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At the end of World War II, the USSR had the largest army, the world had ever seen. But Mother Russia was destroyed just as completely Europe.
27 Mio. Soviets were killed and 70000 Russian villages were burned down.
6 Mio. Jews were killed in concentration camps.
Great Britain became totally impoverished.
20 % of the Polish population were dead.
In contrast to all the negative effects, the USA became the largest industry power in history.
They were for example able to built a cargo ship in less than 3 days and a Bomber in a few hours.
Opposing to the western alliance (which tried to rebuild Germany) , the Soviets ruthlessly exploited their occupation zones. They tried to take every chance to disarm and dismantle Germany. It was a kind of revenge.
The Soviets were attacked 3 times from Europe in the last 150 years. So their destiny was that no European country should be able to attack Russia in future. Therefore they attached so called satellite states. To reach this, Stalin replaced the governments under his influence by communists and created a communist bulwark. With this aggressive and provocation tactics, Stalin risked a open confrontation with the West. So Washington saw, not longer than 6 months after the War, a potential enemy in Russia!
So what to do? The communism seemed to spread over Europe like a Virus.
The answer was a "Containment Policy" developed by the USA. The destiny was to answer the aggressive way of Russia with political and financial cleverness. For example by giving credits to Western Europe and stop giving credits to the Soviets.
Comments by Stalin in early 1946, that capitalism and imperialism made future wars inevitable, set off alarm bells in the West. George Kennan, a career U.S. diplomat in Moscow, was asked by the State Department for his view on Soviet motives and intentions. His famous cabled response warned there could be no permanent, peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union.
As Stalin refused to call his troops back from Northern Iraq, the world wide oil resources were in danger. The reaction was that Churchill announced what everybody knew before:
"An Iron Curtain is pulled over the whole continent from Stettin to Triest !"
1946, Moscow demanded free access to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. But Turkey denied their demand. So Soviets stationed 12 divisions at the coast of the Dardanelles. The answer: the USA sent out warships and the Soviets gave up.
The winter came (46/47) and it was one of the hardest winters, mankind had ever seen. Britain was near a huge catastrophe. They had to shorten their Expenditures and give up the eastern Mediterranean. The situation began to get out of control, because the eastern Mediterranean was about to fall under Russian control and therefore under communistic reign.
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