The Cold War During World War II - 2112 Words

The Cold War began during World War Two when Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of the U.S.S.R, which Joseph Stalin reacted with the desire to crush Germany and eventually to resist against anyone who was opposed to communism. After Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, in order to insure Germany would not come to power again, Germany and Berlin were divided among the four major powers of the Allies: France, Britain, America, and the U.S.S.R. Unlike Russia, who planned to destroy Germany so they could not attack Russia again, America used the Marshall Plan which President Truman created with his Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, which gave sixteen countries in Europe $12.5 billion of aid. Though at first Congress was not in favor of†¦show more content†¦Fear of the expansion of the communist Soviet influence led to America creating several counter measures against Russia. One of the first clashes between the United States and Russia was the Berlin Blockade from June 26, 1948 to September 30, 1949. The U.S.S.R. blocked all roads and railway to the Berlin so they could eventually take over all of Berlin, but the Allies organized the Berlin Airlift to feed the people of West Berlin. In order to combat the spread of communism, America joined Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); if any country under NATO was attacked by the Soviet Union, it was considered an attack on all NATO nations. The United States also passed the National Security Act in 1947 which created the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on communist countries, topple communist governments, and support anti-communist revolts. Meanwhile in Asia, China, which had been freed from Japanese occupation from Russia, had a revolution in October 1949, led by Mao Zedong, which established them as communist nation. Korea, who had also been occupied by Japan until the end of World War Two, had been divided into two parts, the north and the south: the north had been occupied by Russia down to the 38th parallel and the south by the United States. Both sides had established governments and in 1950 North Korea, backed by communist China and the U.S.S.R., and South Korea,