How did the Cold War between the United Stares and the Soviet Union grow out of world war 2?

Answer 1

The “Cold War” is usually thought of as being the conflict and stress between the US and the USSR (Soviet Union) during the period lasting from the end of World War 2 until the collapse of Communist government in Russia and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is called the “cold” war because the belligerents never came to actual blows, but there were many “brushfire” wars that could have exploded the “cold” war into “hot” war many times. The entire period was marked by what we call “brinksmanship;” i.e., coming right up to the edge but stopping short of actual warfare between the two main players, the US and USSR.

The Cold War may be thought of as having started as early as 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power in what had been Tsarist Russia and installed a Marxist Communist form of government. Communism has always been unalterably opposed to Capitalism, the economic system under which the democratic republic of the US operates. Without getting into the specifics of each, suffice it to say that the two systems are diametric opposites, and as such are mortal enemies. After the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917, the United States was so fearful of the specter of a Marxist Empire in Europe that we initially sent American troops to fight alongside the “White Russians” (Tsarist loyalists) in a civil war that lasted until 1920. In 1922 the Soviet Union was declared. The other Allies of the First War also fought against Bolshevism until as late as 1920, but some of the early intervention was because the Bolsheviks made a separate peace with the Central Powers, notably Germany, and the Allies feared that the Russians might even ally with Germany and turn on their former allies. This did not happen, but Winston Churchill at the time warned that Bolshevism must be, “…strangled in its cradle.”

Churchill is also quoted as having said that democracy was “…the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Leninist Communism, and later Stalinist Communism in the USSR resulted in the deaths of millions through direct execution and starvation due to failed economic policies and other causes. Democracy and Capitalism definitely have their faults, but the Communist Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 for a simple enough reason: it didn’t work.

Despite that, the “cold war” was still active during World War 2 while the US and USSR were allied against the Axis Powers: Germany, Italy and Japan. There was mistrust from the very beginning. Stalin mistrusted the western Allies for having signed the Munich Accord with Hitler in 1938 that gave the Nazis Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. The Allies mistrusted Stalin for having signed a “non-aggression” pact with Hitler in August 1939 which gave the Germans the green light to invade Poland and trigger World War 2. In fact, Stalin attacked Poland from its eastern border as well and grabbed all the Polish land he could. There was very good reason for the democracies to dislike and distrust the Soviet Empire, but nevertheless, after Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941, we were all in the same boat trying to defeat Naziism, but still the tensions existed. As an example, the Nazis felt so much closer to the west than to the Soviets that, in several much-too-late attempts by prominent Nazis to make a separate peace with the western Allies, the main thing that seemed to concern them was keeping the Red Army out of Germany, but by the time this happened we already knew about the Death Camps and allowing the Red Army to invade the eastern half of Germany seemed like fitting punishment for what the Nazis had done.

After the War, however, two major things happened: one was that the Soviets did not withdraw to their former borders, but simply expanded the USSR to include all the territory they had reconquered from the Germans. Once again, to quote Winston Churchill, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” That “iron curtain” was to remain in place for another 45 years. As the Soviets “liberated” a country from the Germans, they “offered” to help set up a [Communist] government. This included the entire eastern half of Germany. So many East Germans tried to flee into the western half that finally the Communist East German government was forced to literally build a wall across the country to prevent the human leakage.

The second thing that happened was the acquisition by the USSR of the Atomic Bomb. They exploded their first one in August 1949, and suddenly there were two superpowers in the world. In fact, the Soviets had had a spy in the Manhattan project who gave many US atomic secrets to the Soviets, but historians are divided on how much damage the spy really did. The Soviets already had an atomic program of their own, and it may be that what they stole from us only accelerated their program by a year or so. It was inevitable that, once nuclear weapons existed at all, that other countries, starting with the USSR, would get them. The main thing is that Soviet acquisition of The Bomb triggered an arms race that continued right through the 1980’s, with the unfortunate result that to this day, Russia and the United States between them have enough nuclear devices to obliterate almost every living thing on the planet several times over. This fact was at the heart of the Cold War. The fear of sudden nuclear disaster was never far from the minds of those who lived through it.

During the Cold War there were many smaller “hot” wars and crises, starting with the Korean War in 1950. The USSR had entered the war against Japan at the last possible minute in 1945, and Korea was arbitrarily divided along the 38th parallel of latitude into northern (Communist) and southern (sort-of Republican) halves. In 1950, North Korea, backed by the Soviets and the Chinese Communists, invaded South Korea to try to unite the country under Communist rule, and President Truman went to the U.N. for a mandate to stop them, mostly with U.S. troops. We fought the North Koreans and the Chinese for three years, and the thing ended in a stalemate and an armistice, which is not the same as a peace. Technically, we’re still at war with the North Koreans — and now theyhave The Bomb.

