A lot of things happened in the span of forty five years of the Cold War. I will be addressing some of the things that happened in the Cold War in this research paper. The Cold War was not really a fighting war it was more like a “military standoff” (Marriott 19). I will also talk about the smaller wars that happened in the Cold War like The Vietnam War and The Korean War. I will start off with telling you what Communism is in the first place.
There are will four main points in this paper, The rise of Communism particularly in the Soviet Union, Democracy particularly in the U.S., Nuclear weaponry between world powers, and The Space Race. “Communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.
g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society.” (Britannica) President Eisenhower made this saying popular. “The domino theory was a Cold War policy that suggested a communist government in one nation would quickly lead to communist takeovers in neighboring states, each falling like a perfectly aligned row of dominoes.
“(History.com) If you put this in context it is like the Soviet Union is communist and after that a lot of other countries started adopting this style of government. The U.S.
S.R. is an abbreviation for Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. After the U.S. dropped Nuclear weapons on Japan the U.
S.S.R. was also curious in making weapons of mass destruction of their own, this soon became the Cold War. At the time Europe was very weak after WWII so the two biggest world powers were the United States and the U.S.S.
R. The Iron Curtain was not a real “Iron Curtain” but it was an imaginary border between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. “The term Iron Curtain had been in occasional and varied use as a metaphor since the 19th century, but it came to prominence only after it was used by the former British prime minister Winston Churchill in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, U.S., on March 5, 1946”.(Britannica) On the East was the Soviet Union with its communist government and on the West were the non-communists. Joseph Stalin was leader who killed and put people in jail for having a different belief.
He was interested in the development of nuclear weapons like the U.S.A.(Marriott 16) He believed in communism and was taking over countries in Europe.
(Marriott 16) The imaginary fence separating the Communist nations and the others was called the Iron Curtain, but there was also an actual dividing line in Berlin, Germany where they built the Berlin Wall.(Marriott 16) Mikhail Gorbachev was a president of the of the Soviet Union. He was in office during the fall of Communism. He signed the the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This was signed December 8, 1987 and it was signed in Washington D.C.
This would mean that both countries had to destroy certain weapons with nuclear warheads.(Britannica) Nikita Khrushchev was born in Kalinovka, Russia on April 15, 1894. He was the successor to Joseph Stalin and was also a communist. He had a rough time when his two children died of typhus.
Towards the end of his his time as the leader of the U.S.S.R.
the communist ideology was fading and so was the U.S.S.R.(History.com) The government system Democracy mean ruled by the people for instance people can vote for their leader.
(Britannica) The United States is in the western hemisphere and it is in the middle of Canada and Mexico. The U.S. at this time is a very powerful country and also has allies Europe. The Marshall Plan was a plan where the U.S.
gave economic aid of 13 billion U.S. dollars to the western part of Europe that was not controlled by the Soviet Union. The U.
S. did this to help western Europe recover from the damages of World War ?. “The plan formed the basis of the European Economic Union.”(Marriott 18) Harry S. Truman was in office during the economic boom in the U.
S. He was the Vice President of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but President FDR died, so Truman was next in line to be President. He saw things happen that lead him to think a Cold War was about to breakout.(Marriott 18) John F.
Kennedy was born into a wealthy family, had a great education, and was a hero in the military during World War Two. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States and his age of 43 made him the youngest president. JFK developed the Peace Corps and had an idea of putting a man on the moon, but sadly he did not get to see that happen because he was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
(History.com) Dwight D. Eisenhower was a World War ll hero because he led D-Day or The Battle of Normandy. He was born in Denison, Texas, on October 14, 1890. In the Cold War he the President of the U.
S. from 1953-1961 or 2 terms. Eisenhower launched the Space Race and created the Interstate highway system. He also made Social Security stronger.(History.com) Lyndon B.
Johnson was president after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He fought for Civil Rights, Medicare, Head Start, the Voting Rights Act. He was president during the Vietnam War. The U.
S. had nuclear weapons during this time along with their rival, the U.S.S.R. The weapons both countries had could cause catastrophic damage along with radiation lasting years before it is sustainable to live in anymore. If you were a country during The Cold War and you had nuclear weapons of mass destruction that probably meant you were powerful because of how expensive they were along with the fact that you would need to employ people that knew how these weapons worked which was hard as its own.The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted 13 days and had to do with the U.
S., Cuba, and the Soviet Union. What happened was Cuba became friends with the Soviet Union and the U.
S. did not like that. The reason for this is that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were on opposing ends of the Cold War. Cuba had Nuclear bombs from the Soviet Union and the U.S.
created a blockade around the country until they got rid of the bombs. (History.com) “Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016) established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.”(History.com) The space race was a battle of firsts dealing with space. The space race was between the U.
S. and the U.S.S.
R. After WW2 the German rocket scientists that made the V1 and V2 rockets were recruited to help the U.S. space program or the U.S.S.R. space program.
(History.com) The space agency for the U.S. is The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or N.A.S.A. The U.
S.S.R.
space agency is called the Soviet Space Program.This was a program done by the U.S.
called the Apollo project and it is done by the people at NASA. The mission, Apollo 11 was to land two people, Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin on the moon to be able to be on the surface of the moon. There was a third person in the mission, Michael Collins and what he did was orbit around the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon. This was done successfully, and the first person to step on the moon was Neil Armstrong.
(Loff) This was the U.S.S.R. rocket that was able to carry people. Later during the Cold War, a U.S. capsule and a Soyuz locked together in space.
A newer variation of the Soyuz is still being used today to send people to the International Space Station or ISS.(Harland) The Sputnik is the world’s first satellite to be launched into space. The satellite was from the U.S.S.R. and it was in general a silver ball with antennas flowing out from it, starting from the top, bottom, left, or right and flowing back.
This triggered the U.S. and basically inspired the idea of the Space Race. The Cold War ended in 1991 but the Korean War and North and South Korea are still split to this day.
The Cold War has taught us lessons like not to mess around with nuclear weapons. It has also shown us that having allies is necessary to have a sustaining country. The effects of The Cold War still affect us to this day in an political and economical standpoint.
After the Cold War the U.S. and Russia both dismantled a lot of their nuclear weapons. The bonds between the countries in the Cold War are still on and off but are slowly making improvements
