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On This Day 14 May 1955: The Signing of the Warsaw Pact
Roger Moorhouse joins Antonia Senior for another episode of History Book Buffs: On This Day — and today we’re in Warsaw on 14 May 1955 for the signing of the Warsaw Pact.
This was the treaty that formalised the Soviet bloc and defined the Cold War in Europe for the next 35 years. But why did the Soviet Union create the Warsaw Pact? Was it really a defensive alliance against NATO — or a mechanism for tightening Moscow’s grip on Eastern Europe after Stalin’s death?
Antonia and Roger explore:
Why the Warsaw Pact barely appears in many Cold War histories
The crisis over Germany in the early 1950s…
The skinny
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