Cold war and causes

Causes of the Cold War

• During World War 2 the United Kingdom, France and the United States aligned another in order to defeat Nazi Germany. The USSR would join this alliance following Operation Barbarossa – the invasion of Russia by Nazi Germany. There were promises that the alliance would continue well after the war.
•  After the war, however,  tensions started rising up. The USA was the strongest power that emerged after the war. It was a superpower in economic and military strengths.
• The USSR was the second most powerful country and it had played a key role in Germany’s defeat in the war. This increased its prestige in the world.
• After the war, in eastern Europe, many countries had communist governments. These nations saw the USSR with favourable eyes. Those that did not, were replaced by governments that looked at the USSR in a similar way
• The USA, as also the western European countries saw communism as a threat to its way of life and towards freedom also.
• The world was polarised into two blocs – the communist powers led by the USSR and the powers opposed to communism led by the USA. The former group comprised mostly eastern European nations while the latter by the western European countries.
• The USA began to view every development in the world as either supportive of or against the rise of communism. It even went to the extent of supporting colonial powers in their subjugation of the people if it meant curbing communism. This was their reasoning behind supporting the colonial domination of France in Indo-China. 
• The arms race by the two powers also was a factor in rising tensions between them. It even extended beyond the far reaches of the Earth itself, when both the superpowers developed technology that would put their respective nations on higher technological footing than its rivals.