There is some debate as to who carries the greater responsibility for the outbreak of the Cold War. Some suggest that The USA was to blame; others point at Stalin and soviet expansion. Both sides misunderstood each other, leading to a climate of mistrust which started the Cold war.
There is some debate as to who carries the greater responsibility for the outbreak of the Cold War. Some suggest that The USA was to blame; others point at Stalin and soviet expansion. Both sides misunderstood each other, leading to a climate of mistrust which started the Cold war.
There is some debate as to who carries the greater responsibility for the outbreak of the Cold War. Some suggest that The USA was to blame; others point at Stalin and soviet expansion. Both sides misunderstood each other, leading to a climate of mistrust which started the Cold war.
There is some debate as to who carries the greater responsibility for the outbreak of the Cold War. Some suggest that the USA was to blame; others point at Stalin and soviet expansion. The argument here is that both sides misunderstood each other, leading to a climate of mistrust which started the Cold War. It could be argued that the USA was to blame for the outbreak of the Cold War. The USA was staunchly anti-communist, and had been since the Russian Revolution in 1917. It was because of this that the USA did not share its knowledge of the Atomic Bomb with the USSR in 1945. The USA were acting aggressively towards the USSR with the Truman Doctrine, which followed the policy of containment. For this the USA said it was act to stop any further communist expansion, clearly threatening any further movement by Stalin and the Soviet Union. The Marshall Plan, which gave $17 billion to European countries for reconstruction, could also be seen as aggressive, trying to buy the loyalty of Europeans against the Soviet Union. This was made worse by the creation of NATO in 1950, an alliance designed to challenge the USSR. There is clearly some evidence to suggest that the USAs actions led to the Cold War. There is, however, considerable evidence that the USSR holds responsibility for the start of the Cold War. Stalin had taken control of eastern Europe after the end of the Second World War in 1945, and the Soviet Union had physical control over countries such as Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia due to their occupation by Red Army troops. Although Stalin had agreed at the Yalta conference that there would be free elections in eastern Europe, this proved not to be the case, and elections were rigged to ensure that communists were elected. Perhaps the greatest sign of Soviet aggression was the Berlin Blockade, where Stalin cut off the transport links to west Berlin. It was only through the 1947-1948 Berlin Airlift that the problem was overcome without threatening another world war. For these reasons, it could be argued that it was Soviet aggression which led to the start of the Cold War. Arguably, it was neither solely the USA nor the USSR who held responsibility for the outbreak of the Cold War. Instead, it was a series of misunderstandings between them. At Yalta and Potsdam there was an atmosphere of mistrust, and this led to later problems. The Soviet Union assumed that American aid to western Europe was an attempt at direct control. Similarly, the USA believed that Stalin was interested in taking control of western Europe, where he had expressed a wish only to create a buffer zone against invasion. It was, therefore, a sequence of misunderstandings which led to the outbreak of the Cold War. It is certainly true that the USA did a number of things which could be seen as aggressive toward the USSR, not least the Truman Doctrine. However, the USSR was also responsible for creating a climate of mistrust. In the end, it was misunderstandings between the two sides which led to the beginning of the Cold War. The statement is true, therefore, in part, but is only one part of the story.