Who Was To Blame For The Cold War Essay

Going back about 70 years, we enter one of the most hostile and tense times ever in history: the Cold War. For almost half a century, the once allied superpower countries of the United States and Russia faced stressed relations caused by their conflicting ideologies and desires. However, like in many situations, the blame has to be put on someone. Since the end of the Cold War, historians have been re-examining and re-analyzing the various places, events, and historical interpretations of the War in order to come to a conclusion. And with that has come distinct disagreements and beliefs between the historians about which country is solely responsible. Each of their viewpoints can be categorized into three unique schools of thought: traditionalists, …show more content…
The group of people that blame neither the United States or the Soviet Union for the Cold War are called post-revisionists. Post-revisionists claim that with the amount of power the two countries held in Europe post World War II, it was inevitable for mutual suspicions and misunderstandings to not rise. Unlike traditionalists, they believe Stalin was actually trying to secure the Soviet Union rather than plan a communist takeover. The United States was unaware of this, thus creating the suspicion and confusion between the countries. Post-revisionist John Lewis Gaddis supports this in his novel, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, stating that conflict caused by “mutual misunderstanding, reactivity, and America’s inability to understand Stalin 's fears and need to defend himself after the war” caused the war.3 Understanding that the Cold War was the result of miscommunications that were beyond control of the United States and the Soviet Union is key to the post-revisionists