Who was responsible for the Cold War?

At Yalta, Stalin had promised to organise free elections at the end of the war, but:

Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_people%27s_referendum,_1946
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_legislative_election,_1947#Conduct
Czechoslovakia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Czechoslovak_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
Romania: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election,_1946#General_irregularities
etc.

To be fair, there were free elections in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, but the problem was that Stalin didn't accept the results.

Once the USA saw what was happening in Eastern Europe, they realised that they had to counter Soviet influence with the Marshall plan, which was only implemented in June 1948. If they had wanted to control Europe, they would have used it immediately after the fall of Nazi Germany. Their first idea was to destroy Germany with the Morgenthau Plan, and leave Europe. The US Congress was also Republican, and isolationists such as Robert Taft wanted to return to the pre-war situation.

The USSR was the first to violate the Yalta agreement by purging the countries they had "liberated" and preventing elections from taking place, then they blockaded Berlin to force the USA to abandon the city. They also behaved like savages in their occupation zone; Soviets soldiers raped on an industrial scale and NKVD commissars killed at a similar pace. The fear of the Red Army was not a "paranoia". Most of the blame for starting the Cold War is on them.

Don't let your antiamericanism fool you.

The Truman doctrine (or Marshall Plan) was a response to preventing poorer nations from communism and becoming Soviet allies. American attitudes, not Soviets.

I'll check up about the blockade, I'd assumed that since Soviet attitudes towards Germans was resentment anyway but okay, it was a power play.

Again, its a simple comparison, the US had multiple military bases in proximity to the Soviet Union, additionally unlike the US bases, Cuba's leader was targeted for assassination, the Soviets rallied behind their communist ally. The US wanted to overthrow a revolution and restore a government looking after their own interests, how are they the good guys?

It shows how much more powerful the US was than the USSR was, so that any deal would be easier to cope with for the US than the Soviets.

I don't know who the Jupiter removals are, (guerillas?)

Dirty as in why it was so hated, sure it defeats the American dream premise, but supporting the purge because of fear that a political ideology spreads? Madness.

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All good points, although it depends how you look at it. Ultimately it was the Soviets that gained that Eastern bloc territory, so arguably you are requiring one of your 4 member states to roll back the land it liberated. After the war, the Soviets didn't expand, what countries did they actually invade or support other than fellow communists China, Cuba (North Korea, North Vietnam?) and Afghanistan. The USSR ended WW2 with the highest casualties, being dictated to by the US, the wealthy "heroes" who suffered little losses but were using their wealth to undermine the Soviet ideology. Wasn't Greece highlighted as the example where Communists were "revolting" when in fact the people wanted to overthrow their leader. Stalin was forced by the Yalta agreement to not intervene in Greece, yet the US was allowed to funnel aid? How is that fair?

The US owed the USSR a significant debt after WW2, considering the invasion of Japan, the length and cost of the war to the USSR, yet their response was hostility after the war, rather than tolerance. The blockade tbf is a good example of Soviet aggression, but alot of US "aggression" is never mentioned.

After the war the Soviets didn't expand, ummm:


That green bit on the right is the USSR in 1940, this is the USSR and it's satellites with puppet government in 1960:


I.e. suddenly there are 5 whole large countries and a big chunk of another that the USSR had expanded into.

Or another alternative, a map of the expansion:


Or in .gif form:

I'm definitely not seeing the red area expanding between the start and 1989...

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan are not the same thing, the Marshall Plan was part of the Truman Doctrine; the Truman Doctrine started in 1947, Marrshall was 48, and it's ultimate form was realised in '49 with the formation of NATO. The whole thing was in response so Soviet imperialism: the failure of the Soviets to withdraw from Iran, the failure by the Soviets to hold free and fair elections in Poland so as to form a puppet government; the annexation or otherwise illegitimate establishment of puppet governments in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Hungary, and others; Soviet aggression towards Turkey. Basically all of that went against pledges made at Yalta.

Jupiter, as in the missiles, these things:


The things put in Turkey and Italy that prompted the soviets putting their own missiles in Cuba.

Of course the irony of commenting on attempted assassination of Castro is the favourite tool of Stalin was assassination, I recall a man called Bronstein being whacked round the head with an ice pick on Stalin's orders, oh, and let's not forget about the million killed in the mid 30s, or all those assassinated in the previously mentioned dodgy elections.

Oh, and let us not forget the long telegram, the TL;DR of which is "The USSR want to wipe everybody off the face of the Earth that does not subscribe to communism, especially non-communist lefties." Also heavily the basis of the Truman Doctrine, with the assertion that it would be possible to defeat the Soviets without the need to engage in direct conflict, something that the Soviets really did not want to do, and instead the basis of any strategy should be to try to bring it down from within, given the types of propaganda used, and to use force to put off the fundamentally weak and divided Soviets. The very centre of it all is what wins most ideological battles: positivity over negativity.

But all of that territory was liberated by the Soviets from the Nazis after WW2. It wasn't like the Soviets proceeded to then invade beyond what land they seized during the war, its not the same thing IMO to maintain a presence in said nations as it is to actually expand in to them. The Soviets ruled through puppets sure but isn't that the same as American actions in central and south American nations?

