Lasting from the end of\u00a0World War II\u00a0in 1945 until the early 1990s, the\u00a0Cold War\u00a0was one of the most significant events of the 20th century. \u00a0At its heart, the Cold War was essentially a \u2018face off\u2019 or competition between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II.\u00a0 Historians have identified several causes that led to the outbreak of the Cold War, including: tensions between the two nations at the end of World War II, the ideological conflict between both the United States and the Soviet Union, the emergence of nuclear weapons, and the fear of communism in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first major cause of the Cold War was the increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.\u00a0 During the Second World War, the Soviet Union under the leadership of\u00a0Joseph Stalin, was allied with Britain, France, and the United States against\u00a0Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan.\u00a0 At the time, the alliance was based around destroying the\u00a0fascist\u00a0regimes in the Europe and Japanese expansionism in the Pacific.\u00a0 However, by 1945 the major fighting in both the\u00a0European Theater\u00a0and\u00a0Pacific Theater\u00a0began to come to an end.\u00a0 For example, World War II in Europe essentially ended with the death of\u00a0Adolf Hitler\u00a0on April 30th, 1945.\u00a0 Japan was defeated soon after in August of 1945 with the\u00a0atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\u00a0 During these final stages of World War II, the partnership between the Soviet Union and the other Allied nations began to fall apart.\u00a0 This is best evidenced by the Allied wartime conferences in Yalta and Potsdam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\u00a0Yalta Conference, along with the\u00a0Potsdam Conference, was an important event for the end stages of\u00a0World War II\u00a0and the beginning of the Cold War. \u00a0The Yalta Conference occurred from February 4th to the 11th in 1945 and was a wartime meeting of the Allied leaders, including:\u00a0Franklin D. Roosevelt,\u00a0Winston Churchill\u00a0and\u00a0Joseph Stalin. \u00a0The meeting took place near Yalta, which is now a city in Crimea, Ukraine.\u00a0 \u200bThe purpose of the conference was for the three Allied powers to begin discussing how to reorganize Europe once\u00a0Adolf Hitler\u00a0and Nazi Germany were defeated. \u00a0While,\u00a0World War II in Europe\u00a0was not over yet, the Allies could see that the end of the war was near and that Germany would soon be defeated. \u00a0The hope was that the three leaders could agree on how to divide Europe following the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the Yalta Conference is now viewed as a major event in the\u00a0Cold War\u00a0as well, because it highlighted the divide between Stalin and the other two leaders. Neither side trusted the other and Joseph Stalin was resentful of the other two\u00a0believing\u00a0that they delayed the\u00a0Normandy Invasion\u00a0and\u00a0Allied invasion of Italy\u00a0to cause the Soviet army to struggle alone against\u00a0Nazi Germany. \u00a0This divide would be further highlighted at the later Potsdam Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Potsdam Conference occurred from July 17th to August 2nd in 1945 and was a wartime meeting of the Allied leaders, including:\u00a0Harry S. Truman,\u00a0Winston Churchill\u00a0and\u00a0Joseph Stalin. Truman had just replaced\u00a0Franklin D. Roosevelt\u00a0as President of the United States following his death. \u00a0The meeting took place in Potsdam, which at the time was in the Allied controlled area of Germany.\u00a0\u00a0The purpose of the conference was for the three Allied powers to begin discussing how to handle the defeat of Nazi Germany, which had occurred just recently. \u00a0Other goals focused on how the world would carry on after the war. \u00a0While, World War II in the Pacific\u00a0was not over yet, the Allies could see that the end of the war was near and that Japan would soon be defeated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hope was that the three leaders could agree on how to handle world issues after the war was over, including: peace treaty issues and the effects of the war. \u00a0However, the Potsdam Conference is now viewed as a major event in the Cold War as well, because it highlighted the divide between Stalin and the other two leaders similar to the earlier Yalta Conference. As well, it is at the Potsdam Conference that Truman made Stalin aware of the American atomic weapons program (Manhattan Project) and that the Americans had developed the world’s first atomic bomb. \u00a0It was also at this conference that a deep divide was created between the United States and the Soviet Union specifically. Truman was incredibly suspicious of Stalin and his intentions and Stalin felt a similar way towards Truman. \u00a0In general terms, the seeds of the Cold War were planted at the Potsdam Conference. \u00a0The United States would\u00a0bomb Hiroshima\u00a0just days after the conference ended and World War II would be over in the just a few weeks, while the\u00a0Cold War\u00a0was just beginning. \u00a0As such, many historians view the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences as the start of the Cold War since they highlighted the growing mistrust and tensions between Truman of the United States and Stalin of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next major cause of the Cold War was the emergence of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II.