Who was responsible for the outbreak of the Cold war to 1946?

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Jacob Meagher

Who was responsible for the outbreak of the Cold war to 1946?

The Cold war was a conflict based on Ideologies, it stemmed from the misinterpretation and lasting resentment of the Russian revolution moving on to the division of Europe after the defeat of the Nazis. The fear of the new Nuclear weapon caused the Soviets to create a buffer zone of protection whereas the USA rightfully saw or misinterpreted this as a purely expansionist policy leading on to total communist world domination.

The Cold war can be seen as stemming from the start of the Russian revolution in 1917, the USA fought on the side of the royalists opposing the Communist Bolsheviks who would later win and rule the country up until the end of the Cold war. The USA failed to interpret the Cold War as a conflict based on ideologies and resentment, ideologies based on the principles of Capitalism and Communism which doctrinally opposed each other. Between the periods of the end of the Russian revolution and the beginning of the second world war neither the USSR or the United states had anything to do with each other both diplomatically and economically both countries had adopted a purely  isolationist policies and mistrusted each other. During the second world war because there was a common goal both countries put there differences aside so as defeat Germany but after the war there was no common goal and each country wanted to make a gain from the many years of fighting and their new found world dominance.

With the memory of the Great Depression still fresh in many Americans minds and the high cost of the war, the USA, under Roosevelt, needed to stimulate economic growth and sustain the economic boom triggered by the war. Roosevelt decided on adopting an occupation policy of rehabilitation instead of one simply based on punitive punishment, another reason why America treated the countries of Eastern Europe so well was the need for them to buy American exports and keep the US economic boom going. The American actions in occupied Germany contradicted those of the Russians who began to strip there territories. America had no major damage done to it during the war (apart from pearl harbor) and was never invaded, Russia on the other hand lost at least 20 million people, 30 thousand factories and 40 thousand miles of rail tracks all of which had been destroyed by the Germans. America knew that the Soviet Union was on the brink of economic collapse and all the industrialization that Stalin had created during the 5 year plan had been lost. Stalin requested from Roosevelt a 6 billion dollar loan under the land lease act, congress denied this which was a huge shift from the periods of 41-45 where the USA gave enormous quantities of military equipment to the Soviets this doctrinal shift showed to that the USA was no longer prepared to help the Soviets or treat them as allies, the Soviets interpreted this as a breaking of ties and an American dismissal of the sacrifices they made during the war. Roosevelt’s predecessor, Truman realized this and did all in his power, through the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, to make sure the Soviets only gained as little reparations form its conquered territories as possible. The idea being to try to cripple the Soviet Union and to force it to look inward instead of expanding its territories. The Soviets did the exact opposite and expanded on Eastern Europe so as to extract as many natural resources as possible, the brunt of post war Soviet economic collapse was bared by the soviet population whom in the years 45-47 were thrust into famine and over 20 million died of starvation.  

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The USA saw the actions of the USSR in the aftermath of WW2 as purely expansionist when it can easily be argued as a protectionist measure. Stalin found out about the atomic bomb in 1943 and promptly started his own project, when in 1945 at the Potsdam conference Truman told Stalin that he had a new weapon and was ready to use it, this created systemic fear throughout the Soviet government as they were now unprotected from an attack from there old ally the USA. Stalin promptly stated to one of his aids at Potsdam “…talk to Kurcheckov…” who was ...

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