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Who Was To Blame For The Cold War Essay

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Who Was To Blame For The Cold War Essay
The Cold War extended from a period which started at end of the Second World War (1945) until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. During this time there was a sustained state of political and military tension between the two different world powers, NATO (Mainly led by the United States and its Western allies), and the Eastern European Block (led by Soviet Union, its mainly communist and socialist allies). It is defined as “a state of tension between states, which behave with great distrust and hostility towards each other, but do not resort to violence” (Lippmann 1947) by the famous Cold War historian, Walter Lippmann. A central question in the historiography of the Cold War is simply, who was to blame for the cold war? This is one of the most controversial debates in world history. There are mainly three differing “schools” of thoughts about the origin of this conflict: “orthodox” explanations, “revisionism,” and “post-revisionism.” The orthodox view mainly blames the Soviet Union for starting the …show more content…
There were continuous disagreements between the East and the West about the economic future of Germany and it was then that the West decided to introduce a new currency to help their zones flourish. The Soviets had no knowledge about this and when Stalin became aware of this he was infuriated and he decided to block Berlin and cut off all transportation links and supplies. The U.S responded to this by their counter blockade measures and they airlifted tons of necessities such as coal and food into Berlin for eleven months straight. This was when separate western governments were established in Germany and the North Atlantic Treaty was being signed in Washington. The blockade ended when Stalin had no choice but to admit defeat and lift the blockade. Stalin’s actions were seen as a major driving force in the Cold war and it lead to frosty superpower tensions. (Roger
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