The Cold War: Prelude in Wartime

The Origins of the Cold War.

The United States and Great Britain accepted the Soviet Union as an ally during World War II out of necessity. Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that the German threat was such that if "Hitler had invaded hell, I would have made a pact with the devil," and many Allied leaders characterized the Soviets in demonic terms. The roots of such attitudes were decades deep. From the moment the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917, they were at odds with the Western powers. First, the Russians signed a separate peace treaty with the Germans in World War I, enabling Kaiser Wilhelm II to transfer troops to the western front, thereby increasing pressure on the Allies. The Bolsheviks expropriated many Western properties without compensating their owners, and then the new Russian leaders began to stir up revolutionary activity against Western governments. Britain, France, and the United States found the new...