Cold War Essay, Research Paper

After WWII, there was an iron curtain dividing eastern and western Europe. And there were also two superpowers left standing, the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States dominated in western Europe while the Soviet Union dominated in eastern Europe. Tensions grew between the two superpowers (once allies) as they both realized the other superpower was a threat. They both did not want the other to dominate the rest of the world.

They both had opposite views and beliefs of how to run their countries. The Soviet Union condemned capitalism and adopted the communist way of life. They were a totalitarian society that limited economic and political freedom and they also forced their ways and beliefs onto other nations. They spent their money at the expense of the consumer while the czars and any high ranking official lived in a higher standard of living then everyone else.

The United States is a democratic country so we felt threatened by the idea of communism. Using the power we had in western Europe we warned and threatened those nations about the evils of communism while the Soviet Union did the same in eastern Europe. The United States aided the governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, while the Soviet Union took over East Germany, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and more. The soviet union was also threatened by us because we had the atomic bomb and they did not.

I believe the cold war was inevitable. The tensions between the two countries have been there since WWII ended and even before that when the United States stopped giving the Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union. The soviet union felt threatened by us because we controlled western Europe, We had different ideas of how to govern, we had the atomic bomb, and we could potentially use it against them. We felt threatened by them for the same reasons except they controlled eastern Europe and didn’t have an atomic bomb, but we knew that they would be getting one soon.

The cold war became inevitable when the war in Europe ended during WWII. The Soviet Union was very aggressive and wanted to destroy anything that threatened them. They saw the United States as threat, so the united states had to respond to the threat of them expanding. They were once allies, and now they were enemies.