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Who Started the Cold War and Why?

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Who started the cold war and why?

The Cold War was started by the principal victors of World War II: the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to a lesser extent Britain. The Cold War was essentially an ideological struggle which but soon adopted all facets of full international conflict with its geopolitical, economic and also scientific-technological aspects.

The earliest stages of the Cold War coincided with the final defeats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the first half of 1945. Both Communists and Capitalists were anxious to fill the power vacuums that the defeated Axis powers were leaving behind in Central Europe and the Pacific. From the setting of the scene at Yalta in February 1945, to the embittered conclusion of the Warsaw Pact on 14th May 1955, the worst obstacle to achieving a peace settlement was a mutual and deep-seated sense of suspicion, which the powers on either side of the 'Iron Curtain' must be held responsible for.

"Twenty years ago I strove with all the energy in my power against Communism, because at that time I considered Communism, with its idea of world revolution, the greatest danger to the British Empire ... Nowadays German Nazism, with its idea of the world hegemony of Berlin, constitutes the greatest danger for the British Empire ... If the danger for the British Empire from the side of Fascism were to disappear and the danger from the side of Communism were to rise again, I - I say this absolutely frankly - would begin to strive against you again."1

For Winston Churchill the danger from the side of Communism returned almost instantly once Germany had surrendered on 8th May 1945. This is not surprising for Churchill had been a fierce and long-standing enemy of Communism, which he famously described as "a pestilence more destructive of life than the Black Death or the Spotted Typhus."2

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