Origins of the Cold War - wikipedia Origins of the Cold War Part of a series on the History of the Cold War Origins of the Cold War World War II ( Hiroshima and Nagasaki ) War conferences Eastern Bloc Western Bloc Iron Curtain Cold War ( 1947 -- 1953 ) Cold War ( 1953 -- 1962 ) Cold War ( 1962 -- 1979 ) Cold War ( 1979 -- 1985 ) Cold War ( 1985 -- 1991 ) Frozen conflicts Timeline Conflicts Historiography Cold War II The Origins of the Cold War involved the breakdown of relations between the Soviet Union versus the United States, Great Britain and their allies in the years 1945 -- 1949. From the American - British perspective, first came diplomatic confrontations stretching back decades, followed by the issue of political boundaries in Central Europe and political non-democratic control of the East by the Soviet Army. Then came economic issues ( especially the Marshall Plan ) and then the first major military confrontation, with a threat of a hot war, in the Berlin Blockade of 1948 -- 1949. By 1949, the lines were sharply drawn and the Cold War was largely in place in Europe. Outside Europe, the starting points vary in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Events preceding the World War II and even the Russian Revolution of 1917, underlay older tensions between the Soviet Union, European countries and the United States. A series of events during and after World War II exacerbated tensions, including the Soviet - German pact in 1939, the Anglo - Americans repeated postponement of an amphibious invasion of German - occupied Europe, the Western allies ' support of the Atlantic Charter, Soviet rejection of decisions about Eastern European democracy made in wartime conferences and the Kremlin 's control of an Eastern Bloc of Soviet satellite states. Contents 1 Russian Revolution 2 Interwar diplomacy ( 1918 -- 1939 ) 3 Molotov -- Ribbentrop Pact and the start of World War II ( 1939 -- 1941 ) 4 Wartime alliance ( 1941 -- 1945 ) 5 Postwar relations 5.1 Wartime conferences 6 Creation of the Eastern Bloc 7 Further division in the 1940s 7.1 `` Long Telegram '' and `` Mr. X '' 7.2 `` Iron Curtain '' speech 7.3 Morgenthau and Marshall Plans 7.4 Greece and Italy 7.5 Nazi - Soviet Relations and Falsifiers of History 7.6 Berlin blockade and airlift 7.7 Soviet military perspective 8 Other regions 8.1 Latin America 8.2 Far East and Pacific 8.3 China 8.4 Middle East 9 Historians on the beginning of the Cold War 10 See also 11 Notes 12 Further reading 13 External links Russian Revolution Main article : Russian Revolution In World War I, Britain, France and Russia had been allies from the start in 1914, and the U.S. joined in April 1917. The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November 1917 but German armies advanced rapidly deep into Russia. In early March 1918, they agreed to harsh German peace terms at Treaty of Brest - Litovsk. Russia now was helping Germany win the war by freeing up a million German soldiers for the Western Front and by `` relinquishing much of Russia 's food supply, industrial base, fuel supplies, and communications with Western Europe. '' According to historian Spencer Tucker, the Allies felt, `` The treaty was the ultimate betrayal of the Allied cause and sowed the seeds for the Cold War. With Brest - Litovsk the spectre of German domination in Eastern Europe threatened to become reality, and the Allies now began to think seriously about military intervention ( in Russia ). '' The Bolsheviks saw Russia as only the first step -- they planned to incite revolutions against capitalism in every western country. In 1918 Britain sent in money and some troops to support the anti-Bolshevik `` White '' counter-revolutionaries. France, Japan and the United States also sent forces to help decide the Russian Civil War. However, the Bolsheviks, operating a unified command from a central location, defeated all the opposition one by one and took full control of Russia, as well as breakaway provinces such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Bainbridge Colby, the American Secretary of State, in 1920 announce an American policy of refusing to deal with the new regime. Colby stated : It is their ( Bolshevik ) understanding that the very existence of Bolshevism in Russia, the maintenance of their own rule, depends, and must continue to depend, upon the occurrence of revolutions in all other great civilized nations, including the United States, which will overthrow and destroy their governments and set up Bolshevist rule in their stead. They have made it quite plain that they intend to use every means, including, of course, diplomatic agencies, to promote such revolutionary movements in other countries. Soviet Russia found itself isolated in international diplomacy. Dictator Vladimir Lenin stated that the Soviet Union was surrounded by a `` hostile capitalist encirclement '' and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon to keep Soviet enemies divided, beginning with the establishment of the Soviet Comintern, which called for revolutionary upheavals abroad. Communist revolutions failed in Germany, Bavaria, and Hungary, as the US poured billions of dollars of food relief into eastern Europe expressly to curb unrest. Inter-War diplomacy ( 1918 -- 1939 ) Further information : International relations ( 1919 -- 1939 ), Soviet Union -- United States relations, Germany -- Soviet Union relations before 1941, and Russia -- United Kingdom relations Differences in the political and economic systems of Western democracies and the Soviet Union -- -- dictatorship by one party versus pluralistic competition among parties, mass arrests and execution of dissidents versus free press and independent courts, state ownership of all farms and businesses versus capitalism, economic autarky versus free trade, state planning versus private enterprise -- became simplified and refined in national ideologies to represent two ways of life. Following the postwar Red Scare, many in the U.S. saw the Soviet system as a threat. In 1933 the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially recognized the Soviet Union. The long delay was caused by Moscow 's repudiation of Tsarist - era debts, the undemocratic nature of the Soviet government, and its threats to overthrow capitalism using local Communist Parties. By 1933 these issues had faded and the opportunity for greater trade appealed to Washington. Molotov -- Ribbentrop Pact and the start of World War II ( 1939 -- 1941 ) Main articles : Molotov -- Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi -- Soviet economic relations ( 1934 -- 41 ), and German -- Soviet Axis talks Soviet and German military and political advances in Central and eastern Europe 1939 -- 1940 Moscow was angry with Western appeasement of Adolf Hitler after the signing of the Munich Pact in 1938 which gave Germany partial control of Czechoslovakia after conference in which the Soviet Union was not invited. In 1939 after conducting negotiations with both the British and French group and Germany regarding potential military and political agreements, the Soviet Union and Germany signed a Commercial Agreement providing for the trade of certain German military and civilian equipment in exchange for Soviet raw materials and the Molotov -- Ribbentrop Pact, commonly named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries ( Molotov -- Ribbentrop ), which included a secret agreement to split Poland and Eastern Europe between the two states. One week after the Molotov -- Ribbentrop Pact 's signing, the partition of Poland commenced with the German invasion of western Poland. Relations between the Soviet Union and the West further deteriorated when, two weeks after the German invasion, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland while coordinating with German forces. The Soviet Union then invaded Finland, which was also ceded to it under the Molotov -- Ribbentrop Pact 's secret protocol, resulting in stiff losses and the entry of an interim peace treaty granting it parts of eastern Finland. In June, the Soviets issued an ultimatum demanding Bessarabia, Bukovina and the Hertza region from Romania, after which Romania caved to Soviet demands for occupation. That month, the Soviets also annexed the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia From August 1939 to June 1941 ( when Germany broke the Pact and invaded the Soviet Union ), relations between the West and the Soviets deteriorated further when the Soviet Union and Germany engaged in an extensive economic relationship by which the Soviet Union sent Germany vital oil, rubber, manganese and other material in exchange for German weapons, manufacturing machinery and technology. In late 1940, the Soviets also engaged in talks with Germany regarding potential membership in the Axis, culminating in