Question by Alix A: if we were allies with russia during world war 2 how come we went into the cold war with them?
this came to my mind just a few minutes ago. it doesn’t come to my mind how we helped them during the war. and now its kinda like were enemies i mean thats a really big country and i wouldn’t want to go to war with them. but lately i noticed how Obama and i think Vladimir Putin or i think it was dmitry anatolyevich medvedev . and they were pushing for sanctions on Iran. i mean that doesn’t exactly mean that there friends or what ever right?
Answers and Views:
Answer by dylanfox
the american war industry always needs a bogey man to scare the american people with, to justify the trillions wasted to make some very rich!
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Smyth says
Good answers have already been given, but it might interest you to know that throughout history many nations have been allies and then turned enemies, or at least put aside their differences for a while in order to combat a more powerful foe. Sure, we worked with Russia during WWII in order to combat Germany and Italy. We also worked with China in order to combat Japan. Even within China, Mao Zedong, who was a communist revolutionary at the time, put aside his differences with the Chinese government in order to combat the invading Japanese. It wasn't until WWII was pretty much over that he resumed his fight against the government, eventually overthrowing it.
Legio XVII says
The Cold War was a result of an ideological conflict between the USSR and the "west" (the west means the United States and western Europe). The USSR wanted to spread communism around the world, but the western world wanted to spread capitalism and democracy. This conflict had existed ever since the creation of the Soviet Union, but WWII emboldened the Soviets to expand communism into eastern Europe and Asia.
In fact, part of the reason we dropped nuclear bombs on Japan was to end the war before the Soviets could have a chance to invade Japan and spread communism there.
We're on much better terms with Russia now than we have been for a long time, but we're not allies.
Crown Royal says
The reason why, after WWII, was that the Russians wouldn't give those countries back to govern themselves. Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Baltics…were propped up with Soviet regimes, whereas the Western European nations were given their sovereignty back. That made for a confrontation and distrust.
Now, it's a kind of live and let live, but we're not quite allies though.
Jacob says
Actually Russia helped us at least as much as we helped them – Russian soldiers bore most of the brunt of fighting the land war.
The alliance between the USA and Russia during WW II was in some sense a "shotgun wedding" caused by the need to band together against a common enemy. But once that enemy was defeated, the USA and Russia couldn't exactly just forget the fact that they each had opposing ideologies (capitalism vs. Communism) and nuclear weapons.
Ashley says
we had to unify against a common threat, germany. germany was invading russia and would have eventually invaded the us had they not been stopped. but we had two different political ideologies, communism and democracy. the cold war wasn't a real war, it was a competition.