When East met West – the 1955 Geneva Summit 

The summit of the “Big Four” in Switzerland addressed the toughest questions of the Cold War. While the tone was cordial, little was achieved on substance. Still, the meeting had a considerable and lasting symbolic impact. The last time they had met, they were still allies. In 1945, the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States had met in Potsdam, a German city just southwest of Berlin, to discuss the post-war reorganisation of Europe. What followed was a decade of silence between them. It was not until July 1955 that the former Allied powers convened again for a major diplomatic summit – this time, however, as rivals. The conflict between East and West was already in full swing. And the Cold War was not cold everywhere. The Greek Civil War, the Indochina War and the Korean War had all been fought prior to the Geneva meeting. The parties involved – the US, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France – known as the “Big Four” – shared an interest in easing tensions in the ...