the countries trading written proposals, though no agreement for Soviet Axis entry was ever reached. Wartime alliance ( 1941 -- 1945 ) U.S. government poster showing a friendly Russian soldier as portrayed by the Allies of World War II Further information : Diplomatic history of World War II On June 22, 1941, Germany broke the Molotov -- Ribbentrop Pact with Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union through the territories that the two countries had previously divided. Stalin switched his cooperation from Hitler to Churchill. Britain and the Soviets signed a formal alliance, but the U.S. did not join until after the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Immediately, there was disagreement between Britain 's ally Poland and the Soviet Union. The British and Poles strongly suspected that when Stalin was cooperating with Hitler he ordered the execution of about 22,000 Polish officer POWs, at what was later to become known as the Katyn massacre. Still, the Soviets and the Western Allies were forced to cooperate, despite their tensions. The U.S. shipped vast quantities of Lend - Lease material to the Soviets. During the war, both sides disagreed on military strategy, especially the question of the opening of a second front against Germany in Western Europe. As early as July 1941, Stalin asked Britain to invade northern France, but Britain was in no position to carry out such a request. Stalin had also requested that the Western Allies open a second front from the early months of the war -- which finally occurred on D - Day, June 6, 1944. The US and Britain initially indicated that they would open the second front in 1942, and then in 1943, but it was postponed both times. In early 1944 MI6 re-established Section IX, its prewar anti-Soviet section, and Philby took a position there. He was able to alert the NKVD about all British intelligence on the Soviets -- including what the American OSS had shared with the British about the Soviets. Throughout World War II, the Soviet NKVD 's mole Kim Philby had access to high - importance British MI6 intelligence, and passed it to the Soviets. The Soviets believed at the time, and charged throughout the Cold War, that the British and Americans intentionally delayed the opening of a second front against Germany in order to intervene only at the last minute so as to influence the peace settlement and dominate Europe. Historians such as John Lewis Gaddis dispute this claim, citing other military and strategic calculations for the timing of the Normandy invasion. In the meantime, the Russians suffered heavy casualties, with as many as twenty million dead. Nevertheless, Soviet perceptions ( or misconceptions ) of the West and vice versa left a strong undercurrent of tension and hostility between the Allied powers. In turn, in 1944, the Soviets appeared to the Allies to have deliberately delayed the relief of the Polish underground 's Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis. The Soviets did not supply the Uprising from the air, and for a significant time also refused to allow British and American air drops. On at least one occasion, a Soviet fighter shot down an RAF plane supplying the Polish insurgents in Warsaw. George Orwell was moved to make a public warning about Soviet postwar intentions. A ' secret war ' also took place between the British SOE - backed AK and Soviet NKVD - backed partisans. British - trained Polish special forces agent Maciej Kalenkiewicz was killed by the Soviets at this time. The British and Soviets also sponsored competing factions of resistance fighters in Yugoslavia and Greece. Both sides, moreover, held very dissimilar ideas regarding the establishment and maintenance of post-war security. The Americans tended to understand security in situational terms, assuming that, if US - style governments and markets were established as widely as possible, countries could resolve their differences peacefully, through international organizations. The key to the US vision of security was a post-war world shaped according to the principles laid out in the 1941 Atlantic Charter -- in other words, a liberal international system based on free trade and open markets. This vision would require a rebuilt capitalist Europe, with a healthy Germany at its center, to serve once more as a hub in global affairs. This would also require US economic and political leadership of the postwar world. Europe needed the USA 's assistance if it was to rebuild its domestic production and finance its international trade. The USA was the only world power not economically devastated by the fighting. By the end of the war, it was producing around fifty percent of the world 's industrial goods. Soviet leaders, however, tended to understand security in terms of space. This reasoning was conditioned by Russia 's historical experiences, given the frequency with which the country had been invaded over the preceding 150 years. The Second World War experience was particularly dramatic for the Russians : the Soviet Union suffered unprecedented devastation as a result of the Nazi onslaught, and over 20 million Soviet citizens died during the war ; tens of thousands of Soviet cities, towns, and villages were leveled ; and 30,100 Soviet factories were destroyed. In order to prevent a similar assault in the future, Stalin was determined to use the Red Army to gain control of Poland, to dominate the Balkans and to destroy utterly Germany 's capacity to engage in another war. The problem was that Stalin 's strategy risked confrontation with the equally powerful United States, who viewed Stalin 's actions as a flagrant violation of the Yalta agreement. At the end of the war in Europe, in May 1945, the Soviets insisted on occupying the Danish island of Bornholm, due to its strategic position at the entrance to the Baltic. When the local German commander insisted on surrendering to the Western Allies, as did German forces in the rest of Denmark, the Soviets bombed the island, causing heavy casualties and damage among a civilian population which was only lightly touched throughout the war, and then invaded the island and occupied it until mid-1946 - all of which can be considered as initial moves in the Cold War. Even before the war came to an end, it seemed highly likely that cooperation between the Western powers and the USSR would give way to intense rivalry or conflict. This was due primarily to the starkly contrasting economic ideologies of the two superpowers, now quite easily the strongest in the world. Whereas the USA was a liberal, two - party democracy with an advanced capitalist economy, based on free enterprise and profit - making, the USSR was a one - party Marxist -- Leninist State with a state - controlled economy where private wealth was all but outlawed. See also : Operation Unthinkable and World War II Behind Closed Doors : Stalin, the Nazis and the West Postwar relations In 1945, the Soviet Union conducted a show trial of 16 Polish resistance leaders who had spent the War fighting against the Nazis with British and American help. Within six years, 14 of them were dead. At the Nuremberg Trials, the chief Soviet prosecutor submitted false documentation in an attempt to indict German defendants for the murder of around 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest near Smolensk. However, suspecting Soviet culpability, the other Allied prosecutors refused to support the indictment and German lawyers promised to mount an embarrassing defense. No one was charged or found guilty at Nuremberg for the Katyn Forest massacre. In 1990, the Soviet government acknowledged that the Katyn massacre was carried out, not by the Germans, but by the Soviet secret police. From September 1945, Polish resistance fighter and Righteous Witold Pilecki was sent by General Anders to spy against the communists in Poland. In 1948, he was executed on charges of spying and ' serving the interests of foreign imperialism '. Wartime conferences Clement Attlee, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945 Several postwar disagreements between western and Soviet leaders were related to their differing interpretations of wartime and immediate post-war conferences. The Tehran Conference in late 1943 was the first Allied conference in which Stalin was present. At the conference the Soviets expressed frustration that the Western Allies had not yet opened a second front against Germany in Western Europe. In Tehran, the Allies also considered the political status of Iran. At the time, the British had occupied southern Iran, while the Soviets had occupied an area of northern Iran bordering the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, at the end of the war, tensions emerged over the timing of the pull out of both sides from the oil - rich region. At the February 1945 Yalta Conference, the Allies attempted to define the framework for a postwar settlement in Europe. The Allies could not reach firm agreements on the crucial questions : the occupation of Germany, postwar reparations from Germany, and the fate of Poland. No final consensus was reached on Germany, other than to agree to a Soviet request for reparations totaling $10 billion `` as a basis for negotiations. '' Debates over the composition of Poland 's postwar government were also acrimonious. The Yalta Conference ended with `` a declaration on liberated Europe pledging respect for democratic forms and providing a diplomatic mechanism for constituting a generally acceptable Polish government ''. Following the Allied victory in May, the Soviets effectively occupied Eastern Europe, while the US had much of Western Europe. In occupied Germany, the US and the Soviet Union established zones of occupation and a loose framework for four - power control with the ailing French and British. Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin meeting at the Potsdam Conference on July 18, 1945. From left to right, first row : Stalin, Truman, Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko, Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Second row : Truman confidant Harry H. Vaughan ( 1 ), Russian interpreter Charles Bohlen, Truman naval aide James K. Vardaman, Jr., and Charles Griffith Ross ( partially obscured ) ( 2 ). At the Potsdam Conference starting in late July 1945, the Allies met to decide how to administer the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier on May 7 and May 8, 1945, VE day. Serious differences emerged over the future development of Germany and Eastern Europe. At Potsdam, the US was represented by a new president, Harry S. Truman, who on April 12 succeeded to the office upon Roosevelt 's death. Truman was unaware of Roosevelt 's plans for post-war engagement with the Soviet Union, and more generally uninformed about foreign policy and military matters. The new president, therefore, was initially reliant on a set of advisers ( including Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. This group tended to take a harder line towards Moscow than Roosevelt had done. Administration officials favoring cooperation with the Soviet Union and the incorporation of socialist economies into a world trade system were marginalized. The UK was represented by a new prime minister, Clement Attlee, who had replaced Churchill after the Labour Party 's defeat of the Conservatives in the 1945 general election. One week after the Potsdam Conference ended, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki added to Soviet distrust of the United States, when shortly after the attacks, Stalin protested to U.S. officials when Truman offered the Soviets little real influence in occupied Japan. The immediate end of war material shipments from America to the USSR after the surrender of Germany also upset some politicians in Moscow, who believed this showed the U.S. had no intentions to support the USSR any more than they had to. Creation of the Eastern Bloc Expansion of the USSR during World War II. The borders of Eastern bloc 's members other than the USSR, Poland and Yugoslavia are shown in their post-war status Main article : Eastern Bloc After the war, Stalin sought to secure the Soviet Union 's western border by installing communist - dominated regimes under Soviet influence in bordering countries. During and in the years immediately after the war, the Soviet Union annexed several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Many of these were originally countries effectively ceded to it by Nazi Germany in the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact, before Germany invaded the Soviet Union. These later annexed territories include Eastern Poland ( incorporated into two different SSRs ), Latvia ( became Latvia SSR ), Estonia ( became Estonian SSR ), Lithuania ( became Lithuania SSR ), part of eastern Finland ( Karelo - Finnish SSR and annexed into the Russian SFSR ) and northern Romania ( became the Moldavian SSR ). Other states were converted into Soviet Satellite states, such as East Germany, the People 's Republic of Poland, the People 's Republic of Hungary, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the People 's Republic of Romania and the People 's Republic of Albania, which aligned itself in the 1960s away from the Soviet Union and towards the People 's Republic of China. The defining characteristic of the Stalinist communism implemented in Eastern Bloc states was the unique symbiosis of the state with society and the economy, resulting in politics and economics losing their distinctive features as autonomous and distinguishable spheres. Initially, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies, democratic governance ( dubbed `` bourgeois democracy '' in Soviet parlance ) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state. They were economically communist and depended upon the Soviet Union for significant amounts of materials. While in the first five years following World War II, massive emigration from these states to the West occurred, restrictions implemented thereafter stopped most East - West migration, except that under limited bilateral and other agreements. Further division in the 1940s `` Long telegram '' and `` Mr. X '' Main article : X Article In February 1946, George F. Kennan 's Long Telegram from Moscow helped articulate the growing hard line against the Soviets. The telegram argued that the Soviet Union was motivated by both traditional Russian imperialism and by Marxist ideology ; Soviet behavior was inherently expansionist and paranoid, posing a threat to the United States and its allies. Later writing as `` Mr. X '' in his article `` The Sources of Soviet Conduct '' in Foreign Affairs ( July 1947 ), Kennan drafted the classic argument for adopting a policy of `` containment '' toward the Soviet Union. `` Iron Curtain '' speech Main article : Iron Curtain On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, while at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, gave his speech `` The Sinews of Peace, '' declaring that an `` iron curtain '' had descended across Europe. From the standpoint of the Soviets, the speech was an incitement for the West to begin a war with the USSR, as it called for an Anglo - American alliance against the Soviets `` Morgenthau and Marshall plans Further information : Morgenthau Plan, Marshall Plan, and Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948 Having lost 20 million people in the war, suffered German invasion twice in 30 years, and suffered tens of millions of casualties from onslaughts from the West three times in the preceding 150 years, the Soviet Union was determined to destroy Germany 's capacity for another war. This was in alignment with the U.S. policy which had foreseen returning Germany to a pastoral state without heavy industry ( the Morgenthau Plan ). On September 6, 1946, James F. Byrnes made a speech in Germany, repudiating the Morgenthau Plan and warning the Soviets that the US intended to maintain a military presence in Europe indefinitely. ( see Restatement of Policy on Germany ) As Byrnes admitted one month later, `` The nub of our program was to win the German people (... ) it was a battle between us and Russia over minds (... ) '' Because of the increasing costs of food imports to avoid mass - starvation in Germany, and with the danger of losing the entire nation to communism, the U.S. government abandoned the Morgenthau plan in September 1946 with Secretary of State James F. Byrnes ' speech Restatement of Policy on Germany. In January 1947, Truman appointed General George Marshall as Secretary of State, scrapped Joint Chiefs of Staff ( JCS ) directive 1067, which embodied the Morgenthau Plan and supplanted it with JCS 1779, which decreed that an orderly and prosperous Europe requires the economic contributions of a stable and productive Germany. ``. Administration officials met with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and others to press for an economically self - sufficient Germany, including a detailed accounting of the industrial plants, good and infrastructure already removed by the Soviets. After six weeks of negotiations, Molotov refused the demands and the talks were adjourned. Marshall was particularly discouraged after personally meeting with Stalin, who expressed little interest in a solution to German economic problems. The United States concluded that a solution could not wait any longer. In a June 5, 1947 speech, Comporting with the Truman Doctrine, Marshall announced a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe, called the Marshall Plan. With the initial planning for the Marshall plan in