The Cold War was a period of tension and hostility between the United States of America and the Soviet Union from the mid-40s to the late 80s. It began as World War II was ending, and was called “cold” because both sides were afraid of fighting each other directly with nuclear weapons. Many events contributed to the rising tensions between the two nations during the early years of the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union were allies throughout World War II, though suspicious of each other at times. After Germany’s surrender, the two nations did not have a common enemy and did not have a reason to be friendly. The economies of both nations were very different. The United States had become the most powerful capitalist country in the world, whereas the Soviet Union was the world's leading Communist power. Both nations believed that the way their economy ran was the best way to run it. Since both nations were very powerful and had opposing viewpoints on how to best run economically, they distrusted each other. They disagreed over the type of government Germany should have and also over how severely Germany should be punished after the war. The last straw was when it was …show more content…
The Truman Doctrine was a policy implemented to slow the Soviet Union's spread of Communism, which Truman believed put the United States and other democracies in danger. This obviously upset the Soviet Union because their goal was a socialistic-communistic system for the post-war world. The second new policy was the Marshall Plan, which was put into place with the purpose of sending large amounts of economic aid to rebuild Europe from the devastating effects of World War II. The Soviet Union disliked the Marshall Plan because they believed that by allowing the European nations to take American money, the nations would be closer to the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to control Eastern