Causes of the Cold War Essay

DBQ Outline Intro Paragraph · Background/Context: The Cold War was a state of political tension after World War II between the Eastern bloc countries and Western bloc countries. Cold War took a significant place in between 1947 to 1991 which the two most powerful countries, United States of America and Soviet Union, were competing with each other over spreading the rule and showing off their arms without killing people. After the World War II, people in different countries started to think about who bears more responsibility for starting the Cold War, United States or USSR. · Three-point thesis: The United States of America bears more responsibility for starting the Cold War because it built up military powers and prepared for

The orthodox view regarding the cause of the Cold War, formed the standard interpretation between the 1940s and early-1960s. The breakdown of the wartime alliance and the expansion of Soviet

Conflicts of national interest caused the United States and the Soviet Union to continue tension from World War II onto the Cold War, that lasted from 1947 to 1991. Although there was no direct military conflicts, there were constant nuclear threats. Over the past thirty years historians have divided themselves into different categories including: traditionalists, revisionists, and post-revisionists, and share their perspective on who caused the Cold War, the USSR or the US. Based off of three historians: Michael H Hart believes the USSR is at fault for aggressively wanting Communism to be spreaded, William Appleman Williams stated that the US is to blame for being too focused on their “open door” policy with foreign trade , and John Lewis Gaddis believes that their are at fault due to miscommunication and efforts to remain peaceful at the end of the war.

The cause of the Cold War is debatable. The Cold War was inevitable due to the differences in Capitalist and Communist ideologies. However, one is not able to fully point out who was responsible for the Cold War. There are so many factors that could have contributed to the Cold War. Many of the historians perspectives about the causes of the Cold War varies to a certain extent. The Orthodox view generally holds that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Cold War. It states that the Soviets were inevitably expansionist , due to their suspicion of the West. Thus, Stalin violated the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, occupied and imposed Soviet control in Eastern Europe and decides to ¨plot¨ the spread of Communism throughout the world with

There are many opinions on who started the Cold War, whether it be the USSR’s fault or the United States. With old trust issues rising up again, the next forty years resulted in constant tension and aggression between the two rival powers. But, when it’s time to place the blame for this tedious conflict, it is clear the United States can be blamed, for they were constantly imposing their greater power, and led the USSR to lose their trust due to international acts of aggression from the US. From 1945-1991 the US took action abroad to stop the USSR from gaining more global power, they misinterpreted Soviet motives, and threatened the USSR with acts of aggression through major bomb threats. With both nations having different motives after WWII,

MacDonald’s article Communist Bloc Expansion in the Early Cold War, four schools of thought surrounding the origins of the Cold War are laid out. Specifically, MacDonald argues mostly in favor of the traditionalist school, which emphasizes the expansionist, offensive nature of Soviet expansion into Asia and Eastern Europe. Also, MacDonald makes an important point regarding the accuracy of information and historical texts regarding the origins of the Cold War, explaining that “The argument over the origins of the Cold War is important not only for historical accuracy, but also for the consequences it will have on theoretical questions and therefore on their implications for policy.” Not only is this true, but also extremely relevant to scholars studying the Cold War with regard to international relations, as it points out the importance of the correct application of paradigms and perspectives to the Cold War case study. In MacDonald’s argument in favor of the traditionalist school, he

In this paper I will discuss what actions and thoughts added up to cause the cold war. The cold war lasted from September 1, 1945 to about December 25, 1991. That is about forty-five years, which is an extremely long time. The cold war was a global competition basically between two sides, the Free World, which was led by the United States of America, and the Communist World led by the Soviet Union. The struggle took place through indirect military conflict, and direct competition in the areas of economics, diplomacy, culture, space exploration, and political theory. It also involved nuclear stand offs, espionage, and global competition for other nations. The cold war has established the framework for most

During the course of history, great leaders have coerced the world to the brink of war; this was the case for Joseph Stalin, who forced the world to the unprecedented Cold War. To a large extent, Stalin’s actions were responsible for the onset of the Cold War. Stalin displayed a lack of trustworthiness, evident in the Yalta conference during February 1945, and spread communism into eastern European states. This led to mutual distrust between the USSR and the United States. In 1948, Stalin further escalated tensions between himself and the United States, by enforcing the construction of the Berlin blockade, created to weaken the United States supplies in West Germany. Stalin was a strong believer in militarism, because of this Stalin ordered the creation and consolidation of the USSR’s nuclear arsenals in 1947, inflaming the arms race that could have potentially inflicted total devastation throughout the globe. Stalin’s impetuous actions caused great tensions between himself and other leaders, subsequently causing him to be responsible for the outbreak of the Cold War.

