The Origins of the Cold War are widely regarded to lie most directly in the relations between the Soviet Union and its allies the United States, Britain and France in the years 1945–1947. Those events led to the Cold War that endured for just under half a century.
Events preceding the Second World War, and even the Russian Revolution of 1917, underlay pre–World War II tensions between the Soviet Union, western European countries and the United States. A series of events during and after World War II exacerbated tensions, including the Soviet-German pact during the first two years of the war leading to subsequent invasions, the perceived delay of an amphibious invasion of German-occupied Europe, the western allies' support of the Atlantic Charter, disagreement in wartime conferences over the fate of Eastern Europe, the Soviets' creation of an Eastern Bloc of Soviet satellite states, western allies scrapping the Morgenthau Plan to support the rebuilding of German industry, and the Marshall Plan.
Read more about Origins Of The Cold War: Tsarist Russia and The West, Russian Revolution, Interwar Diplomacy (1918–1939), Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and The Start of World War II (1939–1941), Wartime Alliance (1941–1945), Postwar Relations, Creation of The Eastern Bloc, Disagreement Over The Beginning of The Cold War
Famous quotes containing the words cold war, origins of, origins, cold and/or war:
“Let us not be deceived—we are today in the midst of a cold war.”
—Bernard Baruch (1870–1965)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“In the cold morning the rested street stands up
To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.”
—Martha Gellhorn (b. 1908)