Views:
Answer by Hereward the Wake
the fear didn’t come from eastern europe, it came from the paranoid american leadership
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fortheimperium2003 says
Basically, because Stalin LIED. he said had every intention of taking over all of europe. Here are some ideas : He sealed off all access routes to Berlin, hence the berlin airlift, largest emergency relief mission in history. He surrounded Berlin with 30 soviet motorized rifle divisions (enough to over run europe). He built the 'iron curtain' all along the German border, along with other eastern european countries, enslaving millions.
Western Europe was crawling with spies and terrorists to 'prep' Europe for an invasion.
Am I a 'paranoid american' ? It was pretty real to me when the Red Army faction kept trying to blow up everything American. We had bombings all through Europe. I spent my 9 years stationed in Germany checking for bombs under my car. They blew up our Hawk missile site when I was in Baumholder Germany, Frankfurt was getting constantly hit.
What is there to fear about communism? how about the stone cold murder of almost 100 million people?
I was in Nurnberg Germany when the wall went down and had the joy of getting to drive into Eastern Germany (past about a mile of barbed wire, tank traps and mine fields set up on the RUSSIAN side set up by paranoid russians). They were at least 50 years behind us. They had no concept of pollution, so half of eastern Germany is STILL being cleaned up.
I could go on but will stop here. If you are not into reading too much, glue yourself to the history channels, lots of good info there.
Chibi C says
Because Stalin (leader of the soviets) was rigging elections in eastern europe so they could put communist governments in power. At the Yalta conference and Potsdam the allied countries (britain, russia, france and america) had to decide what to do with germany after world war 2 they also agreed that the russians could use eastern europe as the soviet sphere of influence in exchange for the 20mill soviet deaths but with stalin rigging the elections the sphere of influence was spreading and capitalist countries such as America were fearing a comunist takeover because of this. Churchill described the communist takeovers as an 'iron curtain' which couldn't be lifted.