How did the Cold War actually start?
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The western countries like the US and France and the UK thought the rest of the world needed more democracy and freedom, and the eastern countries under the USSR thought communism and strict government control over personal lives was the better option. And both sides had nuclear weapons and they were *really* serious about trying to spread their agenda around the world.
Ww2 ended and the western countries had a fear of communism and its threat to freedom. This led to them doing whatever they can to preserve democracy and freedom which meant strengthening military power and technological power in the case of an event. Hitler, although anti communist, proved that democracy and freedom are very fragile(Germany was democratic before his rise to power) Russia and other eastern countries wanted to spread communism.
Basically a difference in political ideologies existed during WW2, they just compromised during the war due to having a common enemy. https://youtu.be/9vWqqiv1iEQ
Just a heads up OP. r/Askhistorians would be Able to provide you a much more in depth and accurate answer than anyone could here.
Hard to give an exact point. The Allied invasion of Russia to take out the Soviets is probably a good point to pick. It showed that the British/Americans/French were the sworn enemies of the Soviets and intended to destroy them.
Well basically everybody was hostile to the Bolsheviks from the start and the Entente intervened in the Russian Civil War against them. Not enough to win but enough to ensure that the Bolsheviks would not forget.
So, not a great start
Here are some possibilities for starting moment:
The Bolsheviks expected a World Revolution, and under Marxist theory this was supposed to take place somewhere more industrially advanced like Germany or Britain.
When it didn’t, and the Red Army was repulsed from Poland and Bela Kun thrown out of Hungary they drew back from a hot war; but realise everyone still hates them even if they are not trying to get rid of them right now.
So a Cold War it is
This is also helped by Stalin winning the internal power struggle against Trotsky
But the Soviets aren’t “The” Enemy, they are a backwards pariah mostly content to be horrible to their own people
In the aftermath of WW2 the Soviets are a lot closer and a lot relatively stronger, and in addition to their own ideology telling them their triumph is inevitable they have also inherited the ambitions of Imperial Russia and have suffered devastating invasions from the West twice in 30 years so want a buffer zone.
However this wasn’t acceptable to The West and no one wanted a Hot war (it was called Operation Unthinkable for a reason); so back to semi-peaceful Cold War it was.
Or if you want the TLDR:
Cold War is the default state between the Soviet Union and just about everybody else; WW2 forced a temporary change in that but neither Stalin nor his fellows forgot that “My Enemy’s Enemy is my Enemy’s Enemy, nothing more”
This is hard to say. As the name suggest the cold war never actually started. Already in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1923 there were a series of interventions from the UK, France, US, and others to help out the White against the Red communists. Then in the Winter War of 1939 Finland received help from UK, France and other western nations to fight the Red Army. And while the Soviet Union were part of the Allied during WWII there were significant distrust between them which required several in person conferences between the top politicians and diplomats to agree on a war plan and how to divide the spoils of war. They were all planning for the cold war already while they were losing WWII. And towards the end of the war generals and soldiers on both sides were openly discussing the desire to continue fighting each other after Nazi Germany were defeated. There might even have been some firefights between western allied forces and the Red Army towards the end of the war.
And then there were the Korean war which started in 1948-1950. Kim Il Sung was appointed by the Soviet Union and he had to ask Stalin for permission to invade South Korea. This was the first big proxy war that was part of the Cold War. And although there were many smaller hostilities either directly or indirectly between the United States and Soviet Union the big direct confrontation happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. This was when the US Navy blocked USSR transport ships which were probably carrying missiles, soldiers and nuclear weapons to Cuba. If the cold war had not started before this it was started then.
Well, it starts during WW1.
After the communist revolution in 1917, the Russians turned inwards. This essentially ended their involvement in the war against Germany. The Allied forces were concerned with this, and some troops were sent to Russia, but it’s kind of confusing, complicated, and really inconsequential to the outcome of events. Never the less, the presence of American troops on Russian soil during this time was a good source of propaganda for the new Soviet government, and this would fuel things for a very long time from their side.
In the US, this was the start of the “red scare”. Capitalists really hate communists. As such, a lot of effort went in to creating anti-capitalist propaganda. As a side-note, this is one of the reasons many people argued in favor of friendly relations with the Nazi regime during the 1930’s. The Nazis were aggressively anti-communist, and even before they came to power in Germany, the two political parties would often engage in overt acts of violence. The number of people murdered during this time isn’t very high, but really any kind of open political violence in a ‘democracy’ should be concerning. It is often a prelude to more widespread violence in the country later.
The Spanish Revolution of 1936 plays a role here as well. Spain had just fallen into a civil war, and honestly, this is one of the more complicated conflicts in the 20th century. It had a LOT of different components, but for our purposes, it did pit communism vs. fascism. It also featured democracy vs totalitarianism, but this would not line neatly for the countries who sent backing (Russia on the side of democracy, Brittan on the side of totalitarianism, the US was officially neutral). It’s also a harbinger of how countries would engage in proxy fights, sending aid to a conflict somewhere else in order to establish global influence over their opponent (British v. Russia here, US v. Russia later).
After WW2, despite being allies during the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union saw each other as rivals. The US had already become a player on the world stage, and it was growing more and more influential and dominant around the world. The United States had significant holdings all over the Pacific as well as strong connections with Europe. Due to Russia’s geography, that makes them largely hemmed in from both sides Their north is blocked by ice, the south is landlocked and blocked by mountains, west is Europe, and the east is the Pacific.
Russia had wanted to see itself as the equal to the empires of Europe during the 19th century, when it was a monarchy. I am not arguing that it was or wasn’t on equal footing, merely that it wanted to be perceived as such. Stalin can easily be described as being obsessed with power, and so he latched on to this desire as well. Stalin was the head of the government, and he controlled it ruthlessly. He sought to expand Russian influence and to create a new empire that was communist (at least in name).
The US adopted a policy position of the “domino theory”. They ascribed to the concept that if a single country became communist in a region, it would lead to the spread of communism (ie, dominoes knocking each other over). The US policy was then to expand their own influence and enforce capitalist-style rules around the world. The US largely stepped into the abandoned shoes of European countries that lost their colonies. The US didn’t establish their own colonies, but relied on economic and military power to include other countries in an American economic system.
**Summary**: The conflict between the two countries predates the Cold War by about 40 years. The conflict grew out of both countries ideological opposition to the other’s ideology. This was further exacerbated by both countries desire to force the rest of the world to enact economic and political systems that would favor either the United States or the Soviet Union.
Edit: Those who want to add something, please feel free to add details you think relevant.
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The cold War probably started in 1918 when the US invaded the Soviet Union to try and foment a counter revolution. Immediately after the end of WW2 the US and Great Britain began to try to undermine the soviet union. The point is that the starting point for the cold war goes back to The western powers distaste for any systems of government that didn’t allocate natural resources to them. To put a more precise date on it one might say when Churchill gave his Iron Curtain speech in Missouri in 1946 but it was based on proclivities that were apparent long before then.
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