سؤال قراءة ستيب محلول — فهم التفاصيل (تدريب 6417)

(1) Starting with major scientific breakthroughs during the 1930’s, countries have developed weapons that are based on nuclear energy. The use of nuclear weapons reached its height with the outbreak of World War II and the Cold War. Two of the world’s major superpowers, the USA and Soviet Union, threatened each other with the use of nuclear weapons, which was referred to as the Cold War. (2) Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. As late as 1939, it seemed highly improbable that the United States and the Soviet Union would forge an alliance. U.S.-Soviet relations had soured significantly following Stalin’s decision to sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August of 1939. In spite of intense pressure to sever relations with the Soviet Union, Roosevelt never lost sight of the fact that Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, posed the greatest threat to world peace. In order to defeat that threat, Roosevelt confided that he “would hold hands with the devil” if necessary.Finally, two devastating atomic bomb attacks against Japan by the United States, coupled with the Soviets’ decision to break their neutrality pact with Japan by invading Manchuria, finally led to the end of the war in the Pacific. Soon after the war, the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union began to unravel as the two nations faced complex post- war decisions (3) At various conferences, the most important of which were at Yalta and Potsdam, the three powers split Germany and its capital Berlin in two, with the eastern portion controlled by the Soviet Union and the western portion controlled jointly by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Additionally, the Soviet Union was given influence over the governments of several Eastern European states, where they promptly set up loyal, communist puppet regimes. (4) The United States and the West feared the creation of this Eastern Bloc, as Western journalists and government termed it, and the further spread of communism and/ or totalitarian states in the rest of the world. U.S. foreign policy became one of containment - essentially, stopping the spread of communism wherever it could. This was in direct opposition to the Soviet Union’s policy of fostering the spread of communism, especially in its Asian neighbors. The Americans then feared that the USSR/ Communist influence that already spread over Eastern Europe, would influence the democracies of western Europe. In which year did US-Soviet relations sour significantly?