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The Cold War During World War II Essay

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The Cold War was one of the most fear-inducing situations in American history. Post World War II, the superpowers of the world, namely the United States and the U.S.S.R, struggled to settle issues that arose from initiatives and responses after the war. These created the climate of tension and distrust between the two nations (Sibley 1). The United States held tightly to its liberal-capitalist beliefs while the Soviets “…professed fervent belief,” in their Marxist-Leninist ideology (Sibley 1). Many events led to the tension between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. First, the Soviets grew to distrust the Americans because, during World War II, the U.S. waited a long time to open a second front and relieve the Russians of the German attack. Then, during the Yalta Conference of 1945, it was agreed that Poland would be led by both democratic and communist powers until a democratic election could take place, but Communists took over soon after that and controlled Poland for the next four decades. This left the U.S. State Department feeling betrayed by the Soviets. The Soviets, in turn, felt betrayed by the United States after they were pushed out of Japan with the dropping of the Atomic Bomb. After that, a U.S. representative to the UN Atomic Energy Commission proposed that all atomic weapons materials be placed under international control and to destroy weapons that already existed (Sibley 7). Russia did not like this plan because it allowed the United States to hold onto its complete

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