mid 1947, a plan which depended on a reactivated German economy, restrictions placed on German production were lessened. The roof for permitted steel production was for example raised from 25 % of pre-war production levels to 50 % of pre-war levels. The scrapping of JCS 1067 paved the way for the 1948 currency reform which halted rampant inflation. Stalin opposed the Marshall Plan. He had built up the Eastern Bloc protective belt of Soviet controlled nations on his Western border, and wanted to maintain this buffer zone of states combined with a weakened Germany under Soviet control. Fearing American political, cultural and economic penetration, Stalin eventually forbade Soviet Eastern bloc countries of the newly formed Cominform from accepting Marshall Plan aid. In Czechoslovakia, that required a Soviet - backed Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, the brutality of which shocked Western powers more than any event so far and set in a motion a brief scare that war would occur and swept away the last vestiges of opposition to the Marshall Plan in the United States Congress. In September, 1947 the Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov declared that the Truman Doctrine `` intended for accordance of the American help to all reactionary regimes, that actively oppose to democratic people, bears an undisguised aggressive character. '' Greece and Italy In Greece, during a civil war involving the communist - led partisan movement ELAS - EAM, British Special Forces terminated arms supplies to the ELA - ELAM, pro-monarchist armed forces were strengthened. On the political front, Americans, with British encouragement, attempted to dismantle ELAS - EAM socialist structures in the countryside, and an anti-communist swing gradually occurred. Western Allies conducted meetings in Italy in March 1945 with German representatives to forestall a takeover by Italian communist resistance forces in northern Italy and to hinder the potential there for post-war influence of the civilian communist party. The affair caused a major rift between Stalin and Churchill, and in a letter to Roosevelt on 3 April Stalin complained that the secret negotiations did not serve to `` preserve and promote trust between our countries. '' Nazi - Soviet relations and Falsifiers of History Main article : Falsifiers of History Relations further deteriorated when, in January 1948, the U.S. State Department also published a collection of documents titled Nazi - Soviet Relations, 1939 -- 1941 : Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office, which contained documents recovered from the Foreign Office of Nazi Germany revealing Soviet conversations with Germany regarding the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact, including its secret protocol dividing eastern Europe, the 1939 German - Soviet Commercial Agreement, and discussions of the Soviet Union potentially becoming the fourth Axis Power. In response, one month later, the Soviet Union published Falsifiers of History, this book, edited and partially re-written by Stalin, attacked the West. Berlin Blockade and airlift Main article : Berlin Blockade The first major crisis in the emerging Cold War was the Berlin Blockade of 1948 - 49. Historian Carol K. Fink argues that this crisis, `` occupies a special place in Cold War historiography, as an emblem of Soviet aggressiveness and Anglo - American resistance. '' After setbacks to Soviet plans through the Marshall Plan, the successful introduction of a new currency to West Germany, and massive electoral losses for Communist parties, Moscow decided to cut off land access to West Berlin by rail and highway, thereby initiating the Berlin Blockade. Because Berlin was located within the Soviet - occupied zone of Germany, the only available methods of supplying the city were three limited air corridors. By February 1948, because of massive post-war military cuts, the entire United States army had been reduced to 552,000 men. Military forces in non-Soviet Berlin sectors totaled only 8,973 Americans, 7,606 British and 6,100 French. Soviet military forces in the Soviet sector that surrounded Berlin totaled one and a half million men. The two United States regiments in Berlin would have provided little resistance against a Soviet attack. Therefore, a massive aerial supply campaign was initiated by the United States, Britain, France and other countries, the success of which caused Stalin to lift their blockade in May 1949. At no time did the Soviet military or the Politburo contemplate a military escalation of the Berlin crisis. The United States, the Berlin crisis underscored the need to reverse the demobilization of the Army. On July 20, 1948, President Truman reopened the military draft. He called for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months. The dispute over Germany escalated after Truman refused to give the Soviet Union reparations from West Germany 's industrial plants because he believed it would hamper Germany 's economic recovery further. Stalin responded by splitting off the Soviet sector of Germany as a communist state. The dismantling of West German industry was finally halted in 1951, when Germany agreed to place its heavy industry under the control of the European Coal and Steel Community, which in 1952 took over the role of the International Authority for the Ruhr. At other times there were signs of caution. Stalin observed his 1944 agreement with Churchill and did not aid the communists in the struggle against the British - supported anti-communist regime in Greece. In Finland he accepted a friendly, non-communist government ; and Russian troops were withdrawn from Austria by the end of 1955. Soviet military perspective The Soviet military was focused on its main mission, the defense of the Soviet Union. From that perspective, the formation of NATO in 1949 was the decisive threat, and became its starting point for the Cold War. Historian David Glantz argues that : Militarily, the Soviets considered themselves threatened by, first, the United States ' atomic monopoly ( broken in 1949 ) and, second, by the emergence of United States dominated military alliances, the most menacing of which was NATO. The Soviet Union responded strategically by preserving a large, expandable peacetime military establishment, keeping large military forces in conquered regions of Eastern Europe, and cloaking these forces within the political guise of an alliance ( the Warsaw Pact ), Which could contend with NATO on a multilateral basis. The major thrust of Soviet military strategy was to possess a conventional military force whose offensive capabilities could check Western nuclear and conventional military power. Other regions The Cold War took place worldwide, but it had a somewhat different timing and trajectory outside Europe. In Africa, decolonization took place first ; it was largely accomplished in the 1950s. The main rivals then sought bases of support in the new national political alignments. Latin America During World War II, the United States military operations had widespread support across Latin America, except for Argentina. After 1947, with the Cold War emerging in Europe, Washington made repeated efforts to encourage all the Latin American countries to take a Cold War anti-Communist position. They were reluctant to do so -- for example, only Colombia sent soldiers to the United Nations contingent in the Korean War. The Soviet Union was quite weak across Latin America. Not until the late 1950s did Moscow achieve diplomatic or commercial relationships with most Latin American countries., Before then it had only two trade agreements ( with Argentina and Mexico. ) The communist movements that had existed in Brazil and elsewhere in the 1930s had been disbanded or outlawed. Washington exaggerated the dangers, and decided on a preemptive attack against a possible communist threat. It sought anti-communist resolutions at the annual meetings of the Pan American Union ( renamed the Organization of American States ( OAS ) in 1948 ) and paid special attention to the growth of left - wing forces in Guatemala. A compromise was reached whereby the Latin American states agreed on vague statements of support for the American Cold War position, and the United States provided expanded financial grants and loans to stimulate economic growth. In 1954, at the 10th Inter-American Conference in Caracas, Washington demanded a resolution that the establishment of a communist government in any American state was a threat to the peace of the hemisphere. Guatemala cast the only negative vote. Guatemala 's military, with CIA encouragement, overthrew its left - wing government later that year. Fidel Castro engineered his revolutionary takeover of Cuba in 1957 - 58 with very little Soviet support. The United States