The Cold War
Uploaded by jess4912 on Apr 16, 2000
A war that has created controversy amongst two of the greatest world leaders, United States of America and The Soviet Union, is known as The Cold War. A dispute between once allied countries arose in the Post-WWII era.
The United States and the Allied Powers faced many challenges at the end of WWII. America’s policy was one that contained the spread of communism in Eastern Europe. Russia, under Lenin's rule called for a world revolution and brought the United States into it. It was not until after WWII, that the cold war really began, when the political power of the world shifted from the center of Europe to Moscow and Washington. The Cold War began after the collapse of Germany in May 1945(http://www.coldwar.org/indexrus.html). The creation of the cold war came from the disagreements for postwar Europe and the Far East. Each superpower, the United States, Britain, France and Russia had their own idea of how postwar Europe should look, and many of their ideas clashed. The Cold War arose not from one isolated event, but from the different ideologies and interests between the Soviet Union and the west. Also the Russian government was seeking revenge on the United States because the United States did not enter the war effort soon enough and that caused for more Russian casualties.
After WWII
After WWII, Germany was divided into four zones and occupied by Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Berlin itself was occupied by the western powers; however, it was surrounded by the Soviet zone. Between 1947 and 1948 cooperation between these powers broke down. The west decided to create a separate government in their zones. To prevent this, the Soviet's increasingly harassed the western traffic to and from Berlin. Russia was trying to spread communism, abolish democracies, and spread poverty. Thus creating the Berlin Blockade, which forced America to create the Berlin Airlift. This created a greater controversy between the United States. This controversy’s caused spies to enter into the opposition’s country.
Russia V.S. United States
The most visible part of the cold war was the arms race. Massive and expensive militarization movements, especially nuclear weaponry on the part of both nations involved caused a new psychology to develop. The theory of total destruction of the other country was based on three ideas. One: both nations have enough weapons do destroy the other, two: both nations can detect a first strike...