America's Extreme Power In The Twentieth Century

The twentieth century was filled with disasters. There were two world wars, the Great Depression, revolutions in Russia and China, along with a few other things. All of this caused extreme power changes in the world. The French and British had been replaced by Russia and the United States as the top two superpowers, which caused a little bit of a rivalry between those two new powers. Russia had become the most powerful European country directly after World War Two, with its military spread throughout Europe. The United States had become the last-minute savior of the European Allies during both world wars, saving them from the threat of Germany after both World War One and World War Two. Let’s back up a little bit. During World War Two, Russia, or the Soviet Union, and the United States were allies when they had a common enemy, which was Adolf Hitler’s Germany. It is like that old saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” this is especially true of these two powerful countries. After Germany was defeated, and the United States and Soviet Union no longer had any reason to be allied, so they started becoming more and more split. Harry Truman had made the Truman Doctrine,

One part was controlled by Britain, another by France, another by America, and the last by Russia. The Russians wanted to make the currency for their area the official Soviet currency, while the other three areas would remain the same. Herbert Feis gave a detailed description on this event:

Long before the meeting was due to take place a large crowd had begun to gather, nearly all of them Communists. The crowd then broke into the building, displaying almost military precision, and it forcibly took possession of the gallery in the assembly and the upper floors of the building. The uproar and hooliganism became so bad that the Assembly’s meeting was held up for two