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Mamoru Shigemitsu by Naval Historical Center Photo from Wikimedia Commons
The Causes of the Cold War: Everything you need to Know
Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, amid the devastation of Berlin. The final defeat of the Reich, which he had asserted would last for a thousand years, came six days later when Germany submitted.
The world had undergone a permanent alteration. France had lost her reputation as a major power, while Britain, which had nearly gone bankrupt in World War Two, just retained hers. Germany had been completely vanquished. The two leading nations in the world at the time were the United States and the Soviet Union.
Since they had battled together to defeat the terrifying might of Nazi Germany, these two new superpowers were still considered partners in name only. However, the roots of a future conflict had already been planted as early as 1945.
Here are some reasons the Cold War started in 1945.
1. The atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima
Hiroshima by Mushroom cloud over Hiroshima from Wikimedia Commons
With the same force as 15,000 tonnes of TNT, the atomic bomb that decimated Hiroshima in 1945 detonated. Temperatures briefly approached those on the surface of the sun, killing up to 60,000 individuals instantly, many of whom simply evaporated.
Roosevelt and Churchill both hoped that Stalin would cower before American atomic might. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviet dictator was informed of the weapon’s tremendous destructive capabilities, but he showed little to no interest in it. Now everyone is aware that the news was not unexpected. The top-secret new weapon from America had been well-known to Stalin thanks to his spies, and his scientists were working quickly to produce a bomb for him.
The stakes for the Soviet Union and the United States of America significantly increased with the advent of the atomic era in 1945. A single bomber could now destroy an entire city with just one bomb he was carrying. Later, the two superpowers would create intercontinental ballistic missiles and an arsenal of nuclear bombs that could end most life on Earth. Both sides understood that if the Cold War heated up, civilization could as well come to an end. This significantly contributed to concentrating thoughts on finding diplomatic solutions to disagreements that would have otherwise resulted in conflict.
2. The Soviet domination of so much of Europe was a concern
In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, the British declared war on the Nazi nation with the express purpose of supporting Poland’s right to self-determination. When the Red Army invaded eastern Poland after striking a pact with Hitler, the British chose not to declare war on the Soviet Union, complicating matters.
The American government asserted that it was engaged in a battle for freedom. Due to the need to fight with Stalin’s Soviet Union, a totalitarian regime with few, if any, redeeming qualities, this position was also made difficult.
The United States and the United Kingdom pressed Stalin to organise free and fair elections in the lands he had annexed. Stalin readily concurred, but went ahead and rigged the election results nevertheless. It caused great discomfort and worry for America and the Western nations that the Soviet Union controlled such a large portion of Europe, a continent that had previously dominated world power to a considerably greater extent than it does now.
3. America supported numerous dictatorships
EDDY-CILONA by Heiddy2 from Wikimedia Commons
More than 100,000 Americans sacrificed their lives in World War One, which left the United States of America scarred. America pursued an isolationist policy in its quest to avoid getting involved in any further overseas conflicts. A little army was all that was kept by the country, and it stayed out of other nations’ business.
The strategy failed. With this World War being even worse than the previous, America was forced to participate. Isolationism was officially dead by 1945. With an extensive military force at its disposal, the US had become a global superpower.
The United States would seek to influence and govern the world rather than withdraw from it. Even so, the United States of America installed and supported several dictatorships, putting democratic principles at risk.
With the Soviet Union, which was likewise encouraged by its newfound superpower status and anxious to promote communism all over the world, this more muscular approach to international relations would unavoidably result in confrontation.
4. The Berlin division caused tension
German defenders of Berlin submitted to the Red Army on May 2, 1945. About 80,000 Soviet and 100,000 German soldiers died in the conflict.
The commander of the Allied troops in the west, Dwight Eisenhower, has occasionally come under fire for not pressing his armies forward and advancing before the Soviets reached the capital of Germany. He might have won the race, but it wouldn’t have changed how Europe was mapped out after the war.
Politics had already chosen how to divide Germany. Berlin itself was positioned firmly within Soviet borders. The Soviet Union, America, Great Britain, and France would each be assigned a control area over one of the four sections of the city.
It didn’t take long for Stalin to become enraged by this tiny pocket of Western democracy hidden deep within Soviet-controlled Eastern Germany. When he ordered the city to be blockaded in 1948, he made an effort to heal the open wound by denying the Western Allies access to the city by land, air, or sea. In response, the Allies flew in the necessary supplies. Knowing that ordering the downing of American planes would almost certainly result in their destruction, Stalin resisted making the order.
5. Korea’s division led to serious conflict
Korean War by Flickr from Wikimedia Commons
The start of hostilities did not immediately end after the Japanese announced their desire to surrender. Intent on capturing eastern land while the going was good, Stalin pushed his soldiers forward.
After a titanic battle against Nazi Germany’s soldiers, the Red Army had become a devastatingly effective fighting machine by August 1945. Meanwhile, Imperial Japan’s military was far weaker. Nearly every flight-capable aircraft and the best of the Japanese ground forces had been pulled back from mainland Asia to defend the Japanese Home Islands. The Japanese had controlled Korea since 1910, but the Red Army overran their lines, making significant advances in Manchuria and pushing into it.
Before the entire Korean Peninsula was occupied by the Soviet Union, there was no chance in hell that the Americans would launch an invasion of Korea. Stalin did, however, agree to split Korea in half because he was willing to sacrifice power in the Far East for a stronger negotiating position in Europe.
