Locke the Doors
columnist: Locke

Topic: U.S. History
The Eastern Bloc

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The Eastern Bloc countries are countries in Eastern Europe who came under World War 2. I am going to explain the inevitability of this occurance.

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by Locke
(Conservative)
Saturday, May 10, 2008

I have seen that there seems to be a large amount of criticism directed at FDR and Winston Churchill about the way the map of Europe was drawn after World War 2. These two leaders are accused of handing Eastern Europe to Stalin on a silver platter and causing these countries to fall under the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union for almost 50 years.

This accusation is of course completely off the mark. There is no way that Eastern Europe could have remained free after the surrender of Germany without starting World War 3.

At the end of World War 2, the Red Army was by far the largest in the world. Thanks to the Soviet Union's vast manpower, it had reached a strength of around 11 million men. The other Allied forces on the Western Front was around 4.5 million men, but a fraction of this gargantuan size.

The Allies had a narrow window of time when they could have seized Berlin and maybe pushed as far as Prague. The forces that were in position to achieve this were George Patton's Third Army. If George Patton had been set loose by Eisenhower the map of Europe would have been completely different right?

Wrong. The Soviet's (namely Stalin) were bent on capturing the final prize of Berlin and finally vanquishing their hated foe. There would have been a strong likelyhood that Patton would have met the Soviet forces who outnumbered him so greatly. I have a doubt that Patton would have handled this precarious situation in a way that would not have started World War 3. Patton was full of talk that the Russians were the greatest enemy and Allied forces should enlist the German's help in fighting off the Soviets.

 There was no possible way that the Western Allies could have defeated the Red Army. The Americans were stilll heavily engaged in the Pacific and the total American forces deployed throughout the world would still not have equaled the Soviet advantage in artillery, tanks, and men. The greatest advantage the British and Americans posessed was airpower. The Soviets also had a large amount of aircraft but I think that the superior American and British planes would have ensured air superiority for a time. It was also easier to resupply the Red Army because of the overland route and because it was only fighting a one front war. The United States was the primary supplier of the Western front at the end of hostilites in Europe. The U.S. was also still heavily engaged in the Pacific and supplies had to be shipped over thousands of miles of ocean. There was no possible way the Americans and British could have defeated the Soviets on the ground without some miracle.

The greatest weapon in the American arsenal was its monopoly on atomic weapons. At the time however, the U.S. was still some months away from a fuctional weapon. The Soviets could have been defeated by using atomic weapons because history would show that if would be almost four years before they would develop their own. Yes the war could have been won is this way, but at what cost? A death count that would dwarf World War 2? The total destruction of Europe and Russia's economies, to a level where it would take generations to rebuild?

It is my opinion that redrawing the map of Eastern Europe would have destroyed and entire continent and the prize that the western Allies would gain would not even be worth having. It is a misguided belief to think that the dividing of the spoils after the most destructive war in history could have ended any differently without even more destruction.

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2008 Locke, all rights reserved.
Published: Saturday, May 10, 2008
Last modified: Saturday, May 10, 2008

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