\u00a0 As stated previously, World War II\u00a0ended in Europe by May of 1945 with the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied Powers, but the war did not officially end in the\u00a0Pacific Theater\u00a0until the atomic bombing of Japan in August of 1945.\u00a0 The United States had developed its atomic weaponry during the final years of the war through its secretive program called the\u00a0Manhattan Project.\u00a0 With the\u00a0atomic bombing of Japan, the United States had begun the era of nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the outset of the\u00a0Cold War, the United States was the only nation in the world to contain atomic weapons, such as those used against Japan in 1945.\u00a0 As such, the Soviet Union was not able to militaristically challenge the United States and worked to develop their own atomic weapons.\u00a0 However, on August 29th, 1949, the Soviet Union performed a test of their first atomic bomb codenamed \u2018First Lighting\u2019.\u00a0 These early years were important to the growing tensions and anger between the two superpowers.\u00a0 Because of the development of nuclear weapons, the two nations did not trust each other.\u00a0 As a result, they each spent the first few decades of the Cold War developing large arsenals of nuclear weapons.\u00a0 By the 1950\u2019s each country had developed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other.\u00a0 This development was an important aspect of the Cold War, as the stockpiles of nuclear weapons acted as a means of defense.\u00a0 Essentially, each nation was deterred from going to war with other, or from escalation tensions, due to the fear of a nuclear war.\u00a0 Historians refer to this idea as\u00a0Mutual Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)\u00a0since any escalation to war could result in the total destruction of both countries.\u00a0 Regardless, this nuclear arms race between the two nations showed the growing divide between the two nations.\u00a0 As such, the initial development of nuclear weapons in the 1940s and 1950s is considered to be a cause of the Cold War because it increased the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and caused them to enter into a dangerous\u00a0nuclear arms race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The third main cause of the Cold War was the\u00a0ideological conflict\u00a0that existed between the United States and Soviet Union.\u00a0 At the time, the Soviet Union was a\u00a0communist\u00a0nation that was based on the principles of\u00a0collectivism\u00a0or\u00a0socialism, while the United States was a modern liberal\u00a0democracy\u00a0nation based primarily on the principles of\u00a0individualism.\u00a0 This means that the Soviet Union was positioned on the far-left side of the economic spectrum, while the United States was position on the right side.\u00a0 This difference in ideology was a major source of the conflict between the two nations because throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to expand communism to other regions and the United States sought to stop it with its policy of containment.\u00a0 As such, many people now view the Cold War as a conflict of the left and right sides of the spectrum, among other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To better understand the ideological conflict of the Cold War it is first important to understand the main principles of\u00a0capitalism, communism, democracy and\u00a0dictatorship.\u00a0 During the Cold War, the United States was based upon capitalism and democracy while the Soviet Union was based upon communism and dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At its heart, capitalism is an economic system based upon the values of individualism and promotes individual liberty over government regulation and control.\u00a0 For example,\u00a0laissez-faire capitalism\u00a0is a form of the ideology that translates to \u201cleave us alone\u201d meaning that the government should remain out of the economy and instead allow individuals to freely carry out their own economic affairs. The development of capitalism as an economic system, sought to reject the idea of government control of the economy and instead put the focus on individuals. On the economic spectrum, capitalism is a right-wing ideology that is fundamentally based on: private ownership, competition, free trade, self-reliance, self-interest, and the principles of supply and demand.\u00a0 Capitalist societies are often based on free-market economies.\u00a0 This system differs from communism wherein the government usually controls the means of production and makes all important economic decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democracy is a political system that is associated with the idea that power or authority in a society rests with the people.\u00a0 In general, the people exercise their authority through elections in which they choose others to represent their interests in a formal legislative structure.