Historians have identified several causes that led to the

outbreak of the Cold War. Let’s take a look at them

The first major cause of the Cold War was the increased
tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union
at the end of World War II. During the Second World War,
the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin,
was allied with Britain, France, and the United States
against Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan.  After World War
II, the partnership between the Soviet Union and the other
Allied nations began to fall apart.  This is best evidenced
by the Allied wartime conferences in Yalta and Potsdam.

The Yalta Conference occurred from February 4th to the

11th in 1945 and was a wartime meeting of the Allied
leaders, including: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston
Churchill and Joseph Stalin.  The meeting took place near
Yalta, which is now a city in Crimea, Ukraine. The purpose
of the conference was for the three Allied powers to begin
discussing how to reorganize Europe once Adolf Hitler and
Nazi Germany were defeated. However, the Yalta
Conference is now viewed as a major event in the Cold
War , because it highlighted the divide between Stalin and
the other two leaders. Neither side trusted the other and
Joseph Stalin was resentful of the other two believing that
they made the Soviet army struggle alone against Nazi
Germany. 
The Potsdam Conference occurred from July 17th to
August 2nd in 1945 and was a wartime meeting of the
Allied leaders, including: Harry S. Truman, Winston
Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Truman had just
replaced Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United
States following his death. The purpose of the conference
was again for the three Allied powers to begin discussing
how to handle the defeat of Nazi Germany. However, the
Potsdam Conference is now viewed as a major event in
the Cold War as well, because it highlighted the divide
between Stalin and the other two leaders similar to the
earlier Yalta Conference.

As a result, Germany was divided into two parts. USSR

took control of East Germany while West Germany was
under the control of USA, Britain and France

The next major cause of the Cold War was the emergence
of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II. The United
States had developed its atomic weaponry during the final
years of the WWII and was the only nation in the world to
contain atomic weapons. Seeing this the Soviet Union also
started to develop their own atomic weapons. On August
29th, 1949, the Soviet Union performed a test of their first
atomic bomb codenamed ‘First Lightning’. Because of the
development of nuclear weapons, the two nations did not
trust each other.  As a result, they both started to further
develop large arsenals of nuclear weapons.  By the 1950’s
each country had developed enough nuclear weapons to
destroy the other.

The third main cause of the Cold War was the ideological

conflict that existed between the United States and Soviet
Union.  At the time, the Soviet Union was
a communist nation while the United States was a modern
liberal democracy nation based on the principles of
capitalism. To better understand the ideological conflict of
the Cold War it is first important to understand the main
principles of capitalism and communism.
capitalism is an economic system based upon the values
of individualism and promotes individual liberty over
government regulation and control. communism is
centered on the idea of establishing a society based upon
public ownership of the means of production and the
removal of any form of social classes. Communist
countries such as the Soviet Union are also often
dictatorships. This ideological conflict caused the Cold
War because it displayed the difference in worldview
between the two nations.
As such, the final cause of the Cold War was the
American fear of the spread of communism around the
world.  As stated above, there was a major ideological
conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union at
the outset of the Cold War.  The United States, led by
Harry S. Truman feared that communism as an ideology
would spread throughout Europe and the rest of the
world. He adopted the Containment Policy against soviet
union. The purpose of this policy was to contain the
spread of communism abroad. When Greece and Turkey
were under threat of Soviet Expansionism, President
Truman introduced his Truman Doctrine. According to this
doctrine, the US would provide economic assistance to
countries to fight off Soviet expansionism
These foreign policies caused the United States to enter
into conflict with the Soviet Union and led to major historic
events like  Berlin Blockade, Korean War, Vietnam War and
the Cuban missile crisis.

Now lets summarize our today’s presentation.

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