AS Unit F964 - European and World History Enquiries
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This document provides a detailed essay based on the IB HL History Paper 2 question 'Compare & Contrast the causes of two world war crises from two different regions' This essays focuses on the following 2 crises: The Berlin Blockade & The Korean War. The essay is paragraphed in accordance to cause...
AS Unit F964 - European and World History Enquiries
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Compare & Contrast the causes of two world war crises from two different regions
Following World War Two, the city of Berlin was divided into 4 occupation zones: the
British, the French, the American and the Soviet. Due to the close proximity between
communist and capitalist nations, Berlin was the location of one of the Cold War crises, the
Berlin Blockade. Between June 1948 and May 1949, the Soviet East Germany blocked all
roads, railways, waterways and electrical and gas lines linking Capitalist West Berlin with
the US, French and British sectors of Germany. For 11 months citizens of West Berlin had
to live through airlifts of supplies in order to live through this crisis. Another Cold War crisis
developed in 1950, the Korean War. World War Two had left Korea, a nation which had
been under Japanese occupation for over 30 years, with no economy, no politicians and
no education. At the end of World War Two, Korea was temporarily split in two along the
38th parallel with a USSR backed government in the North and a US backed government
in the South. Desire for unification in Korea led to a full-scale war which ended with a
stalemate along the 38th Parallel after causing 10% of the North Korea’s population to be
killed. These two crises originate from different regions of the world but share some
similarities and have some differences in their causes: the political systems involved, the
aims of the main parties in these crises, the economic interests of the main parties in these
crises, a Great Power rivalry and local affairs.
Both the Korean War and the Berlin Blockade are characterised by being caused by the
presence of contrasting political systems: In Korea, the North was led by communist leader
Kim Il Sung, who was trained in Moscow and therefore had strong links to the USSR, as
seen by his multiple trips to see Stalin in order to ask for permission to invade the South.
Similarly, the leader of the South, Syngman Rhee, having been educated at Princeton and
Harvard universities and been placed in his position of power by the US government, had
strong ties with the USA. A similar scenario is present in Berlin: East Berlin was
Communist and were controlled by the USSR, while West Berlin was controlled by
capitalist nations, namely the USA. So why were these contrasting political systems a
cause of both crises? In both these locations, contrasting ideologies were in close contact.
Therefore, there was always a constant reminder of the presence of the opposing ideology
in close proximity and, hence, a method of comparison between these systems. This
reminder of an opposing political system led Stalin to blockade Berlin in an attempt to drive
any capitalist influences out of the city in order for communism to be the sole ideological
option. Similarly, communists in North Korea wanted to drive the capitalist regime of the
South completely out of the Korean Peninsula in order for Korea to be controlled by a only
Communist regime. Additionally, communist China was willing to support North Korea in
the war also because of this reason: the CCP did not want an American influenced,
capitalist nations bordering its frontiers due to the threat that this brings to its own political
system. While the issue of conflicting political systems is a key cause of both the crises, it
is important to distinguish between an ideological conflict and a patriotic one: The Berlin
Blockade was caused by an ideological conflict, the removal of an opposing political
system, due to the potential instability it may bring to the communist rule East Berlin and
Germany. The Korean War was caused by a nationalist desire to unite the Korean
Peninsula under one ruler. Therefore, even though a similarity of the causes of the two
crises was contrasting political systems, the Korean War also originates from a nationalist,
patriotic desire for a unified Korea after over 30 years of division.
The aims of the powers involved in the crises also present both the similarities and
differences of the causes of these two events. In both cases, the crises developed due to
an attempt from each superpower, the USA and the USSR, to drive the other one out: in
Berlin, Stalin wished to drive capitalism out of the city and the USA was resistant as a
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