What Was The Cold War?
After World War II America and Russia became superpowers. Even thought they fought together against the Nazis they soon became hostile rivals. Between 1945 and
1989 the two countries and their allies were involved in a conflict known as the Cold War. The United States and the USSR never used weapons directly against each other. So how was the Cold War fought? The Cold War was fought through Proxy Wars, the Nuclear Arms Race, spying, strong words and threats, prestige, and the Space Race.
Both sides deeply mistrusted each other because they believed in two completely different types of government. The Eastern countries were run by a communist government, whereas the Western countries had democratic capitalist governments. The Western countries hated communism and believed that the USSR wanted to spread it throughout the world. They therefore did everything they could do to stop it from spreading. The mistrust made the East and West extremely suspicious of each other. Even though no shots were actually fired people were still scared that a nuclear war could start at any moment.
How Did The Cold War Start?
In 1917 the Bolshevik Party took control of Russia and turned it into a communist country. In 1923 Russia joined with three neighboring areas under Bolshevik control and formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). In 1941 during World War II, Germany invaded the USSR. The United States, Britain and the USSR formed the Grand Alliance. Even though they were fighting together there was still a lot of mistrust between them.
By the beginning of 1945 Germany was on the verge of defeat. In February Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, the British prime minister met at Yalta on the Black Sea to discuss what wo...
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...ed in the USSR. The republics that were part of the USSR demanded their independence. On August 19, 1991 a group of hard core communists tried to overthrow Gorbachev. At the time he and his wife were on vacation in the Crimea and the KGB put them under house arrest. Meanwhile in Moscow the leaders of the rebellion sent in tanks onto the streets. The president of Russia, Yeltsin demanded that
Gorbachev be released. On August 21, only two days later the communists in the rebellion gave themselves up and were imprisoned. Yeltsin wanted to end communism, so he forced Gorbachev to end the communist party. By December 1991 the USSR had broken up. On December 25 Gorbachev resigned and Yeltsin was now in control of the nuclear weapons. Despite the ending of the Cold War there are still many nuclear weapons in the world. There is still the slight possibility of a nuclear war.
During 1945 and early in 1946, the Soviet Union cut off nearly all contacts between the West and the occupied territories of Eastern Europe. In March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned that "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent" of Europe. He made popular the phrase Iron Curtain to refer to Soviet barriers against the West (Kennedy 1034). Behind these barriers, the U.S.S.R. steadily expanded its power. In 1946, the U.S.S.R. organized Communist governments in Bulgaria and Romania. In 1947, Communists took control of Hungary and Poland. Communists seized full power in Czechoslovakia early in 1948. These countries became Soviet satellite nations controlled by the U.S.S.R. Albania already had turned to Communism. Yugoslavia also joined the Communist bloc. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia had helped drive out the Germans near the end of the war. Communists led by Josip Broz Tito then took over the government (Cold War). East and West opposed each other in the United Nations. In 1946, the U.S.S.R. rejected a U.S. proposal for an international agency to control nuclear energy production and research. The Soviet Union believed the United States had a lead in nuclear weapons and would have a monopoly if controls were approved. The Soviet Union pictured itself as a defender of peace and accused the United States of planning a third world war.
In reality both countries had their differences, despised and did not trust each other, they both fought for their beliefs but never really went into actual warfare and that is why the term Cold War is used to define their relationship, whereas, the term Hot War is actual warfare and is the result of failed talks between both
The Cold War, which started sometime in the 1940’s, was a large quarrel between the United States and the Soviet Union. This dispute involved a lot of propaganda and threats of nuclear warfare. Despite all of the trouble though, after over forty years of fighting, the two leaders of these countries (Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev) would finally work out a solution. However, although they did reach an agreement, there were many differences between these two men.
A cold war is an ideological conflict with military standoffs while keeping diplomatic relations open. The Cold War consisted of two sides (or Superpowers); the first was the United States, who believed in and practiced capitalism, the opposing side was the Soviet Union, who believed in and practiced the idea of communism. Many historians dispute the start time of the conflict; however, it began some time after World War II and dragged on until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. The Cold War Project Group Online claims “the advancement of technology during the Cold War was greater than that of any one time period” (“The Arms Race”). The war developed nuclear missiles and many other technological advancements taking the world into a new era, the Nuclear Era. It was estimated at one time the United States and the Soviet Union could nuke the world seven times over; the governments realized the pointlessness of so many nuclear missiles and turned their attention toward other ways to get an upper hand in the conflict. Tensions ran high during this time; without military confrontation, research and resources were redirected towards other fields of technology such as detection systems, surveillance equipment, and underwater technologies.
