The Cold War is a term coined by journalist Walter Lippman given to the competition and tension between the United States and the Soviet Union from February 1945 until August 1991. (Lightbody 18) The main cause of the tension between the two giants was their ideal logical differences. The USSR was communist while the USA was capitalistic. These two ways of thinking contradicted each other, and it was in their nature that they would clash. The clash in fact leads to a 46 year war.
Although the Cold War started at the Yalta conference in February in 1945, its roots go much deeper than the ideological disagreements between the United States and the Soviet Union. The tension can be dated back to 1890 when the century long good relations between the Soviet Union and the United States ended when they both rivaled each other on the issues regarding the development of Manchuria.
Yalta summit in February 1945 with (from left to r...
February 4–11: Yalta Conference
English: USSR stamp, S. Smith, 1985, 5 k. Русс...(LaFeber History Channle) However the tension between the two soon turned to the ideal logical battle between capitalism and communism. In 1917 where communism won in the Bolshevik revolutions in Russia, they felt the pressure from the anti communist sentiments held by one of the other great powers at the time. Lenin even supported the Marxist idea that the inevitable conflict between capitalism and communism would only end until one destroys the other. (Lightbody 4) The tension mounted so high that there were no diplomatic relations between the US and the soviets union until they were forced to unite over the common enemy of the Axis powers.
After the war was when the real problems between the two began. The USSR was the main reason that Hitler lost his eastern front. They defeated Hitler but at a great cost, there is an estimated that 20 million Russian soldiers...