Cold War Dbq

I agree to some extent that the USA was responsible for starting the Cold War during the period of 1945 to 1950. In Source 4, Edwards describes how Stalin become increasingly intimidated by the USA. On August 6, 1945, upon Truman deciding to use the atom bomb on Hiroshma, Stalin realised that "the balance [had] been destroyed". His fear became even greater when he realised that it would be difficult to fight back due to the USSR's lack of "long-range bombing capacity" and "inferior navy". If the USA had not acted in such a hostile manner, tensions between Stalin and Truman would not have been as intense–this was a major factor in the breaking out of the Cold War that could have been prevented had the USA not raised tensions through both these

However, this source is slightly biased, as Marshall does not mention containment–preventing the spread of communism, which is why tensions between the USA and USSR were so high at this time; the USA believed very strongly in capitalism, while the USSR's ideology was strictly communist. This extract is from June 1947, which is when Marshall Aid was introduced, and the aim of this policy was for the USA to provide economic aid to European countries that suffered from "hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos" (due to the fact that the USA believed these factors would result in these countries electing communists). This lead to another factor in the Cold War starting: Stalin believed that Marshall Aid was merely a means of America enslaving European countries, and refused to let eastern European countries accept it. The USA saw this as further evidence of Stalin attempting to spread communism throughout the world, and realised they needed to take action in order to stop this. The Marshall Plan is another way in which the USA were responsible for the start of the Cold War during the

In Source 1, Winston Churchill's famed Iron Curtain (a metaphor he used to describe the post-war divison of European countries) speech, he states that the USSR-influenced Polish government has made "enormous and wrongful inroads upon Germany". At the time, Britain and America were very eager to protect Germany because they had seen the effect that factors such as reparations had had on the country at the end of the Great War in the 1918. The USSR clearly had a very different ideology, as at the Potsdam Conference, Stalin wished to take more reparations from Germany than Truman thought was necessary. This clash of ideas, perhaps the most important factor in the breakout of the Cold War in the first place, is one reason as to why the Soviet Union is partially responsible–they saw a re-built Germany as a threat, whereas America wanted to protect