In order to describe the causes of the Cold War, it is important to fully understand what the Cold War actually means. The term ‘Cold War’ means a war fought on every front except actual fighting. This includes propaganda, war of words and threats. Each side stockpiles weapons and forces, which it hopes to never use but are a good asset in the war of words and threats. A real war between them could have meant colossal destruction of each other and everyone else on Earth.

Tensions between Russia and the West have been high throughout history. In 1815, at the Congress of Vienna, Tsar Alexander was quite prepared to use the congress to pursue the traditional aims of foreign policy, in p

On 7 December 1941, the Japanese shockingly destroyed a large part of the American Pacific Navy. This attack on the USA, brought them almost instantly out of isolation and left the US fearful of possible further attacks, angry at the way they were attacked and they felt vulnerable due to the dramatic loss of many of the US Navy’s fleet. From this point America was interventionist and was going to play a key role in world affairs and this can be seen as a cause of the Cold War.

The American’s thought of using their army or even the atom bomb, but decided to ferry supplies into West Berlin by air. Stalin too stopped just short of violence and did not even try shooting sown American planes. Despite the fears the Berlin airlift succeeded. “Plane after plane brought in supplies, in total a massive 27,00 trips were made. Then after 318 days, from June 1948 to May 1949, the Russians backed down and opened up the route to the city.” (Shlaim, University of California Press, 1984) German unity was now impossible.

“Stalin, through his speeches, paid lip service to the old Marxist ideals of world revolution, including a belief in the ultimate victory of communism over capitalism, however, there is no hard evidence that Stalin ever realistically thought about invading the west.” (Leffer & Painter, Routledge, 1994, pg. 91) Despite the strength of the red army, Stalin knew that technologically he was still weaker than his opponents. And in these immediate post-war years, America had the atom bomb and the Soviet Union did not.

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