The Cold War Essays

The Cold War

Lane Fister
History 20
Period 6
The Cold War developed in 1945 between two controversial parties, The Soviet Union and

America. Both parties main goal was to dominate international affairs for many years to come. The

Cuban Missile Crisis and The Berlin Wall were two of the several events that occurred during this time.

The main issue concerned throughout the Cold War was the growth in weapons of mass destruction.
The Cold War was a war without warfare. A war that was called, “The Cold War,” because the two

parties involved (America and The Soviet Union) were afraid of an actual war, where blood is shed.

Like young children, the two parties used words as weapons and made ideal threats to each other from

other sides of the world to make the other look foolish. How the Cold War began is a very controversial

topic that can be traced pretty definitely to the discontent of the western powers with the aftermath of

the Yalta Conference, the second and last meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill.
After WWII, the United States and the Soviet Union were the most super powered countries. By

the 1950’s, both parties had nuclear weapons and powerful armed forces which added a dangerous

aspect to the Cold War. The aftermath of the WWII led to parts of Germany being owned by the Allies

and Soviet Union.. Berlin in particular was a prime example of what the Cold War stood for. The Allies

controlled the West while the Soviet Union controlled East Germany.
The Soviet Union wanted Germany to be weak as possible to ensure that they would never be

attacked by Germany. A way of making sure that this would not occur, was by the Soviet Union taking

whatever was needed from Germany. The Allies did the exact opposite. The Allies believed that a

strong Germany would enable to prosper after the years of the Nazi dictatorship. The Deutschmark was

what symbolized this belief. The Soviet Union hated the idea of the Allies and was afraid that there

western Germany would be exposed to this. To resolve the problem, The Soviet Union build a Berlin

Blockade that blocked all surface transport to Western Germany. This event actually made President

Truman act quickly to find another way to support his cause of a stronger Germany. With the help of

the Allies, President Truman ordered military planes to fly coal, food and medicine to Western

Germany. According to text, “they provided over almost 2.5 million tons of supplies on about 280,000

flights”.
In 1949, the U.S led to the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, (NATO). The

sole purpose of the NATO was to defeat the Soviet forces, as the first Secretary General of NATO

quoted, “ to keep Russians out, Americans in, and Germans down.” The original countries of the NATO

consisted of ten Western European countries which were, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France,

Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and finally the United States. These countries

together formed an alliance that would reassure the security of the North Atlantic region, by instilling

the pure principal that an attack against one member, would mean an attack against all members. By

building this strong membership, the NATO was created a “all for one and one for all,” model that

succeeds to conquer over the Soviets. As a counter attack, the Soviets then created a similar model

which was called, the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was created several years later, blindly trying to

facilitate the same defense mechanism that eventually falls, which led to both the Soviet Union and the

Warsaw Pact to come to a defeat, which peaked the Korean War.
The Korean War began in 1950 and lasted for three years until, 1953. The Korean War was a

conflict between communist North Korea and anti-communist South Korea. This was considered a

proxy war between the U.S and the

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