In 1962 the Soviets tried to put ballistic missiles into Communist Cuba. They said it was in response to our having missiles in Turkey aimed at the USSR. There was a long stare down in October that ended only when the Russians “blinked” and withdrew the missiles. No one may ever really know just how close we came to nuclear war, but that is what is meant by “brinksmanship.”

The Vietnam War and the Soviet-Afghan war poured yet more gasoline on the fire, but because by that time each side had enormous nuclear arsenals pointed at the other, there was no war between the Superpowers. We had achieved what was appropriately called MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. Whichever side started it, the other would finish it, and the world would be plunged into nuclear winter. Humanity as a species might cease to exist.

With the collapse of the USSR in 1991 the “Cold War” officially ended, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. We get along okay with the Russians. There are very few Communist run states left in the world, and even fewer of them are truly Communist in their economics (look at modern China for an example). They are totalitarian, but they may eventually evolve a more democratic form of government if we are patient and wait long enough. But the problem remains all those nukes! They’re pretty much all still there, sitting in their silos and hangars and being maintained, “just in case.” Recently Russian President Putin has become incensed at President Bush for wanting to build an antimissile system based in Europe aimed at short circuiting an attempted missile attack by, say, the Iranians. Whether the thing would work or not is immaterial; the Russians consider it a threat to their own security, don’t want it, and Putin has threatened to once again aim Soviet-era missiles at parts of Western Europe.

Then there’s the “War on Terror,” and the fact that it’s theoretically possible for terrorists to get their hands on one or more nuclear devices. In the days when the bombs were huge and heavy and required four-engine bombers to deliver them this was not such a threat as it is now, with decades of miniaturization having gone into nuclear weapon design to the point that it’s possible to get one into a suitcase — certainly into a medium sized truck. And what would happen if one of those went off in the center of one of our cities, no matter where? Would we know right away where it came from? How many of our missiles are still aimed at Russia, and might we send a retaliatory response at an innocent party who, in self defense, would be forced to respond in kind? Leaders of both sides must wrestle with this conundrum every day.

The tensions that led to the “Cold War” still exist, unfortunately. There is said to be an old curse that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” We have the misfortune to live in “interesting times.” It remains to be seen if we humans can somehow stumble on through them. It is a purely human arrogance to believe that we are the culmination of evolution. If we destroy ourselves, something else will survive to take our place.

Answer 2

The Allied nations had the BIG 3. They were Britain, The USA and the USSR. The leaders of these nations disagreed about the goals for the European nations after the war. Stalin insisted on keeping the nations he defeated in the war and they would be ruled by communist Russia. The western allies wanted all the nations to be allowed to be self ruling with democratic forms of government. This sparked a Cold War.

Answer 3

At the Yalta Conference of 1945 the Western Allies had given Stalin the right to keep the countries that Russia had liberated from the Germans within his 'sphere of influence'.

Stalin's wish was only partly dictated by ideological motives such as 'the spread of World Communism'. Mostly it was dictated by Russian fear. Russia had sufferered innumerably larger losses than all the other Allies put together in WW 2. It did not even want to consider a renewal of the war in the form of a concerted action to "defeat" Communism: both Britain, France and the USA had actively fought the rise of Communism only two decades ago on Russian soil and several of the eastern liberated countries had been actively fighting Russia alongside Nazi Germany.

The Allies had conceded eastern Europe to the Soviets because at the time they were in dire need of Russia's armies to finish the job and do most of the battlefield dying for them. After 1945 they started sorely regretting their generosity, but not unnaturally Stalin held on to what he had been given. It did however quickly sour relationships, which were worsened further when Stalin (unsuccesfully) tried to force the Allies to give up their toehold of West Berlin in his newly Communist eastern Europe.

The clincher was Russia's development of an atomic bomb of their own, a thing which the US strongly supected could only have been done through espionnage within the USA on a massive scale. It was this last development which led to an unprecedented arms race in building litterally thousands of atomic missiles on both sides.

So finally it was the combination of traditional anti-Communist feelings in the West, resentment against Russia for holding on to the conquests they had been allowed in Yalta, and the subsequent arms race that led to the Cold War that was to end only in 1990.