and the smaller Latin countries, outvoted the larger powers by the required two - thirds majority in 1962 to identify Cuba as a communist regime and suspend it from the OAS. Far East and pacific After the war ended, Malaya was plunged into a state of emergency as British and Commonwealth forces fought a protracted counter-insurgency war against their former communist - led MPAJA ally, who had fought the Japanese and now demanded independence from Britain. In British Hong Kong, which had surrendered to Japan in December 1941, civil unrest occurred after Britain rapidly re-established rule at the end of the war. Australia 's entry into the Cold War came in 1950, when it rushed combat air and sea forces into the Korean War, two days after the Americans did. The Australian Prime Minister received a hero 's welcome in Washington. The ANZUS military alliance with New Zealand and the United States was signed in July 1951 ; it was a plan for consultation and did not involve military planning like NATO. Public opinion in Australia was intensely hostile to Japan after its wartime atrocities, but Japan was now an ally in the Cold War, so Australia 's accepted the very generous soft peace treaty with Japan in 1951. Instead of worrying about a resurgent Japan, Australia now worried more about a possible Chinese threat. China Main articles : Sino - Soviet relations and China -- United States relations Following decades of struggle, in 1949 the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong defeated Chiang Kai - shek 's Nationalist armies and took control of the mainland. The Nationalist leaders and much of China 's upper class fled to Taiwan where they had American protection. Stalin had long supported Chiang Kai - shek, while also giving some help to the Communists. The United States had tried 1945 - 48 to bring the Nationalists and Communists together in a coalition, but had no success. The conflict was not therefore part of the Cold War until 1949 - 1959. By the late 1950s, however, China and the USSR were at sword 's point, and became bitter enemies over ideological control of the Marxist -- Leninist orthodoxy. The two set up rival communist organizations in countries across the world. The Cold War then became a three - way conflict. France for many years had been dealing with a nationalist insurgency in Vietnam in which communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, played a prominent leadership role. In 1949, Mao 's Communists took control of the north side of the China - Vietnam border, and began supporting the insurgents, especially by providing sanctuary from French attacks. Mark Lawrence and Frederik Logevall point out that `` resurgent French colonialism became inextricably intertwined with Cold War tensions, especially in the years after 1949. '' American pressure on France after 1949 tried to force France to give priority to fighting communism, rather than fighting Vietnamese nationalism. Middle East The political situation in Iran was a flashpoint between the major players in 1945 - 46, with the Soviet Union sponsoring two breakaway provinces in northern Iran, adjacent to the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Soviet troops were stationed in northwestern Iran during the war. They not only refused to withdraw in 1945 but backed revolts that established short - lived, pro-Soviet separatist national states called the Azerbaijan People 's Government and the Republic of Kurdistan. The issue was debated at the United Nations, and in 1946 Moscow abandoned its position, and the conflict was permanently resolved peacefully, with a pro-western government resuming control. Iran did not become a major battlefield of the Cold War, but it had its own history of confrontation with Britain and the United States. The long - standing conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Mandatory Palestine region continued after 1945, with Britain and in an increasingly impossible situation as the mandate holder. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 calling for a homeland for the Jews was supported in 1947 by both the Soviet Union and the United States. Both countries promptly Recognize the independent state of Israel in 1948. The Soviet Union later broke with Israel to support its Arab enemies. The region was more of an independent trouble zone rather than a playing field of the Cold War, and was not a precipitating factor in the Cold War. By 1953, Arab nationalism based in Egypt was a neutralizing force. The Soviet Union leaned increasingly toward Egypt. Ehe United States based its Cold War coalition primarily on the Baghdad Pact of 1955 which formed Central Treaty Organization ( CENTO ), that included Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Historians on the beginning of the Cold War While most historians trace its origins to the period immediately following World War II, others argue that it began with the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 when the Bolsheviks took power. In 1919 Lenin stated that his new state was surrounded by a `` hostile capitalist encirclement '', and he viewed diplomacy as a weapon that should be used in order to keep the Soviet Union 's enemies divided. He began with a new Communist International ( `` Comintern '' ), based in Moscow, which was designed to plan for revolutionary upheavals abroad. It was ineffective -- Communist uprisings all failed in Germany, Hungary and elsewhere. Historian Max Beloff argues that the Soviets saw `` no prospect of permanent peace '', with the 1922 Soviet Constitution proclaiming : Since the time of the formation of the soviet republics, the states of the world have divided into two camps : the camp of capitalism and the camp of socialism. There - in the camp of capitalism - national enmity and inequality, colonial slavery, and chauvinism, national oppression and pogroms, imperialist brutalities and wars. Here - in the camp of socialism - mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, a dwelling together in peace and the brotherly collaboration of peoples. According to British historian Christopher Sutton : In what some have called the First Cold War, from Britain 's intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918 to its uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union against the Axis powers in 1941, British distrust of the revolutionary and regicidal Bolsheviks resulted in domestic, foreign, and colonial policies aimed at resisting the spread of communism. This conflict after 1945 took on new battlefields, new weapons, new players, and a greater intensity, but it was still fundamentally a conflict against Soviet imperialism ( real and imagined ). The idea of long - term continuity is a minority scholarly view that has been challenged. Frank Ninkovich writes : As for the two cold wars thesis, the chief problem is that the two periods are incommensurable. To be sure, they were joined together by enduring ideological hostility, but in the post-World War I years Bolshevism was not a geopolitical menace. After World War II, in contrast, the Soviet Union was a superpower that combined ideological antagonism with the kind of geopolitical threat posed by Germany and Japan in the Second World War. Even with more amicable relations in the 1920s, it is conceivable that post-1945 relations would have turned out much the same. The usage of the term `` cold war '' to describe the postwar tensions between the U.S. - and Soviet - led blocs was popularized by Bernard Baruch, a U.S. financier and an adviser to Harry Truman, who used the term during a speech before the South Carolina state legislature on April 16, 1947. Since the term `` Cold War '' was popularized in 1947, there has been extensive disagreement in many political and scholarly discourses on what exactly were the sources of postwar tensions. In the American historiography, there has been disagreement as to who was responsible for the quick unraveling of the wartime alliance between 1945 and 1947, and on whether the conflict between the two superpowers was inevitable or could have been avoided. Discussion of these questions has centered in large part on the works of William Appleman Williams, Walter LaFeber, and John Lewis Gaddis. Officials in the Truman administration placed responsibility for postwar tensions on the Soviets, claiming that Stalin had violated promises made at Yalta, pursued a policy of expansionism in Eastern Europe, and conspired to spread communism throughout the world. Historians associated with the New Left such as Williams, however, placed responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace mostly on the U.S., citing a range of U.S. efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II. According to Williams and later writers influenced by his work -- such