Question #d257d
1 Answer
The Soviet reaction to the creation of NATO in 1949 was mainly to create the Warsaw Pact in 1955,
Explanation:
Within a year of the end of the WW2 in Europe, the American forces that had been there had largely returned home and were falling back to peace-time levels. The British were demobilizing most of their military as fast as they could, and the rest of Western Europe was still in the process of rebuilding their small national militaries.
The Soviets, however, parked many of their Fronts (a war-time equivalent to an a Western Army/Army Group) in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Eastern Germany, as well as in Romanian and Bulgaria while keeping forces in eastern Austria. They also reneged on most of their wartime agreements about allowing democratic governments to resume in much of Central Europe, and were otherwise being trucculent and aggressive.
The war hadn't changed Stalin much.
The creation of NATO in 1949 as a defensive framework had several results. The Berlin Airlift succeeded in getting the Soviets to allow the other occupying powers resume their access to Berlin, but there was Soviet encouragement for the North Korea regime to invade South Korea in 1950, Some commentators argue that Stalin was testing Western resolve to defend their principles.
Stalin's death didn't eased East-West tensions that quickly and Western Germany was about to regain sovereignty and build its own Armed Forces as a NATO partner. The Soviets reacted by creating the facade of a Defensive Alliance out of the nations they occupied, the Warsaw Pact. In truth, the WP was really unnecessary, as the Soviets still controlled the militaries and security structures of the WP's 'Member' states.
The Berlin Wall was a seperate -- but related -- issue. There was a stream of refugees from most of the WP nations through the 1950s, but in Germany, the stream turned into an flood, to the great embarassment of the East German authorities.
The integral worth of the Warsaw Pact is best illustrated by the speed with which it fell apart once the USSR collapsed.
