<aside> <img src="/icons/light-bulb_gray.svg" alt="/icons/light-bulb_gray.svg" width="40px" /> In this lesson, you will…
Big Question: How and why did the world divide itself politically and ideologically after the Second World War?
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From 1945 to 1991, the former allies the United States and the Soviet Union entered an era of distrust and hostility.
This struggle led to decades of espionage and diplomatic tensions, proxy wars around the world, and near nuclear war.
Through the Second World War, the Stalin saw the United States and United Kingdom as ideological rivals against communism and the Soviet Union.
With the Manhattan Project and the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, the United States had a monopoly on atomic bombs.
The Soviets believed that building their own atomic weapons would make the US hesitate to use them against Moscow
Stalin had agreed during the war at the Yalta Conference to allow the nations of Eastern Europe – then under Soviet occupation – self-determination after the war.
However, as he saw the west as a threat, he installed communist governments in these countries as a “buffer zone” between the west and the USSR
Eastern European nations turned communist and became Soviet satellites
By 1946, Churchill declared Europe was divided by an “iron curtain” that separated democratic, capitalist Western Europe from communist, totalitarian Eastern Europe.
Containment
attempt to “contain” communism in the countries that it had already spread to and not allow it to spread any more
Truman Doctrine
promised economic and military help to any nation threatened by communism
Marshall Plan