Allies Becoming Enemies

For my first post I will give my fellow readers the background they need on the Cold War. After World War 11, the Soviet Union and America were left as the main superpowers of the world. Everything might have gone along fine if the two countries were not absolutely terrified of one another. America feared that the Soviet Union's Communism would obliterate the Democracy they had worked so hard to protect. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, feared America's great military and economic power. The greatest problems was their ways of life were almost incompatible. Communism is based on the state owning everything and distributing equally, while Democracy is based on the people having the power. Both nations also deeply resented each other. The Soviet Union was angry because America had not recognized their Communist government until 16 years after their revolution. America was angry with the Soviet Union because they had signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. The Soviets took an aggressive foreign policy using Eastern Europe to undue the damage the war had cost them. While America took a policy of containment. They tried to block the Soviets from spreading Communism to other nations. The Cold War officially started around 1945, the U.S. had just elected a new president, Harry S. Truman, who did not see eye to eye with the Russian leader, Joseph Stalin. At the Yalta conference, Stalin refused to let Poland have an open election which convinced Truman that the U.S. and Russia would be at odds. America soon past laws like The Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine to help countries resist Communist takeovers. The Chinese Civil war and Korean War put these two nations over the edge. In America Communists were sot out with laws and organisations like HUAC and the McCarran Act. Russia and America also competed in having the latest military devices like the H-bomb. Russian and American spies went back and forth trying to discover secret information to give their side an upperr hand in this insane conflict. The two sides kept up the struggle even into the 60's with the Cubian Missle Crisis, but the the tension eased with the Limited Test Ban Treaty.