ON THIS DAY ·
Communist coup in Czechoslovakia
25 Feb 1948 — Czechoslovakia, the last democracy east of the curtain, falls to a communist coup without a shot. Western resistance to Stalin hardens overnight.
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The moment in context
The winter of 1946–47 brought hunger, fuel shortages and political instability across Europe, and Washington concluded that such conditions could carry communist parties to power through the ballot box even where the Red Army never advanced. Marshall aid therefore tied recovery directly to containment, on the theory that prosperous societies would find communism far less appealing. Western output climbed back above its pre-war level within a few years, while Moscow’s refusal of the aid pushed Eastern Europe into a separate, Soviet-run economic system. A single American programme had begun to divide the continent into two.
From Marshall Plan and Berlin Blockade, chapter 2 of The Cold War, 1945–1991 (MAY 1949).
The place: Communist coup in Czechoslovakia — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — Europe was starving, and hunger votes. The brutal winter of 1946–47 froze canals, halved German rations and pushed French and Italian communist parties. Already a quarter of the vote.…
- The turn — Berlin, 24 June 1948 — the gates close. Stalin’s best chance to stop a West German state without war becomes the event that guarantees one. The airlift turns Berliners from defeated…
- What it changed — NATO: the entangling alliance at last. On 4 April 1949 twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty. The United States’ first peacetime European alliance since 1778. Article 5’s “an…
Then ask the room: The Marshall Plan is often called the most successful foreign policy in American history. What exactly did it buy — and what did it cost? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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