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Cold War Chapter Summary

Decent Essays

Within this book, Martin McCauley explains how the tensions between the Soviets and Americans arise and how it escalated into the Cold War. It also includes a timeline of historical events that are important to the unfolding of the Cold War, a list of important people involved during the Cold War’s formative years, and a list of important documents from the formulating years of the Cold War, 1941-1949. America and the Soviet Union were inherently at odds with each other due to their different economic systems and ideologies. However, the two states became allies with each other due to the greater threat of Hitler’s Germany. However, problems quickly began to rise as the war came to a conclusion and the common enemy vanished. …show more content…

However, Stalin became determined to hold onto everything that he could and prevent the spread of American influence into Eastern Europe due to his perceiving that the atomic bomb is a security threat to him and his superiority in Europe could become nullified. Thus, he became more difficult to be dealt with and became heavy-handed in eastern Europe which the Americans began to view such behavior as being in bad faith and that the Soviets had the desire to expand elsewhere. The Americans began to view the Soviet behavior very negatively towards the war end. Americans became shocked by Soviet behavior and conduct during the war as being barbaric. As shock of the behavior resonated, anti-Soviet politicians became very influential in Congress and desired for a change from the realist policy FDR pursued. Thus, the policy they began to seek was containment or for the Soviets to concede to American desires as advocated by the new president

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