After World War II (1939-1945), the United States and the Soviet Union became the strongest superpowers of the world. Although they shared a common enemy of the Nazi’s during the war, they did not share similar beliefs and interests economically and politically. The main difference between these powers was that the Soviets followed Karl Marx’s ideology of communism while the United States had a democracy and followed capitalism. This caused the two powers to become enemies post-war, later dividing up the world into two sides; The U.S. creating an alliance called NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and the Soviets creating an alliance called the Warsaw Pact. With the fear of starting a nuclear war, the contrasting factions entered
During 1945 there was a war called the Cold War. The Cold War was a war between two superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union, which at the center of the Soviet Union was Russia. Even though the Cold war Centered around these two countries it was actually all of Europe and the United states. This war started after World War II that had put a stop to European dominance(Rothney & Findley,2011). But the Soviet Union still remained Dominant even after Hitler and America gained dominance from winning World War II cementing it 's legacy as a Super Power country(Rothney & Findley,2011). The Cold war between these countries lasted until 1973, that 40 years.
During World War II, the United States and Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two was increasingly tense. The US had been concerned about Soviet communism and of Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical rule of Russia. The Soviets did not like the Americans refusal to treat the USSR as a part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which costed thousands of deaths of Russians. After the war ended, these grievances turned into a sense of mutual distrust between the two. The Soviets expansion in Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a possible Russian plan to try to take over. Although many people believe that the Cold War began off of no one
Before the war, “America had depicted the Soviet Union as almost the devil-incarnate. The Soviet Union had depicted America likewise so their 'friendship' during the war was simply the result of having a mutual enemy (Trueman, Chris).” In other words, these two super powers hated each other. The United States saw the Soviets equal to the devil and the Soviets made sure that everyone knew that the only reason they were fighting side by side in World War II was because they both were enemies with Nazi Germany at the time. Both were very powerful powers that would be able to fight side by side but still be enemies. This what made these two powers so unique. The steps leading up to the cold was a lot different then how other wars started in the past. It all started in the production of the atomic bomb from the Americans. Joseph ...
There were many events that occurred during the Cold War along with increased tension between the United States and the Soviet Union that it seemed almost inevitable that these two nations would go to war with each other. Once enemies who fought against each other in World War II, the two remaining superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union, were now forced to work together to decide post-war Europe’s fate at the Yalta Conference in 1945. The Cold War, which began after the end of World War II until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was the long period of conflict between the West and the East. Tensions were already initiated at the Yalta Conference, where Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt disputed over the issues of dividing up Germany, ...
The Cold War,said to have lasted from the end of World War II to the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991, was one of the most significant political events of the 20th century. For nearly 40 years the world was under the constant threat of total devastation, caught between the nuclear arsenals of the United States, Great Britain, and France on one side and the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China on the other. Any crisis precipitated by the struggle between the forces of democracy and communism could trigger a nuclear exchange of such stupendous proportions and overwhelming horror and suffering that would render life on earth utterly impossible. In reality, this Cold War was a tense political period between the Democratic and Communist blocs, the East and the West, and most importantly, the United States and the Soviet Union. Although this period has now come to an end, many disputes have been raised concerning the initial conference at Yalta near the end of the Second World War, and the actual causes of the Cold War tensions involving Communist and American aggression.
The Cold War was between two countries, The United States of America and Soviet Union. During World War II, the United States of America and Russia were allies fighting a common enemy, Nazi Germany, and once the war had ended political ambitions and trust issues started to drive a wedge between
According to the conventional Western view, the Cold War was a conflict between two superpowers, caused by Soviet aggression, in which the U.S. tried to contain the Soviet Union and protect the world from it.
After World War two tensions between Capitalist America and Communist Russia were high. A cold war began when the two super powers began to build more powerful, technology advanced, and for lack of a better word, better weapons. After VJ Day Russia knew what America was capable of and began to stock-pile nuclear weapons. Fear of attack America did the same thinking that no one would want to attack a nation with a larger military power. Both countries spent billions each year of military power and after all that, both countries were at a standstill. Though the nations repeated one of the underlying causes from world war one no actual fighting ever happened. Proxy wars were fought, supplying countries that for
After WWII their relationship became even more tense due to the building of new weapons capable of destroying entire countries. The USA built and tested a new type of weapon called the Hydrogen Bomb. The Soviet Union became concerned as to whether the USA would actually use such a weapon. Because of this, the Soviet Union began designing a similar weapon. The war became an argument of who had the biggest weapon. However, neither country fired a single missile thus making this a cold war instead of a hot war (200Years).
...pons. They both had a large supply of ballistic missiles. The NATO and Warsaw Pact were formed. This war inevitably led to destructive conflicts like the Vietnam War and Korean War. The Soviet Union had collapsed due to its economic weakness. The Berlin was destroyed and the two German nations were unified. The Baltic States and some former Soviet Republics had gained independence. America became the sole superpower of the world. Communism was no more. Communism collapsed worldwide. The Cold War sketched the foreign policies for both the countries through the second half of the twentieth century as both countries fought for accomplices to uphold and widen their own realms of power around the world, but it did not escalate to an apocalyptic World War II. The decade- long standoff between American capitalists and Soviet communists ceased without causing any violence.