as Walter LaFeber, author of the popular survey text America, Russia, and the Cold War ( updated in 2002 ) -- U.S. policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining capitalism domestically. In order to ensure this goal, they pursued a policy of ensuring an `` Open Door '' to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture across the world. From this perspective, a growing economy domestically went hand - in - hand with the consolidation of U.S. power internationally. Williams and LaFeber also dismissed the assumption that Soviet leaders were committed to postwar `` expansionism. '' They cited evidence that Soviet Union 's occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive rationale, and Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid encirclement by the United States and its allies. From this view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the Second World War as to be unable to pose any serious threat to the U.S., which emerged after 1945 as the sole world power not economically devastated by the war, and also as the sole possessor of the atomic bomb until 1949. Gaddis, however, argues that the conflict was less the lone fault of one side or the other and more the result of a plethora of conflicting interests and misperceptions between the two superpowers, propelled by domestic politics and bureaucratic inertia. While Gaddis does not hold either side as entirely responsible for the onset of the conflict, he argues that the Soviets should be held at least slightly more accountable for the problems. According to Gaddis, Stalin was in a much better position to compromise than his Western counterparts, given his much broader power within his own regime than Truman, who had to contend with Congress and was often undermined by vociferous political opposition at home. Asking if it were possible to predict if the wartime alliance would fall apart within a matter of months, leaving in its place nearly a half century of cold war, Gaddis wrote in a 1997 essay, `` Geography, demography, and tradition contributed to this outcome but did not determine it. It took men, responding unpredictably to circumstances, to forge the chain of causation ; and it took ( Stalin ) in particular, responding predictably to his own authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic predisposition, to lock it into place. '' Global historian Prasenjit Duara has placed the issue in a global context : The Cold War is increasingly treated as a global historical period beginning customarily in 1947 when the Truman Doctrine sought to contain communism and the expansion of Soviet influence, and ending with the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc in the late 1980s. See also The Great Game Culture during the Cold War Historiography of the Cold War Non-Aligned Movement Notes Jump up ^ Carole K. Fink, Cold War : An International History ( 2014 ) pp 53 - 55. Jump up ^ Steven Lee, Outposts of Empire : Korea, Vietnam, and the Origins of the Cold War in Asia, 1949 - 1954 ( Montreal : McGill - Queen 's University Press ; 1996 ). Jump up ^ Jerald A Combs ( 2015 ). The History of American Foreign Policy from 1895. Routledge. p. 97. Jump up ^ Todd Chretien ( 2017 ). Eyewitnesses to the Russian Revolution. p. 129. Jump up ^ Michael Senior ( 2016 ). Victory on the Western Front : The Development of the British Army 1914 - 1918. p. 176. Jump up ^ Spencer C. Tucker ( 2013 ). The European Powers in the First World War : An Encyclopedia. p. 608. Jump up ^ David W. McFadden, `` After the Colby Note : The Wilson Administration and the Bolsheviks, 1920 - 21. '' Presidential Studies Quarterly 25.4 ( 1995 ) : 741 - 750. online Jump up ^ See Colby Letter of August 10, 1920 Jump up ^ Lee 1999, p. 57 Jump up ^ Tucker 1992, p. 34 Jump up ^ Weinreb, Alice ( 2017 - 05 - 01 ). Modern Hungers : Food and Power in Twentieth - Century Germany. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190605117. Jump up ^ Justus D. Doenecke ; Mark A. Stoler ( 2005 ). Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt 's Foreign Policies, 1933 - 1945. p. 121. Jump up ^ Shirer 1990, pp. 515 -- 540 Jump up ^ Shirer 1990, p. 668 Jump up ^ Ericson 1999, p. 57 Jump up ^ Day, Alan J. ; East, Roger ; Thomas, Richard. A Political and Economic Dictionary of Eastern Europe, pg. 405 Jump up ^ NDTV.com : Stalin offered troops to stop Hitler : Report Archived March 17, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. ^ Jump up to : Roberts 2006, p. 82 ^ Jump up to : Roberts 2006, p. 43 ^ Jump up to : Kennedy - Pipe, Caroline, Stalin 's Cold War, New York : Manchester University Press, 1995, ISBN 0 - 7190 - 4201 - 1 ^ Jump up to : Roberts 2006, p. 55 ^ Jump up to : Wettig 2008, p. 20 ^ Jump up to : Senn, Alfred Erich, Lithuania 1940 : revolution from above, Amsterdam, New York, Rodopi, 2007 ISBN 978 - 90 - 420 - 2225 - 6 Jump up ^ Ericson, Edward E. ( 1999 ), Feeding the German Eagle : Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933 -- 1941, Greenwood Publishing Group, pp. 1 -- 210, ISBN 0 - 275 - 96337 - 3 Jump up ^ Shirer, William L. ( 1990 ), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich : A History of Nazi Germany, Simon and Schuster, pp. 598 -- 610, ISBN 0 - 671 - 72868 - 7 Jump up ^ Nekrich, Ulam & Freeze 1997, pp. 195 -- 204 Jump up ^ Gaddis 1990, p. 149 Jump up ^ Olga Rzheshevsky, `` D - DAY / 60 years later : For Russia, opening of a second front in Europe came far too late '', New York Times, June 8, 2004 Jump up ^ Gaddis 1990, pp. 151 -- 153 Jump up ^ Gaddis 1990, p. 151 Jump up ^ Gaddis 1990, p. 156 ^ Jump up to : Walter LaFeber, `` Cold War. '' A Reader 's Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, eds. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991. Jump up ^ Gaddis 1990, p. 176 Jump up ^ Id. ^ Jump up to : David F. Schmitz, `` Cold War ( 1945 -- 91 ) : Causes '' The Oxford Companion to American Military History. John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., Oxford University Press 1999. Jump up ^ `` German Defense Team Clobbers Soviet Claims ''. Nizkor.org. 1995 - 08 - 26. Retrieved 2009 - 04 - 04. Jump up ^ BBC News story : Russia to release massacre files, 16 December 2004 online Jump up ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/books/review/the-auschwitz-volunteer-by-witold-pilecki.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Jump up ^ Gaddis 1990, p. 164 Jump up ^ Walter LaFeber, Russia, America, and the Cold War ( New York, 2002 ), p. 15 Jump up ^ H., Hunt, Michael. The world transformed : 1945 to the present. p. 48. ISBN 9780199371020. OCLC 907585907. Jump up ^ Peter Byrd, `` Cold War '' The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Ed. Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan. Oxford University Press, 2003. Jump up ^ LaFeber 2002, p. 28 Jump up ^ Wettig 2008, p. 21 Jump up ^ Shirer 1990, p. 794 Jump up ^ Wettig 2008, pp. 96 -- 100 Jump up ^ Granville, Johanna, The First Domino : International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956, Texas A&M University Press, 2004. ISBN 1 - 58544 - 298 - 4 Jump up ^ Grenville 2005, pp. 370 -- 71 Jump up ^ Cook 2001, p. 17 Jump up ^ Hardt & Kaufman 1995, p. 11 Jump up ^ Hardt & Kaufman 1995, p. 12 Jump up ^ Hardt & Kaufman 1995, p. 15 Jump up ^ Böcker 1998, p. 209 Jump up ^ Schmitz Jump up ^ Stalin Interview With Pravda on Churchill. New York Times, 1946, March 14, p. 6. Jump up ^ Curtis F. Morgan, Southern Partnership : James F. Byrnes, Lucius D. Clay and Germany, 1945 1947 Jump up ^ John Gimbel `` On the Implementation of the Potsdam Agreement : An Essay on U.S. Postwar German Policy '' Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 2. ( Jun., 1972 ), pp. 242 -- 269. Jump up ^ Beschloss 2003, p. 277 ^ Jump up to : Miller 2000, p. 16 Jump up ^ Marshall, George C, The Marshal Plan Speech, June 5, 1947 Jump up ^ Pas de Pagaille ! Time Magazine July 28, 1947. Jump up ^ Miller 2000, p. 10 Jump up ^ Miller 2000, p. 11 Jump up ^ Airbridge to Berlin, `` Eye of the Storm '' chapter Jump up ^ Miller 2000, p. 19 Jump up ^ Lawrence S Wittner, American Intervention in Greece 1943 - 1949, New York : Columbia, 1982 ; John O Iatrides ( ed ), Greece in the 1940s, Hanover and London : University Press of New England, 1981 ; Howard Jones, A New Kind of War : America 's global strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece, London : Oxford University Press 1989. Bruce R Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War in the Near East, Princeton : Princeton University Press 1980 Jump up ^ LS Stavrianos, `` The Greek National Liberation Front ( EAM ) : A Study in Resistance, Organisation and Administration '', Journal of Modern History, March 1952, pp. 42 - 55. Jump up ^ Prokopis Papastratis, `` The British and the Greek Resistance Movements