ABSTRACT
The European alliance system that had been meticulously erected by Bismarck after 1871, and which formed the starting point for this book, lay in ruins in 1945. All hope of returning to the European status quo of 1914 had been shattered. Indeed, the fate of the historic states of Europe which had dominated the world in the late nineteenth century now depended on two great ‘superpowers’ that had come together late in the war to form an unlikely alliance against fascism. It was agreed that a zone in Germany, to be occupied by the French Forces, should be allocated to France. This zone would be formed out of the British and American zones, and its extent would be settled by the British and Americans in consultation with the French Provisional Government. Potsdam marked a transitional period of the Cold War. The conventional Cold War view of Stalin’s aggressive ambitions was expressed in a David Low cartoon of 1948.
