In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of a story.
The origins of the Cold War have been debated since 1945 when, at the end of World War II, the allied countries of Great Britain, The United States, and The Soviet Union had to decide how to map out the fate of Europe. The continent had seen the leaders of Germany, in the span of less than thirty years, twice embark on a conquest that brought the world into war. What manifested was an unprecedented conflict of ideological misunderstandings, broken promises, suspicions, and changing players (i.e. deaths of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin).
In the years of the Cold War (1947-91) geopolitical anxieties led the world's great powers to maximize their economic strengths and military preparedness as quickly as possible. This outlook inspired such efforts as increasing agricultural modernization, road and railway-building, and the implementation of new nuclear weapons programs.
However, there are factors which present issues that internationalized the study of the Cold War. As a result, a research timeline which began with one-dimensional and pro-west interpretations, shows and increased rejection of those in favor of a more pro-Soviet perspective, and eventually a more balanced view of an essential shared responsibility. .
These stages can be divided into three schools of Cold War historiographical approaches: orthodoxy, revisionism, and post-revisionism. So, when considering an ever evolving view of one of the most dangerous times in world history, which interpretation is right or wrong? Through a look at all three approaches, one can ascertain that only critical thought applied to the research of each one can answer that question.
Initial interpretations of the foundation of the Cold War, known as Orthodoxy, became the norm for historians between the 1940's and the beginning the 1960's. During this period historians, such as Arthur Schlesinger, William H.