EAM and EDES '', in Marion Sarafis ( ed. ), Greece : From Resistance to Civil War, Nottingham : Spokesman 1980, p. 36. Jump up ^ R Harris Smith, OSS, Berkely : University of California Press, 1972, pp. 114 - 121 Jump up ^ Bradley F Smith and Elena Agarossi, Operation Sunrise : The Secret Surrender, New York, 1979. Jump up ^ Richardson, op cit, p. 264. ^ Jump up to : Henig 2005, p. 67 Jump up ^ Department of State 1948, p. preface ^ Jump up to : Roberts 2002, p. 97 Jump up ^ Department of State 1948, p. 78 Jump up ^ Department of State 1948, pp. 32 -- 77 Jump up ^ Churchill 1953, pp. 512 -- 524 Jump up ^ Roberts 2002, p. 96 Jump up ^ Steve Phillips ( 2001 ). The Cold War : Conflict in Europe and Asia. p. 27. Jump up ^ Carole K. Fink ( 2013 ). Cold War : An International History. p. 71. Jump up ^ Miller 2000, pp. 6 -- 7 Jump up ^ Miller 2000, p. 28 Jump up ^ Miller 2000, p. 33 Jump up ^ Miller 2000, p. 30 Jump up ^ Miller 2000, p. 29 Jump up ^ ( Jump up ^ Andrew J. Goodpaster ; et al. ( 2016 ). Toward a Consensus on Military Service : Report of the Atlantic Council 's Working Group on Military Service. Elsevier Science. pp. 34 -- 35. CS1 maint : Explicit use of et al. ( link ) Jump up ^ Victor Gobarev, `` Soviet military plans and actions during the first Berlin crisis, 1948 -- 49 '' Journal of Slavic Military Studies 10 : 3, 1 - 24, DOI : 10.1080 / 13518049708430303 Jump up ^ David M. Glantz ( 2001 ). The Military Strategy of the Soviet Union : A History. pp. 169 -- 70. Jump up ^ Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War : A World History ( Penguin UK, 2017 ) pp 2 - 7. Jump up ^ James H. Meriwether, `` Endangering the Security of the Free World : Africa, the United States, and the Cold War, '' New England Journal of History, 64 ( Fall 2007 ), 90 -- 101. Jump up ^ Gregory Weeks, U.S. and Latin American Relations ( 2008 ) p 97 Jump up ^ Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America ( 6th ed. 2005 ) pp 121, 160 - 61 Jump up ^ Skidmore and Smith, Modern Latin America ( 2005 ) p 410 - 19. Jump up ^ Westad, The Global Cold War, pp 146 - 49. Jump up ^ Richard H. Immerman, `` Guatemala as Cold War History, '' Political Science Quarterly 95 # 3 ( 1980 - 81 ) : 629 - 653. online Jump up ^ Harold E. Davis, History of Latin America ( 1968 ) 723 - 25 Jump up ^ Lester Langley, ed. The United States, Cuba, and the Cold War ; American Failure Or Communist Conspiracy ? ( 1970 ) Jump up ^ Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations : Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping, London : Faber, 1971. Jump up ^ Spenser Chapman, The Jungle is Neutral, London : Chatto and Windus, 1948 ; Ian Trenowden, Operations Most Secret : SOE, the Malayan Theatre, London : Wm Kimber, 1978 Jump up ^ Philip Snow, The Fall of Hong Kong : Britain, China, and the Japanese Occupation, Yale University Press : 2003. Jump up ^ Russel Ward, A Nation for a Continent : History of Australia 1901 - 1975 ( 1977 ) p 322. Jump up ^ Gavan McCormack, Cold war, hot war : An Australian perspective on the Korean war ( 1983 ). Jump up ^ Priscilla Roberts, `` New Perspectives on Cold War History from China, '' Diplomatic History 41 : 2 ( April 2017 ) online Jump up ^ Jeremy Friedman, Shadow Cold War : The Sino - Soviet Competition for the Third World ( 2015 ). online Jump up ^ Robert S. Ross, China, the United States, and the Soviet Union : tripolarity and policy making in the Cold War ( 1993 ). Jump up ^ Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds ( 2007 ). The First Vietnam War : Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis. Harvard UP. p. 14. CS1 maint : Extra text : authors list ( link ) Jump up ^ Bruce R. Kuniholm, The origins of the Cold War in the Near East : Great power conflict and diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece ( Princeton UP, 2014 ). Jump up ^ Arms, Encyclopedia of the Cold War ( 1994 ) pp 37 - 38, 400 Jump up ^ Howard A. Patten, Israel and the Cold War ( 2013 ) excerpt Jump up ^ Michael J. Cohen, `` From ' Cold ' to ' Hot ' War : Allied Strategic and Military Interests in the Middle East after the Second World War. '' Middle Eastern Studies 43.5 ( 2007 ) : 725 - 748. Jump up ^ Behcet Kemal Yesilbursa, The Baghdad Pact : Anglo - American Defence Policies in the Middle East, 1950 - 59 ( 2003 ) excerpt. Jump up ^ Ayesha Jalal, `` Towards the Baghdad Pact : South Asia and Middle East Defence in the Cold War, 1947 - 1955. '' International History Review 11.3 ( 1989 ) : 409 - 433. Jump up ^ Gaddis 1990, p. 57 Jump up ^ N. Copsey ; A. Olechnowicz ( 2010 ). Varieties of Anti-Fascism : Britain in the Inter-War Period. Springer. p. 33. Jump up ^ Max Beloff, The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia 1929 - 1936 ( vol 1, 1947 ) p. 2. Jump up ^ Chrtistopher Sutton, Britain 's Cold War in Cyprus and Hong Kong : A Conflict of Empires ( 2016 ), abstract of ch. 1 Jump up ^ Frank Ninkovich, `` The First Cold War '' Presidential Studies Quarterly ( 2003 ) 33 # 3 pp 688 - 90. Jump up ^ Baruch, Bernard M... Vital Speeches of the Day, 5 / 1 / 47, Vol. 13 Issue 14, p425, 3p ; ( AN 9753238 ) Cold War -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia ^ Jump up to : Jonathan Nashel, `` Cold War ( 1945 -- 91 ) : Changing Interpretations '' The Oxford Companion to American Military History. John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., Oxford University Press 1999. Jump up ^ Brinkley, Alan ( 1986 ). American History : A Survey. New York : McGraw - Hill, pp. 798 -- 799. ^ Jump up to : Brinkley, 798 -- 799 Jump up ^ ' Dictionary of the Social Sciences '. Craig Calhoun, ed. Oxford University Press. 2002. Jump up ^ Calhoun Jump up ^ John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know : Rethinking the Cold War ( New York : Oxford University Press, 1997 ) Jump up ^ Prasenjit Duara, `` The Cold War as a historical period : an interpretive essay. '' Journal of Global History 6.3 ( 2011 ) : 457 - 480. online Further reading Further information : List of primary and secondary sources on the Cold War Beschloss, Michael R ( 2003 ), The Conquerors : Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler 's Germany, 1941 -- 1945, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0 - 7432 - 6085 - 6 Böcker, Anita ( 1998 ), Regulation of Migration : International Experiences, Het Spinhuis, ISBN 90 - 5589 - 095 - 2 Brune, Lester Brune and Richard Dean Burns. Chronology of the Cold War : 1917 -- 1992 ( 2005 ) 700pp ; highly detailed month - by - month summary for many countries * Christenson, Ron ( 1991 ), Political trials in history : from antiquity to the present, Transaction Publishers, ISBN 0 - 88738 - 406 - 4 Churchill, Winston ( 1953 ), The Second World War, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ISBN 0 - 395 - 41056 - 8 Gaddis, John Lewis ( 1972 ), The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941 -- 1947, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0 - 231 - 08302 - 5 Gaddis, John Lewis ( 1990 ), Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States -- An Interpretive History Grenville, John Ashley Soames ( 2005 ), A History of the World from the 20th to the 21st Century, Routledge, ISBN 0 - 415 - 28954 - 8 Hardt, John Pearce ; Kaufman, Richard F. ( 1995 ), East - Central European Economies in Transition, M.E. Sharpe, ISBN 1 - 56324 - 612 - 0 Henig, Ruth Beatrice ( 2005 ), The Origins of the Second World War, 1933 -- 41, Routledge, ISBN 0 - 415 - 33262 - 1 Huston, Robert ( 1975 ). `` Roots of the Cold War ''. Conspectus of History. 