Traffic Between West Germany And West Berlin example essay topic

One very important factor in the Cuban missile crisis was Cuba's location. Cuba is an island approximately 90 miles off the coast of America. Which was and still is in good missile range of USA. And so the USA wanted to keep it's influence by means of trading links and controlling the Cuban economy this meant the USSR could hold no influence in the area. Until 1959, Juan Batista ruled Cuba. At this time Cuba was very dependant on the USA; there were many US banks and businesses on the island, as well as a massive US naval base.

Cuba's main export was sugar, and the USA was their biggest customer. All this changed in 1959, there was a Communist revolution in Cuba, and Batista was replaced by Fidel Castro. He cut off all ties with the USA and turned to the USSR for aid and support. The USSR signed a treaty of friendship and gave Castro massive aid, as well as agreeing to buy all his sugar. Therefore Cuba became a kind of Soviet satellite state on the USA's doorstep.

Before Castro was in power Cuba was a very corrupt country but Castro turned it into a communist country, which attempted to share the wealth of the country with its people. The Berlin War was a trigger event because it was the main innocent leading to the Cuban missile crisis. Stalin wanted to keep Germany under control and was very suspicious of the West. He believed that the West was trying to build a strong Germany that could one day be in a position to attack the USSR again. The new currency introduced by the? Would mean that the Western zones would be cut off from the Soviet zone.

So Stalin blockaded Berlin in June 1948 in an attempt to drive the Western Allies out of the city. He stopped all traffic between West Germany and West Berlin by closing the road, rail and canal routes. The Allies began to fly supplies of food and fuel into the city. They needed 4,000 tons of supplies every day. To provide this, planes flew into West Berlin every 90 seconds. Although planes crashed and pilots were killed, the Allies kept the airlift going.

By spring 1949, 8,000 tons of supplies were being flown into Berlin every day. This was called the Berlin Airlift. The allies did this because they were not going to let the Communists take over any more of Europe. Also, the Allies did not believe that the USSR would risk a war by shooting down their planes. Fortunately they were right, and on 12 May 1949 Stalin called off the blockade. The West had not given in and were still in Berlin.

This was an embarrassing failure of soviet tactics, they now sought other opportunities to put one other the USA. In October 1962 the world came nearer to a nuclear war than at any time since 1945. President Kennedy had discovered that there were Soviet missiles based on Cuba and assumed they were to be aimed at the major US cities. He had already done nothing to stop the USSR building a wall in Berlin to cut the East off from the West.

Now he saw this as the time to stand up to what he thought was Russian aggression close to the American homeland.