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Yeah, the Truman Doctrine was (if I recall) a promise to oppose the spread of communism across Europe, funded by the Marshall Plan.

What imperialism? The US were concerned that more European states (impoverished) would turn to communism of their own volition (financially backed by Soviets? Maybe) revolutions were inevitable anyway.

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol19no3/html/v19i3a01p_0001.htm

That article seems to suggest that the majority of Soviet assassination targets were anti-Communists, most of them Soviet or ex-Soviets, very few cases list targeting of political opponents in other countries. Can't find any mention of Bernstein or an assassination? America at the time though did assassinate its own President (and his brother senator)

Let's not forget the red scare, the McCarthyite purge, the censorship of communist or socialist parties, the bias against Wallace, a socialist, the introduction of communist villains into films and cartoons. Americans were indoctrinated to despise communism.

And yeah, the Americans could have, but the Soviets had developed hydrogen bombs in what, early 1950s? MAD rendered the whole thing pointless, it was Petrov who blinked first, it was the US who pushed for Star Wars.

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You run into the slight problem that they are, allegedly, liberating forces, not occupying forces, and at Yalta they agreed not to occupy, rather to reestablish them as states with free and fair elections, which you seem to be having difficulty understanding that they didn't. Crushing opposition to make it practically a one party state is not having a free and fair election, especially when you then back a coup to get rid of the parties that disagree with you.

Further, most of Eastern Europe where the Soviets threw their backing behind the communist and socialist parties to get them into power and instill a puppet government weren't even part of the Third Reich, and when they were "liberated" were almost certainly done so purely to occupy the areas.

Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, in fact most of South Eastern Europe were not touched until late 1944 early 1945 when the heavy lines were moving in miles per hour, not per day, the darkest bit of the map above, swept from one side almost all the way to the other in a few months after the lighter tone took 3 years. The explicit strategy of both forces in the final months was not a race to Berlin, but a race to liberate/occupy as much of central Europe and Germany as possible, the Stalin to extend his sphere of influence, the Western Allies to minimise that expansion, the final six months or so of the European campaign was all about which political position won more of Europe.

I guess it's not surprise you're ,moving the goalposts, trying to justify actions that directly lead to the cold war by saying "well, the other people then did it during the cold war"



Are these inevitable revolutions the ones that never happened, per chance?

You probably know Bernstein better as one Leon Trotsky.

Dear God, you've stooped to a new level of looking stupid now, I'm guessing NASA never landed on the Moon either, I mean that inferior American equipment could clearly not manage it!

The US tested Tellar-Ulam (what basically everybody uses) fussion bomb in May '51 225kt, not meant to be big, meant to prove it works, went full scale, then Cryogenically cooled full scale the following November up at 10.4Mt, then dry design in March '54 with 15Mt and the biggest yeild of any tested US design (although they did ponder 250-500Mt devices to place off the West Coast as a defence against a naval assault).

Soviets on the other hand detonated their first fusion device in 1953, although I don't think it's fusion yeild was anywhere near high enough to be truly considered a fusion device, eventually in 1955 they used the same design as the Americans and managed 1.6Mt, and then in '61 you got the clearest demonstration of how powerful staged devices can be with Tsar Bomba.

The UK joined the club in 1957, before entering into the still standing sharing agreement with the US in 1958. Trivia on the side, we hold the record for the largest fission detonation ever, which everybody else thought was a fusion device.

Yeah, Russia was well behind in development, but went for higher yields that their western enemies (still do).

As for SDI, not unique to the US, the USSR tried to build anti ballistic missile system, but simply could not afford it, you can actually see parts of the never completed Moscow installations to this day, and more primitive systems had been in development by both sides since the 50s, there was a reason the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was a thing, limiting areas that could be covered by anti-ballistic missiles two only two, later cut down to 1, each with no more than 100 launchers and missiles. the USSR chose Moscow, which implies that they had launch systems very close to Moscow, which really shows the Soviet disregard for their own citizens, the US chose a facility in North Dakota (makes sense given they can't get much closer to Western Russia than there, at least without counting Alaska) where the system was being built anyway. The Americans finished the project, the Russians ran out of money, although the US only operated it for a single year.

You should have learnt not to bother trying to argue Nuclear when the Libs suggested it would be a good idea to go back to planes and bombs rather than SSBNs

Rargh, the other ideology was wrong. Do you know when the Cold war is regarded as having started, short of going all the way back to Lenin (yeah, the Russian guy started it all off)? It's generally agreed to be related with the Truman Doctrine, bonus points if you can tell me who's expansionism this was a reaction to?

Do you really expect the US to have taken the hit over Cuba when it was the Russian missiles going to Cuba that sparked it, even if US missiles in Turkey caused those actions? Do you really think allies over enemies would be blamed? Or the people who apparently lost nothing over the people who were made to remove their tactical edge? Remember, the Jupiter removals and promise not to invade Cuba were not common knowledge.

Oh, and if you really can't work out why communist is such a dirty word, I'll give you a hint: it's related to the American Dream.

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