1 ( 2 ). Leffler, Melvyn P. and Odd Arne Westad, eds. The Cambridge History of the Cold War : Volume 1, Origins ( 2015 ) 23 essays by leading scholars. excerpt Leffler, Melvyn ( 1992 ), A Preponderance of Power : National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0 - 8047 - 2218 - 8 Lewkowicz, Nicolas ( 2010 ), The German Question and the International Order, 1943 - 48, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 978 - 0 - 230 - 24812 - 0 Lewkowicz, Nicolas ( 2008 ), The German Question and the Origins of the Cold War, IPOC, ISBN 978 - 88 - 95145 - 27 - 3 Lee, Stephen J. ( 1999 ), Stalin and the Soviet Union, Routledge, ISBN 0 - 415 - 18573 - 4 Miller, Roger Gene ( 2000 ), To Save a City : The Berlin Airlift, 1948 -- 1949, Texas A&M University Press, ISBN 0 - 89096 - 967 - 1 Nekrich, Aleksandr Moiseevich ; Ulam, Adam Bruno ; Freeze, Gregory L. ( 1997 ), Pariahs, Partners, Predators : German -- Soviet Relations, 1922 -- 1941, Columbia University Press, ISBN 0 - 231 - 10676 - 9 Porter, Bernard, The Lion 's Share : A Short History of British Imperialism 1850 -- 1995, Longman, 1996. pp. 84 -- 89. Roberts, Geoffrey ( 2006 ), Stalin 's Wars : From World War to Cold War, 1939 -- 1953, Yale University Press, ISBN 0 - 300 - 11204 - 1 Roberts, Geoffrey. `` Stalin, the Pact with Nazi Germany, and the Origins of Postwar Soviet Diplomatic Historiography. '' Journal of Cold War Studies 4 # 4 ( 2002 ) : 93 - 103. Shirer, William L. ( 1990 ), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich : A History of Nazi Germany, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0 - 671 - 72868 - 7 Department of State ( 1948 ), Nazi - Soviet Relations, 1939 -- 1941 : Documents from the Archives of The German Foreign Office, Department of State Tucker, Robert C. ( 1992 ), Stalin in Power : The Revolution from Above, 1928 -- 1941, W.W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0 - 393 - 30869 - 3 Wettig, Gerhard ( 2008 ), Stalin and the Cold War in Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0 - 7425 - 5542 - 9 Yergin, Daniel, Shattered Peace : The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State, Houghton Mifflin, 1977. ISBN 0 - 395 - 24670 - 9 Young, John W. The Longman Companion to America, Russia and the Cold War, 1941 - 1998 ( 1999 ) excerpt External links Listen to this article ( info / dl ) This audio file was created from a revision of the article `` Origins of the Cold War '' dated 2012 - 07 - 11, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ( Audio help ) More spoken articles The division of Europe Portal to topic documents. CVCE.eu ( Centre for European Studies ) James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly The division of Germany. CVCE.eu ( Centre for European Studies ) Address given by Winston Churchill : ' The Sinews of Peace ' Recording of Winston Churchill 's speech in 5, March, 1946, warning about the advance of communism in central Europe. CVCE.eu ( Centre for European Studies ). ( 3 ) EDSITEment 's curriculum unit The Origins of the Cold War Causes of the Cold War Study guide, primary sources, multimedia, teacher resources The CWIHP at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars Document Collection on the Origins of the Cold War Cold War USA USSR ANZUS NATO Non-Aligned Movement SEATO Warsaw Pact Cold War II 1940s Morgenthau Plan Hukbalahap Rebellion Dekemvriana Percentages agreement Yalta Conference Guerrilla war in the Baltic states Forest Brothers Operation Priboi Operation Jungle Occupation of the Baltic states Cursed soldiers Operation Unthinkable Operation Downfall Potsdam Conference Gouzenko Affair Division of Korea Operation Masterdom Operation Beleaguer Operation Blacklist Forty Iran crisis of 1946 Greek Civil War Baruch Plan Corfu Channel incident Turkish Straits crisis Restatement of Policy on Germany First Indochina War Truman Doctrine Asian Relations Conference May 1947 Crises Marshall Plan Comecon 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état Tito -- Stalin Split Berlin Blockade Western betrayal Iron Curtain Eastern Bloc Western Bloc Chinese Civil War ( Second round ) Malayan Emergency Albanian Subversion 1950s Papua conflict Bamboo Curtain Korean War McCarthyism Egyptian Revolution of 1952 1953 Iranian coup d'état Uprising of 1953 in East Germany Dirty War ( Mexico ) Bricker Amendment 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état Partition of Vietnam Vietnam War First Taiwan Strait Crisis Geneva Summit ( 1955 ) Bandung Conference Poznań 1956 protests Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Suez Crisis `` We will bury you '' Operation Gladio Arab Cold War Syrian Crisis of 1957 1958 Lebanon crisis Iraqi 14 July Revolution Sputnik crisis Second Taiwan Strait Crisis 1959 Tibetan uprising Cuban Revolution Kitchen Debate Sino - Soviet split 1960s Congo Crisis 1960 U-2 incident Bay of Pigs Invasion 1960 Turkish coup d'état Soviet -- Albanian split Berlin Crisis of 1961 Berlin Wall Portuguese Colonial War Angolan War of Independence Guinea - Bissau War of Independence Mozambican War of Independence Cuban Missile Crisis Sino - Indian War Communist insurgency in Sarawak Iraqi Ramadan Revolution Eritrean War of Independence Sand War North Yemen Civil War Aden Emergency 1963 Syrian coup d'état Vietnam War Shifta War Guatemalan Civil War Colombian conflict Nicaraguan Revolution 1964 Brazilian coup d'état Dominican Civil War South African Border War Transition to the New Order Domino theory ASEAN Declaration Laotian Civil War 1966 Syrian coup d'état Argentine Revolution Korean DMZ Conflict Greek military junta of 1967 -- 74 Years of Lead ( Italy ) USS Pueblo incident Six - Day War War of Attrition Dhofar Rebellion Al - Wadiah War Protests of 1968 French May Tlatelolco massacre Cultural Revolution Prague Spring 1968 Polish political crisis Communist insurgency in Malaysia Invasion of Czechoslovakia Iraqi Ba'athist Revolution Goulash Communism Sino - Soviet border conflict CPP -- NPA -- NDF rebellion Corrective Move 1970s Détente Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Black September in Jordan Corrective Movement ( Syria ) Cambodian Civil War Koza riot Realpolitik Ping - pong diplomacy Uganda -- Tanzania War 1971 Turkish military memorandum Corrective Revolution ( Egypt ) Four Power Agreement on Berlin Bangladesh Liberation War 1972 Nixon visit to China North Yemen - South Yemen Border conflict of 1972 Yemenite War of 1972 NDF Rebellion Eritrean Civil Wars 1973 Chilean coup d'état Yom Kippur War 1973 oil crisis Carnation Revolution Spanish transition Metapolitefsi Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Rhodesian Bush War Angolan Civil War Mozambican Civil War Oromo conflict Ogaden War Ethiopian Civil War Lebanese Civil War Sino - Albanian split Cambodian -- Vietnamese War Sino - Vietnamese War Operation Condor Dirty War ( Argentina ) 1976 Argentine coup d'état Korean Air Lines Flight 902 Yemenite War of 1979 Grand Mosque seizure Iranian Revolution Saur Revolution New Jewel Movement 1979 Herat uprising Seven Days to the River Rhine Struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union 1980s Soviet -- Afghan War 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics boycotts 1980 Turkish coup d'état Peruvian conflict Casamance conflict Ugandan Bush War Lord 's Resistance Army insurgency Eritrean Civil Wars 1982 Ethiopian -- Somali Border War Ndogboyosoi War United States invasion of Grenada Able Archer 83 Star Wars Iran -- Iraq War Somali Rebellion 1986 Black Sea incident 1988 Black Sea bumping incident South Yemen Civil War Bougainville Civil War 8888 Uprising Solidarity Soviet reaction Contras Central American crisis RYAN Korean Air Lines Flight 007 People Power Revolution Glasnost Perestroika Nagorno - Karabakh War Afghan Civil War United States invasion of Panama 1988 Polish strikes Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 Revolutions of 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall Velvet Revolution Romanian Revolution Peaceful Revolution Die Wende 1990s Mongolian Revolution of 1990 German reunification Yemeni unification Fall of communism in Albania Breakup of Yugoslavia Dissolution of the Soviet Union Dissolution of Czechoslovakia Frozen conflicts Abkhazia China - Taiwan Korea Nagorno - Karabakh South Ossetia Transnistria Sino - Indian border dispute North Borneo dispute Foreign policy Truman Doctrine Containment Eisenhower Doctrine Domino theory Hallstein Doctrine Kennedy Doctrine Peaceful coexistence Ostpolitik Johnson Doctrine Brezhnev Doctrine Nixon Doctrine Ulbricht Doctrine Carter Doctrine Reagan Doctrine Rollback Sovereignty of Puerto Rico during the Cold War Ideologies Capitalism Chicago school Keynesianism Monetarism Neoclassical economics Reaganomics Supply - side economics Thatcherism Communism Marxism -- Leninism Castroism Eurocommunism Guevarism Hoxhaism Juche Maoism Trotskyism Naxalism Stalinism Titoism Other Fascism Islamism Liberal democracy Social democracy Third - Worldism White supremacy Apartheid Organizations ASEAN CIA Comecon EEC KGB MI6 Non-Aligned Movement SAARC Safari Club Stasi Propaganda Active measures Crusade for Freedom Izvestia Pravda Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Red Scare TASS Voice of America Voice of Russia Races Arms race Nuclear arms race Space Race See also Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War Soviet espionage in the United States Soviet Union -- United States relations USSR -- USA summits Russian espionage in the United States American espionage in the Soviet Union and Russian Federation Russia -- NATO relations Brinkmanship CIA and the Cultural Cold War Cold War II Commons Portal Timeline List of conflicts Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Origins_of_the_Cold_War&oldid=843232836 '' Categories : Cold War Causes of wars Cold War by period Hidden categories : Webarchive template wayback links CS1 maint : Explicit use of et al. 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Question: when did the cold war alignment of britain and the united states versus the soviet union begin
Answer: 1945