The Nazi-Soviet pack allowed Hitler to invade Poland and then fight France and Britain without having to worry about the powerful Soviet army. (6) A surprise attack by the Germans on the Soviet Union on June 1941 ended the Nazi-Soviet pact. This drove the Soviet Union to join the allies, but they found no love in the hearts of the United States and Britain. It was only Germany’s might and murder policies that held the Grand Alliance together. (7) As the tide turned in favor of the Allies in the eastern theater, the side where the Soviet Union was fighting on, the soviets army was pushing into several Eastern European countries which were formerly allied or controlled by Germany. As the soviets controlled occupied these countries, they were able to control them. The same fear that had arisen in 1812 arose again: Would Russia become so powerful that it, instead of Germany, would threaten to dominate Europe. (8) To avoid this nightmare Britain and the United States invited the Soviet Union to a conference to discuss how to establish a durable peace. The “Big Three” met at Yalta, a resort on the Black Sea shore in the southern part of the Soviet Union. At the final diner at Yalta, hosted by Stalin on February 8, in a toast to Churchill and Stalin, President Roosevelt said he felt “the atmosphere between them was that of a family.” (9) Harry Hopkins, one of Roosevelt’s closest advisors and his special envoy to other heads of the state

The orthodox view of the Cold War elucidates its inevitability due to the great ideological differences that existed between the Soviet Union and United States. On the other hand, the revisionists argued that it happened due to the actions that Soviets took and the consequential responses made by the United States as a result of their inflexible, single-sided interpretations of Soviet action. Yet, even with the backdrop of the early Bolshevik conflict in 1918 as well

However, the Cold War was not completely inevitable. Both revisionist and orthodox historians agree that the war “resulted from essentially unilateral actions by one or another power and that therefore the cold was an avoidable tragedy” (Crockatt 65).

There have been many attempts to explain the origins of the Cold War that developed between the capitalist West and the communist East after the Second World War. Indeed, there is great disagreement in explaining the source for the Cold War; some explanations draw on events pre-1945; some draw only on issues of ideology; others look to economics; security concerns dominate some arguments; personalities are seen as the root cause for some historians. So wide is the range of the historiography of the origins of the Cold War that is has been said "the Cold War has also spawned a war among historians, a controversy over how the Cold War got started, whether or not it was inevitable, and

In my opinion ,the US should bear a bigger responsibility for causing the cold war .After the second world war , the ideological difference ,mutual distrust and the disappearance of the common enemy (germany ) , these all are the causes of the cold war .However ,these comflicts were all brought by the US . Many historians believe that the Cold War was inevitable once the common enemy, Germany, was defeated after the end of World War II. Other historians such as John Gaddis stress that neither superpower can be held solely responsible for the ideological war that lasted half a century. These historians believe that the US and the USSR followed a pattern of action and reaction; and that neither nation had a definitive plan of action (Todd,

I think that to some extent, the Soviet Union was to blame for the start of the Cold War. The Soviet Union’s aggressive actions in Eastern Europe meant that the Americans had to step in to stop the Soviet Union from taking over Eastern Europe and making the countries into puppet states of theirs. As stated in the Truman Doctrine, America was supposed to aid all countries under oppression. That is why the Americans tried to stop the Soviet Union and allow democracy in those countries which the Soviets didn’t like at all. That distanced the two countries from each other and made them hate each other even more.

The term “Cold War” refers to the second half of the 20th century, usually from the end of the World War II until 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since the 1940s and 1950s the scholars have disagreed on the topic of the origins of the Cold War. There are several groups of historians and their interpretations are very different, sometimes even contradictory. The three main schools are the orthodox, the revisionist and the realist. The classification is not completely accurate because we can find several differences in theories of scholars within the same group and often the authors reevaluated their ideas over time.