Misinterpretation Of The Cold War

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During 1945-1991 the two major superpowers, Russia and the United States, engaged in a war known as the Cold War. The reason this war is known as a cold war is because the two superpowers never engaged in a full on war against one another, instead they used the media against each other, they used international events as a cover, and “they fought their battles through various countries across the globe.” (Class Notes) What this means is that the US and the USSR fought the war through events such as the Second Front 1944, the bombing on Hiroshima 1945, and the Berlin Blockade 1947. The US and Russia had completely different ideologies that helped to created the hostility and tension that led to the war, the Soviets were communists with a single …show more content…

The Cold War was filled with misinterpretation from both sides that evidently prolonged the war for forty six years. The first major misinterpretation happened during the Second Front in 1944, this is because when Russia joined the allies in the fight against Hitler and his army in 1942 they urged the United States and Britain to open a second. However the second front did not occur until June 1944, and by that time Russia had seen roughly two million die. Furthermore, this left Russia’s leader Stalin suspicious of his allies because he believed that his they wanted the Nazis to kill as many Soviets as possible. This is a major misinterpretation on Russia behalf because the allies did not want to kill the Soviets, the allies were at war with the Nazis and wanted to kill them, not the Soviets. Another major misinterpretation is the use of the Atomic Bomb in 1945 by the US. During the war against Japan, the United States had developed the technology to create an atomic bomb. The United States however kept their new development a secret, until they used it to win the war by dropping it on …show more content…

During the Cold War the Soviets gained control of Eastern Europe and made it communist, the US saw this “buffer zone” as a threat of the spread of communism. Furthermore when the USSR made the “Two Camps Speech” in 1946 they said that the world was now divided between two hostile camps of either communism or capitalism. This speech was seen as a warning that war inevitable between the two superpowers, and also that the spread of communism was not going to stop. Even with this in mind the US still offered help to any nations rebuilding after WWII under the Marshall Plan in 1947; however Stalin retaliated by making the Molotov Plan, making any Soviet controlled countries and allies refuse any kind of help from the US. The Soviets wanted nothing to do with capitalist states, they only wanted to convert them, all of them, to

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