The grand alliance

grand alliance

• by the beginning of 1945, the marriage of convenience ,known as the grand alliance , between Britain, the USA and the Ussr against Nazi Germany was beginning to show cracks

• the western powers had opened a ‘second front’ in 1944 by invading Nazi-occupied France

pressure of nazi regime

• as the Nazi regime began to face impossible pressure ,soviet forces swept into Poland during august 1944

• from early 1945, the soviet western front stretched from the Baltic to the Carpathian mountains and by march 1945 they had crossed the Oder river

western powers awareness

• the western powers were conscious of the fact that many eastern European states had been liberated from Nazi occupied by the Ussr

franklin D Roosevelt

• was committed to post-war reconstruction based on unity among the victorious powers

• however stalins guarantee of security through a network ofneastern european allies was in fundamental conflict with this view

• this difference was the focus of tension between east and west in the weeks leading up to the Yalta conference