Who is to blame for the Cold War, Soviet Union or United States?

Essay by lilacserenityCollege, UndergraduateA+, October 2004

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The Cold War was the elongated tension between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. It was a clash of these supergiants in political, ideological, military, and economic values and ideas. The blame for the Cold War cannot be placed on one person -- it developed as a series of chain reactions as a struggle for supremacy. The conflict in ideologies between capitalism and communism resulted in one of the greatest conflicts of the twentieth century. Both the United States and the Soviet Union share equal responsibility for the start and continuance foe nearly a half century of the Cold War.

The political relations going on in Europe during and directly after World War II had an enormous effect on laying the foundation for the Cold War. The decisions made by the United States in WWII caused tensions to rise between the U. S. and the Soviet Union.

Fear of Communism in capitalist nations, caused the United states government to use propaganda to raise Cold War anxieties and to get the American public scared of communism and in support of the cold war. The American government used a federal organizations, such as HUAC, tostop films from having to much of a communist appeal to them, to investigate people for being communist spies, and to further the public's hatred of communism. Next an American Senator named Joseph R. McCarthy would lead a series of trials against communists in the United States. Most of the people that Macarthy accused of being communist reached conviction. This happened despite the fact that many of the accused were not in fact communists. Therefore, the McCarthy trials acted as form of US propaganda, which gathered American support for the Cold War against the Soviets. Moreover, Hollywood began to produce anti-Communist films, which increased a...