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As Soviet troops displaced German ones Stalin promised free and fair elections across Eastern Europe. In some places, the exiled government returned and limited elections were held. However, many of these governments were forced into coalition governments with Communist-led Popular Fronts. Within several years these Popular Fronts seized power in every country occupied by Soviet troops and installed regimes loyal to Stalin.
====The Question of Why did Stalin want to divide Germany==into two countries? ==
Germany had invaded Russia twice in less than thirty years, causing millions of deaths. Furthermore, Germany was largely destroyed by the current war, with nearly twelve million killed in the conflict. Ethnic Germans were expulsed from various regions of Eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Czechoslovakia, two regimes soon to be loyal to Stalin.
Stalin's terms were harsh. The Soviets controlled the largest of the four Allied Occupation Zones, including half of Berlin and all of its environs. Stalin was not opposed to a unified Germany, but one that was completely deindustrialized and demilitarized. The United States and the United Kingdom sought instead to reintegrate Germany into the world community unlike after 1918 but also to have it serve as a bulwark against the spread of Communism. The two sides were at an impasse, leading Stalin to ratchet up the pressure. In 1948 the Soviet Union blocked land routes to East Berlin, testing President Truman. Truman responded by organizing the Berlin Airlift. The effort led by the U.S. and U.K. was the largest such effort in history until that point, delivering over 200,000 flights to feed the civilians of Berlin. Stalin's gamble had failed and by 1949 ended the blockade. Distrust between the two sides continued as each zone of occupation solidified around their occupying forces. By 1949, the three Western Allied zones combined to form the Communist-dominated German Democratic Republic and the Western-backed German Federal Republic. <ref>Harrington, Daniel. ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081313613X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=081313613X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=68516b7d0f9365dfd1ac7863a79c957f Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War.]'' Lexington Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. Page 77.</ref>
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====American Goals====
[[File:Marshall Plan poster.JPG|thumb|200px|Marshall Plan poster]]