\u00a0 This system differs from dictatorships wherein many of the decisions are made by the government which is often a single person and single political party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Communism is an economic system that is based on the principles of socialism, especially the earlier development of\u00a0Marxism\u00a0and the ideas of\u00a0Karl Marx\u00a0as expressed in the Communist Manifesto. Similar to Marxism, communism is centered on the idea of establishing a society based upon public ownership of the means of production and the removal of any form of social classes.\u00a0 For example, communism generally focuses on the conditions of the working-class, and the wide income gap that existed in laissez-faire capitalist societies.\u00a0\u00a0Communist countries such as the Soviet Union are also often dictatorships.\u00a0 Communism differs from capitalism because it focuses on the government having much more control over the economy, and is often referred to as a command economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A dictatorship is a form of government in which most or all authority of the country is in the hands of a single individual; the leader.\u00a0 While the term has been used several times throughout history, most common usage of the term is in relation to different types of dictatorships that existed in the 20th and 21st centuries.\u00a0 For example, famous dictators include:\u00a0Adolf Hitler\u00a0in\u00a0Nazi Germany,\u00a0Joseph Stalin\u00a0in the Soviet Union,\u00a0Benito Mussolini\u00a0in Italy, Kim Jung-un in North Korea and Fidel Castro in Cuba.\u00a0 In general, a dictatorship is the opposite of democracy, which is a system of government in which the people hold the power and the ability to choose who represents their government.\u00a0 Essentially, in a democracy the people have the power over the major aspects of government and have the responsibility to elect their leaders.\u00a0 In contrast, a dictatorship is ruled by a single person who generally acts to protect his own position and power over the welfare of the citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This ideological conflict caused the Cold War because it displayed the difference in worldview between the two nations.\u00a0 As such, the United States and the Soviet Union differed greatly in their views of how the world should be organized following the major events of World War II.\u00a0 For their part, the United States feared Soviet expansionism into regions in Europe and around the world.\u00a0 As a result, the United States President at the start of the Cold War, Harry S. Truman, developed a policy in which the country would work to contain the spread of communism.\u00a0 Historians refer to this as the\u00a0Truman Doctrine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As such, the final cause of the Cold War was the American fear of the spread of communism around the world.\u00a0 As stated above, there was a major ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union at the outset of the Cold War.\u00a0 The United States, led by Harry S. Truman feared that communism as an ideology would spread throughout Europe and the rest of the world.\u00a0 For example, after World War II both Greece and Turkey were facing financial crisis.\u00a0 Due to their proximity to Soviet territory and the rise of communism in recent decades it was feared that the two countries might fall into the Soviet sphere of influence and become communist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u200bIn a speech in 1947 on the crisis facing both countries Harry S. Truman stated: \u201cI believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid, which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 In this passage, Truman is promoting the idea that the United States should financially support the two nation to avoid them turning to communism.\u00a0 This approach by Truman formed the basis of American foreign policy throughout the remainder of the Cold War in the form of containment, which historians refer to as the Truman Doctrine.\u00a0 Essentially, the Truman Doctrine was the idea that the United States should attempt to contain the Soviet sphere of influence and the spread of communism.\u00a0 This foreign policy caused the United States to enter into conflict with the Soviet Union as it attempted to thwart Soviet expansionism in events such as:\u00a0Berlin Blockade,\u00a0Korean War,\u00a0Vietnam War, etc.\u00a0 As such, many historians view this as a cause of the Cold War because it increased tensions between the two superpowers and led to several conflicts between the two superpowers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Historians have identified several causes that led to the outbreak of the Cold War, including: tensions between the two nations at the end of World War II, the ideological conflict between both the United States and the Soviet Union, the emergence of nuclear weapons, and the fear of communism in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[103,15,22],"class_list":["post-6267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cold-war","tag-cold-war","tag-history","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6267"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6272,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267\/revisions\/6272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crunchlearning.com\/website_ec2cbfb0\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}