The Soviet Union would rule the northern region of the nation, which was home to the majority of the heavy industry and mineral resources, and the Americans would rule the southern region, which was predominately agrarian.
6. The Japanese were defeated
Japanese prisoners by U.S. Marine Corps from Wikimedia Commons
Since 1941, Japan had been at war with China as well as with the United States of America and the United Kingdom. Even though they shared a territorial border, the Japanese Empire and the Soviet Union had not yet started a war.
For both powers, this had been a practical agreement. While the Japanese in the east had more than enough on their plate on land and at sea, the Soviet Union had been engaged in a life-or-death conflict with Nazi Germany in the west.
A nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki by American forces on August 9, 1945. That morning, a massive surprise operation by the Soviet Red Army against the Japanese had been launched in Manchuria. According to some historians, the Soviet invasion, not the enormous devastation power of America’s new atomic bombs, was what finally convinced the Japanese to declare their capitulation just six days later.
Stalin insisted that despite the short length of the Red Army’s conflict with the Japanese, it was sufficient to justify the Soviet Union’s claim to an occupation zone in the Japanese Home Islands. Stalin requested a portion of Hokkaido in a letter to Truman dated August 16, 1945, and he added that he hoped no one would object to his modest requests.
7. There were disagreements over what the new allies would do about the defeated Nazis
Joseph Stalin, Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill by Oulds from Wikimedia Commons
Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin Roosevelt had their first face-to-face encounter in November 1943. Even though there would still be a great deal of combat and bloodshed, the conclusion of World War II was finally in sight, and an Allied victory seemed all but certain.
The Tehran Conference provided the “Big Three” leaders of the major Allied powers with an opportunity to debate both the war and how to handle the peace. What to do with any Nazis captured was one of the key issues that needed to be resolved.
Stalin suggested that as a remedy, 100,000 German Army officers should be executed by shooting. Churchill was furious and stormed out of the meeting while Roosevelt thought Stalin was making a joke. Even though the British Prime Minister, a former British Army commander, had advocated for hanging senior Nazis without the benefit of legal representation, he was unable to support the killing of soldiers.
The three men eventually came to an understanding that the wrongdoing of their adversaries should be shown in court, but they had quite different notions about what this should involve.
Stalin firmly believed that the verdict and even the plot should be known in advance while holding a trial. The trials had to be perceived as being free and fair, according to the British and Americans. Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armament and one of Hitler’s closest confidants, was among the many Nazis who were either able to flee alive or walk free as a result. This wasn’t the result Stalin had hoped for.
8. Stalin was betrayed by his new “allies” who were a huge contributor to the war
Stalin by U.S. Signal Corps photo from Wikimedia Commons
The idea that Britain and America may turn on him, make their peace with the Nazis, and abandon the Soviet Union to fight the war alone tormented Joseph Stalin for much of World War II. In his wildest fantasies, his allies went even further and collaborated with Nazi Germany to subdue him.
Stalin is recognised as one of history’s most murderously paranoid figures, but his worries were not wholly unfounded. Particularly since the Soviet Union’s founding, Winston Churchill has harboured a strong animosity toward it.
Churchill requested his military strategists to look at the potential of mounting an almost immediate assault on Stalin’s Red Army in 1945, just days after the end of the European War. For obvious reasons, Churchill called it Operation Unthinkable.
It’s unclear how seriously Churchill took this unusual endeavour. In any case, the report’s conclusion that there was little likelihood of success meant that Operation Unthinkable was doomed to failure. The Red Army’s strength was too much for the British to handle. The Soviets had more personnel and tanks, even if the Americans could be persuaded to cooperate with the British, which they vehemently refused to do. There would probably be a protracted, brutal fight.
The unthinkable operation was put on hold. But thanks to his sophisticated snooping network, Stalin quickly found out everything. The Cold War began as a result of his paranoia being stoked by the information that at least one of his erstwhile allies was preparing an attack.
9. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death was thought to be a turning point
Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Leon A. Perskie from Wikimedia Commons
On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt reported having a headache; a little while afterwards, he passed out. He passed away later that day.
Hitler rejoiced amidst the rubble of Berlin when the news spread throughout the Third Reich, which was collapsing. The death of the American president would signal a turning point in the war in Europe, according to the German dictator, who was so desperate that he would grasp at any straws that were offered to him.
Hitler was initially optimistic, but when Harry S. Truman took over as president, World War Two continued on its inevitable path to Germany’s final loss. The post-war world’s dynamics were, however, drastically changed by Roosevelt’s passing.
Roosevelt is regarded as one of the best presidents to have served the United States, but he was somewhat naive to Joseph Stalin’s existence. He mistakenly thought he was very capable of courting the terrible ruler of the Soviet Union because he had not realised how cunning and merciless Stalin could be.
10. The was a clash of ideologies
Yalta summit by Army Signal Corps Collection from Wikimedia Commons
During a significant portion of World War II, Adolf Hitler waited for the alliance between the capitalist Western nations and the communist Soviet Union to disintegrate. Hitler was not altogether unreasonable in his expectations for the long-awaited breakdown in relations, although it did not occur during his lifetime.
One of history’s most improbable alliances was that formed by the major three powers. It was only made possible by the particularly violent strain of fascism that developed in Germany, and it was unable to endure the fall of the Third Reich.
The Cold War was caused by all sides, and no one is exempt from responsibility. The incompatibility of the two opposing philosophies of communism and capitalism made future conflict unavoidable, even though it may not have been immediately clear after Germany’s defeat in 1945.
