Cold war
The cold war was a phony war. The problems emerging between the soviets and the Americans were actually unresolved issues left over from World War II. The cold war enabled both the soviets and the Americans to enhance their military budgets and attempt to establish police states within their borders. The Americans should have known that the soviets were going to dominate Eastern Europe. To expect otherwise was foolish and wishful thinking. Some origins of the cold war were: Greek communists vs. the British Greece, Churchill’s iron curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946, and soviet domination in Eastern Europe.
First was The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek government army,backed by the United Kingdom and the United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), the military branch of the Greek Communist Party, backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania. It was the result of a highly polarized struggle between leftists and rightists that started in 1943 and targeted the power vacuum that the German-Italian occupation during World War II had created. One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, according to some analysts it represents the first example of postwar British and American involvement in the internal politics of a foreign country.
Second was Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician, best known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, he served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States
Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College, used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe:
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "Iron Curtain" has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
Much of the Western public still regarded the Soviet Union as a close ally in the context of the recent defeat of Nazi Germany and of Japan. Although not well received at the time, the phrase iron curtain gained popularity as a shorthand reference to the division of Europe as the Cold War strengthened. The Iron Curtain served to keep people in and information out, and people throughout the West eventually came to accept and use the metaphor.
Last one was Soviet consolidation and domination in Eastern Europe. It began as Soviet forces were liberating nations from Nazi rule during World War II. The Soviets chose to incorporate Ruthenia in Czechoslovakia and Kalingrad in East Prussia in addition to the Baltic nations, Eastern Poland, Bessarabia, and parts of Finland which had been previously annexed, between 1939-1941, to the Soviet Union. During the Soviet drive to Poland in 1944 a large uprising against the Germans by the Polish Home Army in Warsaw was crushed by Nazi forces. During this time Soviet troops had halted just miles outside the city leading some western observers to conclude that it was a deliberate move so the Soviets would not be seriously contested by non-Communist groups in expanding Communism after Warsaw was taken. After the Soviets liberated Poland they executed the remnants of non-Communist leadership in the area, paving the way for a puppet
