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I GOT AN A STAR AT GCSE LEVEL FOR THIS ESSAY, ENGLISH SPELLING... HOPE U LIKE... Everyones opinion is different, some say one thing, some say another but the big question is, who was to blame for the Cold War? The United States of America? The Soviet Union? Maybe it was inevitable and bound to happen, but maybe it was partly both of their faults.
Could the Cold War have been prevented? There are many points that can argue and back up all of the above opinions. I will be examining different sources and viewpoints in this essay and conclude it with my own and other historians opinions. There are three divisions of western historians when it comes to their opinion on the Cold War, the Traditionalists, the Revisionists and the Post-Revisionists. Each party have their own opinion on who was actually to blame for the Cold War. Traditionalists are historians who believe that the Soviet Union were to blame, Revisionists, who believe that the United States were to blame and Post-Revisionists believe that both the USA and the Soviets were to blame.
Each group has reasons for believing what they believe and they will all be argued within this essay. There are many points that may have triggered the Cold War. Firstly, the history of mistrust between the USA and the Soviet Union that formed after their alliance in World War II. The USSR were scared that their Communist system was under threat from the Capitalists, but the Capitalists thought the same thing about the Communists. Both systems believed that they were doing the right thing.
The USSR believed that the West were hostile towards them because of a few points. 1919 USA, Britain and France sent troops across to help the Ussr's opponents. 1938 Stalin believed that there was an indication of Western support to Hitler after the two European countries, Britain and France turned down an Anti-Hitler alliance. USSR believed that the British policy of appeasement was a plan to help Hitler. 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, afterwards, the USA, Britain, France and the Soviet Union fought in an alliance. Stalin urged his allies to launch a second front. The other three countries were not ready to launch such an attack until June 1944 v (D-Day. ) Stalin thought that the other countries were deliberately waiting for Germany to weaken the Soviet Union before the front was launched. The Soviets were not invited to the Munich conference, even though it was held right on the Soviet border. The other countries knew that Stalin would never agree to Hitlers terms.
The basic mistrust that the Soviet Union and the USA had for each other made the breakdown of the wartime alliance inevitable. The second factor of this argument involves the two different political systems that the Soviets and the Democratic West held. The USSR had a Communist system set up, the West had a Capitalist system. Communists believed that rights were less important than the good of society as a whole. As a result of this, industry grew rapidly but the general standard of living was a lot lower than that of the USA. the USSR was a one party dictatorship.
All candidates belonged to the communist party; many communists were bitterly opposed to the Western Capitalist policies. The Capitalists believed that being free of control is much more important than everyone being equal and alike. The USA was the worlds wealthiest country; business and property were privately owned. Some people were rich, some poor. Government was chosen in democratic elections.
Many Capitalists were bitterly opposed to the Communist views. This factor is also very Post Revisionist, as both countries believed that they were right, and the other was wrong. Another factor of this is The Yalta Conference, a meeting about how Europe was to be organised after WWII. Held in February 1945, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met at Yalta and it was decided that these actions should be taken: Free elections to set up democratic governments to east European countries, freed from the Nazis. A United Nations Organisation would be set up to keep peace. Germany should be divided up into zones of occupation, one controlled by Britain, one controlled by the USA, one by the Soviet Union and one controlled by France.
The capital, Berlin was also divided into similar sections. Once Germany was defeated, the Soviets would join war against Japan. Stalin wanted to keep the parts of Poland that he had won in the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. He wanted Poland to expand westward into Eastern Germany.
Which would create a buffer zone between Germany and the Soviet Union, Stalin did not want to be attacked by the Germans again, after Germany had attacked them twice in the 30 years before then. He also wanted Poland to have a pro-Soviet government. Stalin also had another government in exile, ready to be taken over, the Lublin Poles. But Britain and the USA supported a different group called the London Poles, who were strongly against communism. These poles had helped organise the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, aiming to gain part of Poland, before Stalin's army took over the whole country.
Stalin wanted all the Germans out of Poland so that the Lublin Poles would have the country under complete control. By 1945 this had happened. Roosevelt and Churchill did not want Stalin to have control over Poland. At the Yalta conference, they forced him to agree that some of the London Poles would be included in the government and that there would be free elections for a new government as soon as possible The Yalta Conference appeared to be a success, with agreements on what would be done after the war settled, but some of these agreements were not kept, and The London Poles had hardly any say in their government. Stalin elected a pro-communist government into Poland, but this was not what Churchill and Roosevelt had meant. Yalta showed how difficult it was for the Allies to reach an agreement.
In July 1945, a second conference was held, at Potsdam in Germany. Here, the broken relationship between the east and the west was more apparent. By July 1945, Soviet troops had liberated the whole of Eastern Europe from Nazi control, however, instead of free democratic elections, decided on at Yalta, Soviet troops remained in these liberated countries. In the past five months since Yalta, a number of changes had taken place, which would greatly affect the relationships between the country leaders. America had successfully tested the Atomic Bomb. Churchill had lost the general election.
Able is the new British leader. President Roosevelt had died, leaving Truman to be appointed President. Stalin's Armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. It was agreed that: Germany would be divided.
Allies would receive reparations. The Nazis would be banned, and their leaders tried as War Criminals. Germans occupying Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia are sent back to Germany. Poland's Eastern border would be moved west to the rivers Oder and Neisse. Disagreements included: What to do with Germany. Reparations.
Soviet policy in Eastern Europe. Soviet occupation of Japan. Stalin believed that Germany should be made to suffer, Britain and the USA did not agree. This caused uneasiness between the East and the West.
This made it slightly inevitable for the two alliances to fall out. Winston Churchill made his famous Fulton Speech in March 1946, it explained how an iron curtain, a division between East and West Europe had been set. This separation was by soviet policy. The west of Europe was free, but in the east, the Soviets had taken over. This was a clear statement of West versus East.
Stalin accused Churchill of trying to stir up a war against the Soviets. The Soviets made sure that between 1945 and 1948, every country in Eastern Europe had a government that was both communist and were sympathetic towards the Soviets. Stalin said that all he was doing was creating a buffer zone between the Soviets and the Western World. The USA thought that this expansion into Eastern Europe was not for defence, but the first step of a plot for the Soviets to take over the world. The spread of communism had to be stopped, and it was. Truman wanted to put a stop to the growth of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, but there were still Soviet troops in these countries, and there was little Truman could do.
When he was informed that Britain could not afford to hold British troops in Greece and Turkey, Truman gave money to the UK so that they could keep t...
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Research essay sample on Who Was To Blame For The Cold War
