How was President Truman Important in the Build up to the Cold War? Harry S. Truman was the president of the United States just before and during an early period of the Cold War (1945-1953). Truman's presidency was very eventful in foreign affairs. He was involved in the defeat of Nazi Germany, made the decision to drop the Atomic Bombs in Japan, the founding of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine to attempt to contain communism and help aid Greece, the beginning of the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Truman made some decisions that ultimately had a huge effect in the build up to the cold war.
• Who was more to blame for the start of the Cold War, the USA or the USSR? The origins of the Cold War; the 1945 summit conferences including the parts played by Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Truman, and the breakdown of the USA-USSR alliance in 1945–6; Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe; the Iron Curtain; the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan; the Berlin Blockade and its immediate consequences. June 2012 | Q.2 (a) What was the Iron Curtain? [4] (b) Explain why Berlin was a cause of tension between East and West between 1945 and 1949. [6] (c) How successful was the West in containing Communism in Europe up to 1949?
The western view of the time saw Stalin as doing one of two things: either continuing the expansionist policies of the tsars, or worse, spreading communism across the world now that his one-state notion had been fulfilled. Admittedly, the first view of Stalin, as an imperialist leader, may be twisted. The Russians claim, and have always claimed, that Stalin's motives were purely defensive. Stalin wished to create a buffer zone of Communist states around him to protect Soviet Russia from the capitalist West. In this sense, his moves were not aggressive at all -- they were truly defensive moves to protect the Soviet system.
Stalin was determined to make the Soviet Union a nuclear power, after the USA created the first atomic bombs during the Second World War, which were tested in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In August 1949 the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic device, thus bringing an end to the US nuclear monopoly and this subsequently led to the beginning of nuclear arms race where the two superpowers aimed to match each other. Indeed with both superpowers having nuclear capabilities a balance of terror was once again established. The fact that each of the super powers now had nuclear capacity was clearly a stabilising factor, because nuclear weapons meant that the destructive power of each was greatly increased and subsequently so was their vulnerability should we not have the balance of terror in place. In this way the nuclear arms race brought some stability to relations between the superpowers in the period 1949 – 1953 because the threat of nuclear attacks forced both superpowers to limit conflict.
Why did the cold war start? The cold war is the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union over ideologies, through other countries, without direct armed conflicts, which was first used by a English author and journalist called George Orwell at the end of The World War II. This essay is going to focus on main reasons for the beginning of the cold war. One major cause of the cold war was a distrust of the Soviets by the United States and the same distrust of the United States from the Soviet Union. Though the need to defeat the Germans had made USSR a partner in the Allied forces from 1941 onwards, Stalin had displayed the tendency that he wanted to dominate the world, and he used dictatorial powers and military powers towards people of his own country as well as others.
THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE IN THE CONTEXT OF RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE SOVIET UNION FROM 1917 TO 1980 I. The relation between the United States and the Soviet Union is what concluded the nuclear arms race. Development of technology, military capability, and weapons system are the physical manifestation of their highly intensified relationship. The spread of communism in Europe shaped the relationship of the United States and the Soviet Union. From 1917 to 1980, their relationship shifts from good relationship to bad relationship that almost led to nuclear war, which was fallowed again with a good relationship that led to arms control and détente, then to an intensified relationship until the end of the cold war.
This is why I think we shouldn’t have nukes in some countries of the world. There could be a potential world war III all from one nuke. For example the launching of a big out right war using nuclear war heads against Iran has activated drawing boards of the pentagon since 2005. Since 2005 we have been at war with Iran. This has turned into a pre world war three shaking countries all over the world.
Fear of the other country laying influence of their ideology, as a means to gain power, tensions rose. These tensions were fueled by the truman doctrine, which requested 400 million from congress to help combat communism in greece and turkey. The purpose of the Truman doctrine was to provide American economic and military assistance to any nation threatened by communism. The US feared the encroaching soviet strength, which perpetually launched them into an arms race with the U.S.S.R. The Soviets broke the US nuclear monopoly, and that struck fear into all americans, there is now someone just as dangerous as you are.
The US at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima was led by Harry S. Truman, who had been pushed into the position of leadership by the death of Roosevelt. The bombing was almost three months to the day after the defeat of Germany in Europe. This date is of major significance when considering the relation between the dropping of the bomb and the affect on Russia, because of part of the agreements made at the Yalta Conference. This was a meeting of the "Big Three" – the Soviet Union, United States, and Great Britain - to discuss the plans for winning the war. At this conference, the Soviet Union promised to begin helping in the battle in the Pacific Theater three months after the defeat of Germany.
Soviet and US relations changed dramatically between 1945 and 1947, there were many reasons to explain why and how this happened. Firstly, one reason was the end of WW2. During the Second World War, America and the USSR were members of the Grand Alliance in order to oppose Hitler, but when this war finished there was nothing to bring the Communists and Capitalists together. Therefore, the two countries went from allies to progressing enemies after Germany was defeated. This developed until a confrontation, from Western and Eastern Europe, in a nuclear arms race.