After the second world war, the cold war began. During world war two, the Soviet Union and U.S.A. were allies against Hitler, but when the war ended, there was no longer a common enemy. There were large differences between the Soviet Union’s communist political system and the U.S.A’s capitalist one, this made co-operation between the allies very difficult. Because of this and the distrust they had for each other, the cold war began.
The reason why it was called the ‘cold’ war was because there were no weapons used. The war was a war of words, diplomacy, spying and propaganda, but nuclear weapons were still being created. The Soviet Union wanted to be more advanced in nuclear weaponry than the U.S.A. and the U.S.A. wanted the same. This lead to an arms race. They did their best not to set off these bombs, because doing this would destroy the world many times over.
Europe was split into two: a capitalist West and a communist East. This is because during world war two the U.S.A., Britain, and other allies freed Western Europe from German occupation, and the Soviet Red Army had taken control
of most of Eastern Europe. Stalin wanted the Soviet Union to be secured. He did this by making Eastern Europe stronger, and tried to spread communism over Western Europe, whilst tree U.S.A. tried to support the West and demolish communism in the East.