World War II, The Cold War and New Europe
There are many various examples from the history of humanity which show that force has always been one of the main methods to solve problems at the international level. States and their leaders considered war to be the best way to enlarge the territory, achieve some advantage, or just to prove their own power. However, the evolution of society and technologies also conditioned the development of the mode of warfare and appearance of the new more devastated weapons.
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All these changes promoted the change of the local character of military conflicts and introduced the new term total war which was used to define two most horrible conflict in the history of humanity. Unfortunately, the aftermath of these wars did not result in the reconsideration of the approach to the usage of force and the further development of society conditioned the initiation of the cold war, the new sort of the opposition between powerful states.
If to speak about the WW II, it is vital to outline several factors the prove the total character of this military conflict. First, it involved the majority of states existed of that period of time. The world divided into two parts. The first one supported Germany and Hitlers regime while there was also the coalition of the Soviet Union, Britain, the USA, and their allies which tried to resist the German conquest and restore peace.
Using the tactics of blitzkrieg, Germany managed to conquer the whole Europe and a number of countries in other regions. For this reason, “fighting took place in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and in the northern and southern hemispheres” (Kagan, Ozment and Turner 907). Moreover, the intensive usage of human sources all over the world and millions of victims evidence the total character of the war, making it the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.
Therefore, the WWII and its aftermath resulted in the development of another opposition of superstates. The former allies were not able to able to determine the spheres of their influence and make a compromise. This fact conditioned the creation of the bipolar world with the blocks headed by the USA and USSR. There are several major concerns that triggered the development of the conflict. First, the difference in ideologies promoted the appearance of various visions of the future of Europe and the whole world.
The absence of the public enemy had the pernicious impact on the relations between the former allies. The Western world was not able to accept the communist ideology and in 1946 Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech, proclaiming the existence of the unbridgeable gap between the two blocks (“Cold War” para. 3).
Additionally, the Trumans personal attitude to the USSR and the US participation in the Greek Civil war made the relations between the superstates tensed. Finally, the announcement of Marshall Plan that determined the new world order made the further development of the opposition inevitable (Kagan, Ozment and Turner 930). It resulted in the number of conflicts like Vietnam or Korean war, as the struggling blocks provided support to certain political powers to guarantee their dominance in the region and spread their influence.
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Altogether, the 20th century could be characterized by the global opposition of various states which had an overwhelming impact on the further development of society and introduced the model of the bipolar world ruled by superstates.
Works Cited
Cold War. n.d. Web.
Kagan, Donald, Steven Ozment and Frank Turner. The Western Heritage. Volume 2. London: Pearson. 2012. Print.
