The Origins of the Cold War

The Cold War was more than the product of post-World War II tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union argues John Lewis Gaddis, Robert A. Lovett Professor of History at Yale University. Rather, it was the product of events extending all the way back to the 1830s, when Alexis de Tocqueville predicted that Russia and the United States would become the world's foremost powers. In this lecture, Gaddis examines U.S.-Soviet relations from the nineteenth century through the end of World War II, tracing the myriad causes of the Cold War.