history: common enemy - Adolf Hitler

Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Details: Date: Introduction In 1945, both the United States of America and the Soviet Union shared a common enemy-Adolf Hitler, the German leader, and the self declared ruler of the world. The USSR and the US were among other nations such as the Great Britain and France, which constituted the allied powers, bent on ending Hitler’s Nazism reign in Europe. Upon completion of this mission, there emerged serious differences between two of the most powerful of the allied forces, especially on ideological matters. To put it bluntly, the United States was capitalist democracy whilst the USSR was a communist dictatorship. Stalin could not forgive Britain and America for their role in the civil war of 1918 to 1921, and on the other hand, the Americans blamed the Soviet Union for the outbreak of the Second World War. Did this define cold war…? On May 8, 1945, Germany officially surrendered to the allied powers and was in effect, after the Potsdam conference of July, divided into four parts, pending occupation by the allied forces. Germany was to prove a battlefield for ideological exchanges between the west led by America, and the Soviet Union. Stalin wanted a buffer zone created around Germany, which would in future prevent invasions. President Harry Truman on the other hand, wanted a capitalistic democracy for Germany, which would prevent the spread of communism further westwards. This type of disagreement on how states that had previously been controlled by Hitler’s Germany should be governed was to be replicated in Poland, Hungary, Austria, Czech Slovakia and several other states that had been freed from the Nazi regime. Perhaps it was the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that contributed to the growing tension. His replacement, President Harry Truman, was an acclaimed anti-communist and this was to impact heavily on the decisions that were taken in Yalta and Potsdam regarding reparations. It is important to note that Americans had the atomic bomb knowledge and this in effect, gave them a certain edge over the Soviet Union, something Stali...