The Cold War
Uploaded by outthevanwindow on Aug 30, 2007
*This got a 40/40 in my AP World History class last year, my teacher was the hardest teacher and would practically look for ways to mark you down. The only notes she wrote were "Where exactly" about closing of trade routes, but I'm not sure, it's been so long. Enjoy!*
After World War two, there was an emergence of two superpowers that had once been allies, but ended up enemies due to very different ideology. This clash of concepts between the Soviet Union and the United States led to a period of conflict and tension between capitalism and communism. This competition for superiority posed a serious threat to the entire world: nuclear warfare. The ideological clash between communism and capitalism that began in 1917 was one of the very early events leading up to the Cold War, although the United States and Imperial Russia had been enemies since 1900. There was never a direct military engagement but there was a half-century of military build-up.
The world's largest colonial empire and the world's leading economic power were marked by mutual distrust and idological tension. Because Russia was unable to compete industrially with the United States, they wanted to close off part of east Asia to trade, but the United States demanded open trade. After winning the Russian Civil War the Bolsheviks proclaimed a world wide challenge to capitalism. During the war the soviets believed that the British and the Americans had intentionally delayed a second front against Germany, although they had been in no position to carry out Stalin's request to invade northern France. The Soviets suspected that they had decided to let Russians bear the worst of the war, but would intervene towards the end to influence peace settlements and dominate Europe as well. These misconceptions left unfounded feelings of tension and hostility between the two superpowers.
Both the USSR and the United States had very different ideas of how to establish postwar security. Americans assumed that if U.S. style governments and markets were established, states could resolve their differences peacefully. The key to the U.S. vision of security would require a rebuilt capitalist Europe and U.S. economic and political leadership of the postwar world. Soviet leaders understood security in terms of space. Stalin was determined to use the red army to control Poland, dominate the Balkans, and destroy Germany's capacity for another...