Cold War Significance

What was the significance of the Cold War?

In the aftermath of the Second World War the Allied Powers of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France all found themselves victorious against the fascist enemy of Nazi Germany. As this war ended relations between the western and eastern allies became sour and started to corrode forming a new kind of war. The Cold War was not a direct war but decades of geopolitical tension and military standoffs predominantly among the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America. The reason this event was so significant was due to the ideological divide between the two nations that shrouded the world for decades leading to conflict and numerous other competitive

At the end of the WW2 the Korean Peninsula was occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union until eventually both sides left the two sides the nation with both Koreas claiming to govern the entirety of the nation. The Korean War began when the communist nation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea invading it’s capitalist neighbor, the Korean Republic. With aid from the People’s Republic of China, who had just won their civil war against their nationalist enemy, and the Soviet Union the Korean Republic stood no chance against the encroaching communist army. At the beginning of the war most U.S. officials were terrified of the idea of communism taking full control of Korea. The U.S. believe that a “domino effect” would occur, meaning that if Korea fell other countries in the region would fall to the ideology as well. The only problem for U.S. intervention in Korea is that if America decided to officially join the Korean War, other nations such as the Soviet Union may follow, quickly escalating into another World War. Regardless, President Harry S. Truman appealed to South

This also led to the East German Communist Party to build the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was considered to be an ideological boundary between the East and West (History.com Staff 1). Soon Germans living and working in between the East and West found themselves trapped on opposing sides of the wall. The reasoning behind the wall was mainly to stop the defection of information between East and West Berlin. Families were separated for nearly three decades and East Berliners threatening to be killed if any escape was attempted. Nevertheless, this threat would not discourage thousands of East Berliners from escaping to the more prosperous West. Despite the mass migration of East Berliners in attempts to escape the communists, about 171 sadly died in escape attempts (History.com Staff 5). The Berlin Wall was eventually destroyed in 1989, when East German officials announced to the citizens of East Berlin that the were free to go over the wall without any