page_title: Origins of the Cold War
section_title: Start of World War II (1939–1941)
hierarchical_section_title: Origins of the Cold War / Start of World War II (1939–1941)
caption_attribution_description: English: From the original en.wikipedia page: Description: Map depicting most of Central and Eastern Europe, showing 1938 borders, along with Axis (black) and Soviet (red) military and political advances until late 1940. Source: Own map, based on the maps of the University of Texas Libraries Author: Mosedschurte, February 12, 2009
context_page_description: The origins of the Cold War involved the breakdown of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, Great Britain and their allies in the years 1945–1949.
  The origins derive from diplomatic confrontations stretching back decades, followed by the issue of political boundaries in Central Europe and non-democratic control of the East by the Soviet Army. In the 1940s came economic issues 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, but the conflict centered on the US' development of an informal empire in southeast Asia in the mid-1940s.
  Events preceding World War II and even the Russian Revolution of 1917, underlay older tensions between the Soviet Union, European countries and the United States.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Soviet and German military and political advances in Central and eastern Europe 1939–1940
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