Question

The Second World War affected the foreign policies of the United States in the postwar world. How did the strained allied relationships, particularly those of the United States and the U.S.S.R. contribute to initiating the Cold War? Discuss the key events that occurred from the Berlin Airlift to the Cuban Missile Crisis and their impact on the United Stat

Answer 1

Answer:

The (non-existing) communist threat.

Explanation:

The. Berlin Blockade (1948-1949) can be seen, in retrospect, as the start of the Cold War. The Sovjets blocked the Western sectors of Berlin as a protest to the introduction of the Deutsche Mark in Berlin. This event troubled the already tense relationship between the two world powers.

Now it must be said that from the beginning the wide-spread belief that the U.S.S.R and it´s communist comrades (Cuba) was going to complete what Hitler couldn´t manage, i.e. conquer the whole world, was, in retrospect, an absurd idea from the American side.

This by paranoia fueled belief - see for more information Eric Hobsbawm in The Age of Extremes - was shown clearly in the Truman Doctrine, the failed invasion in Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis, not to mention the Vietnam War in which several American presidents ¨tapped their way through a dense cloud of incomprehension, confusion and paranoia.¨  Eric Hobsbawm