U.S.-Soviet Relations

This paper will discuss the evolution of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War in 1948. It will trace the deterioration in these relations, starting with friction between the two countries in the alliance against Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War, through the advent of American nuclear power, to the imposition of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. The paper will end with the Berlin Airlift, which marked the final dissolution of the Second World War Alliance.

The evolution of U.S.-Soviet relations up to the Cold War cannot be understood without a brief background on the effect of the Second World War. Soviet leaders had presented the Soviet Union as an alternative to, and an enemy of, the liberal democratic Western countries in the 1920s and 1930s. Western leaders obliged this view by demonizing the new Soviet republics. The rise of Hitler did not soften this view, particularly when the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939. In accordance with this pact, the Soviet Union did not respond to the German invasion of Poland, the borders of which Germany and Russia had quarreled for decades. The two powers had already agreed upon the division of Poland and stayed out of each other's military escapades over the next 21 months.

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oviet-American relations, giving the United States an outstanding edge over the Soviet-Union through the beginning of the next decade. Although American leaders were uncertain of the new weapon's power prior to July of 1945, after the first test they knew that they possessed a weapon with previously unimaginable destructive power. The bomb was first tested just as the Potsdam conference was beginning in middle July. News of the successful test reached Truman and Churchill as they preparing for the conference. Stalin was informed in vague terms by Truman that the U.S. had tested such a weapon and that it promised great potential power. Truman recalled that Stalin "showed no special interest." Truman and Churchill then concluded that Stalin had not understood the import of the news. In fact, Stalin had known about the research and development of the atomic bomb from Soviet spies planted in the program. Soviet scientists had correctly deduced from the public reports of successful nuclear fission experiments in the late 1930s that a nuclear weapon was probably feasible. Soviet scientists started work on replicating these experiments and developing nuclear power, but this work was not given much support until the German invas
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Soviet Union, Truman Churchill, World War, Communist Chinese, United Peace, Western Allies, Eastern Europe, Soviet Army, Roosevelt Churchill, Anglo-Americans Soviets, soviet union, nuclear weapons, world war, eastern europe, western powers, cold war, atomic bomb, war japan, western allies, foreign policy, dc government printing, united soviet union, washington dc government, government printing office, soviet union enter,
Approximate Word count = 6981
Approximate Pages = 28 (250 words per page)

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