Unit 14:: A Divided Postwar World

Cracks in the Grand Alliance that defeated the Axis powers during World War II were evident early on in the uneasy collaboration between the Soviet Union and its democratic partners. They became more pronounced in 1945 at the Yalta (February) and Potsdam (July–August) conferences, where conflicting interests produced rival postwar blocs in Europe separated by what former British prime minister Winston Churchill described in 1946 as an “iron curtain.” This marked the ideological and territorial dividing line through central Europe, to the east of which the Soviet Union had engineered the consolidation of Communist governments committed to its own economic and security needs and to the west of which countries followed a line in step with the ideology and interests of the United States.