Origins of the Cold War

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers. Their different political systems, economic systems, and ambitions for the future led to the tension between the former allies, which is later known as the Cold War. Joseph Stalin, the totalitarian Communist leader of the Soviet Union, wanted the United States to attack Germany and were angered that the U.S. had secretly developed the atomic bomb. On April 12, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died and Truman became president of the United States, which was capitalist and had competing political parties. The United Nations, which was originally intended to promote world peace, became a place where the two superpowers competed for influence over other nations. On July 1945, in the Potsdam Conference, The Big Three (U.S., Great Britain, and Soviet Union), Harry Truman, Clement Attlee, and Stalin met for the last wartime meeting. Stalin had broken his promise to former U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference that he would allow Soviet controlled nations, specifically Poland, to hold free elections. This time, Truman insisted on allowing free election to spread democracy over nations that were once dominated by the Nazis during the WWII. Soviet Union wanted to take control over parts of Eastern Europe to prevent future attacks from the West because it had suffered massive destruction of land and approximately 20 million Soviet deaths. Stalin planted Communist governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Poland, which became the Soviet Union’s satellite nations. In 1946, a policy of containment, which was proposed by George F. Kennan, stated that the U.S. would to stop further spread of Communism in other nations at all costs.

Jazreel and Tamara