Explain why the USA and the Soviet Union did not trust eachother after the war

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Explain why the USA and the Soviet Union did not trust each other after WW2

Following the Second World War, a large amount of tensions started to rise between the worlds two greatest super powers, the USSR and the USA. The roots of these tensions were seen to have stretched back to the Russian revolution in 1917 various incidents however took place from 1945 onwards such as the disagreements over Poland and the creation of the Iron curtain which caused suspicion and mistrust between the two super powers and left a mark on their relationship for years to come.

The first major tensions caused between the USSR and America was during the First

World War when the soviets withdrew from it leaving Britain and France to fight alone.

Britain’s ally, the USA, which was capitalist, sent soldiers into the USSR to overthrow

its new communist government. His attempts to overthrow the communists however failed

and the communists remained in power. The USA and France and Britain were now thrown

into an instant alliance against the USSR. In 1939 the allies were further enraged by the

USSR’s agreement with Hitler. Hitler however betrayed the soviets hence now throwing the USSR, Britain and America in a battle to defeat Nazi Germany. By 1945 Germany was

defeated and the leaders of the three opposing countries met at a place called Yalta at the black sea to discuss what was now to be done in Post war Europe. All three of the leaders go on well at Yalta, but the civility between the three was only really apparent because of their desire to defeat Hitler, not because they actually got along. The memories of what happened during the First World War were still fresh in the back of everyone’s minds, just waiting to be bought back up again.

Five months later the final wartime conference was held in Potsdam on the outskirts of Berlin. Here you could tell the allies relations had deteriorated visibly. This deterioration was caused by several things, firstly President Roosevelt had died now leaving Harry .S. Truman as the new president of the USA. He was not aware that Roosevelt and Stalin had made private assurances to each other which just added to the mistrust and secrecy that was mounting between the two countries. Stalin in particular was unhappy that Truman had replaced Roosevelt because of the special agreements that he had had with Roosevelt, now no longer existed. Clement Atlee was now the new British Prime Minister who had replaced Churchill. Both Truman and Atlee were highly suspicious of Stalin. Stalin soon became even more annoyed by his new change of colleagues as the decision was made to en the Lend-lease program. He believed that this was a direct attack on the USSR’s economy.  

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At Potsdam, there had been some vague talk of the capitalist USA having a nuclear weapon. This made the communists nervous as they new that if Truman wanted to he could easily use this weapon to defeat them. Truman decided he didn’t want to let too much information about the bomb become open to Stalin. This is just another one of the examples in which major decisions were being kept secret from one another. The reason however that Truman didn’t tell Stalin too much about the bomb was that Stalin had promised Truman help in the invasion of Japan. ...

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