- Fought between USA and USSR for 40 years
- Divided Europe into two blocs (countries grouped by an alliance or ideology) at end of 1949
- First bloc included those who were under Soviet control
- Second bloc included those that benefited from relations with the US (mostly members of NATO)
- Germany was initially split into four, but eventually became 3 western zones (officially known as West Germany altogether) and 1 eastern one (officially known as East Germany)
- The US blamed USSR for spreading communism
- The USSR defended itself by claiming that it was a protective measure and blamed the US for building a central economic empire with itself at its center. The USSR viewed this as a threat and used this fact to justify its extreme methods of protection
The relations between USA and USSR became more hostile because of a number of reasons
- Conflict in Ideologies
- US was a capitalist democracy, allowing freedom in culture and the market with rights being a key attribute of life in the US
- USSR was a communist state, with little freedom of belief and no political opposition granted and a state-controlled economy
- There were also previous instances which increased tensions
- US and British intervention against the Communists in the Russian Civil War
- USSR’s Nazi-Soviet Pact
- Western powers were wary of USSR
- Feared that Communists shared similar intentions with the previous Tsarist government to gain territory in Central Europe and the East Mediterranean
- High-ranking Communists had mentioned revolution and the spread of communism outside of the USSR on a worldwide scale
- This caused a unstable relationship in WW2
- Wartime Alliance and Relationships
- After Germany invaded USSR in 1941, the image of the alliance of the US, Britain and USSR seemed very cooperative and it seemed like they were on good terms
- This was shown by
- The inconvenient journey of British ships across the Baltic to provide resources to the USSR
- The Lend Lease Programme (the selling, lending, and renting of weaponry) granted by US to USSR
- However, in reality, the relations between these three countries were tense
- Stalin kept secrets and did not share information about his plans in the war
- Churchill refused to share knowledge of Enigma codes (coded messages used for the communication of German forces) after the British broke the code
- British and American pilots protested about how Russians seemed to have a lack of trust for them
- Foreign sailors carrying supplies were often given a small budget. The fact that they had to move across Russian ports under strict control made this worse
- A lot of unreliability and questioning of methods within this relationship
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