#Hearts of iron 4 cold war free

#Hearts of iron 4 cold war free

For their part, the Americans were concerned at Communist expansion and accused Stalin of breaching the Yalta Agreement on the right of free peoples to self-determination. The Soviets felt surrounded and threatened by the West and accused the United States of spearheading вЂimperialist expansionвЂ™. Each country feared the newfound power of the other. The conflicts of interest between the new world powers gradually multiplied, and a climate of fear and suspicion reigned. The US now owned more than two thirds of the worldвЂ™s gold reserves and the dollar became the primary international currency. It also confirmed its status as the worldвЂ™s leading economic power, in terms of both the volume of trade and industrial and agricultural production. Its navy and air force were unrivalled, and until 1949 it was the only country with the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. Its human and material losses were relatively low, and even though the US Army was almost completely demobilised a few months after the end of hostilities, the United States remained the worldвЂ™s leading military power. The United States was the great victor of the Second World War. The Soviet Union thus had a real numerical superiority in terms of men and heavy weapons. Furthermore, the Red Army, unlike the US army, was not demobilised at the end of the war. The USSR also offered an ideological, economic and social model extending as never before to the rest of Europe. The country was given a new lease of life by its heroic resistance to the enemy, exemplified by the victory at Stalingrad. The USSR came out of the war territorially enlarged and with an aura of prestige from having fought HitlerвЂ™s Germany. Two blocs developed around the Soviet Union and the United States, with other countries being forced to choose between the two camps. The major European powers that had been at the forefront of the international stage in the 1930s were left exhausted and ruined by the war, setting the scene for the emergence of two new global superpowers.

The end of the Second World War did not signal a return to normality on the contrary, it resulted in a new conflict.