What Country Gained Control Over All Eastern Europe As World War II Came To An End?

The Soviet Union gained control over most of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. This was a consequence of not only the fact that the Red Army had been the "liberating" force in most countries of the region, but also because the Allies had drawn up a plan which divided the continent and individual countries into spheres of influence.

The plan to divide Europe between the Soviet Union and the West was devised in stages at the Teheran Conference on November 28, 1943 and then at the Yalta Conference, which opened on February 5, 1945. Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt were the key players at the two conferences and are referred to by historians as the "Big Three."

At Teheran, Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to Stalin's demand that the Soviet Union be permitted to exercise political and economic control over the countries of Eastern Europe, namely Hungary a reconstituted Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic states. After the end of the war in May 1945, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania came under the direct military occupation of the Soviet Union and the USSR gradually gained control of both the economy and the political and legal systems of all countries in the region, with the notable exception of Greece and, to some extent, Tito's Yugoslavia.