World War 2

One of the greatest competitions between nations our world has ever seen took place during the 20th century. World War II was not a military struggle but rather it was a competition between ideologies. From the founding of both nations, great leaders made the US and the Soviet Union proud countries. Their mutual success during the greatest armed conflict the world had ever seen amplified the egos of these two nations. After defeating a common enemy in the Axis powers, the world witnessed the negotiations that would ultimately create a vast rift between the US and the Soviets. At the Yalta Conference, the concession of Poland to the USSR’s demands of annexation, created angst amongst the US and its other Allies. This would prove to be the first in a long line of disagreements that nearly culminated in a third world war. The US and the Soviet Union shaped the world from the mid 1940s to the mid 1960s economically through the reconstruction, of emerging countries that possessed similar ideologies, and through proxy wars.

After the Second World War, the US and the USSR sought ways to fix the global economy. The US saw that even great countries such as Italy and Germany were reminders that economic hardship could drive hard-pressed populations to embrace authoritarian regimes. (Hunt 79) Not wanting to repeat history, the US moved quickly to restore the German economy in hopes that its rehabilitation would serve as a catalyst for the rest of Europe. The Marshall Plan was the economic and humanitarian plan that was presented to all of Europe including the Soviet Union. The US provided an unprecedented amount of capital with hopes of restoring manufacturing and modernizing industry. The Marshall Plan’s work projects made unemployment rates drop rapidly and set the German as well as European economies in the right direction. Seeing this move, the Soviets refused all Marshall plan aid and additionally refused to withdraw their troops from East Germany; as a result dividing...