The Cold War

Overview of the Cold War (1945 – 1991)

The Cold War global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union that lasted 46 years from the end of World War Two to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term “cold war” was used to describe the conflict because the two countries acted toward each other like they were at war, however they could not directly fight a war against each other. This was because both countries had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several time over. Any military conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union would have resulted in a war that destroyed all human life.

The core of the Cold War conflict was that the United States and the Soviet Union had very different ideologies, or views about the world, and saw the other country’s ideology as a threat. The United States was a capitalist democracy and the Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship. The idea of democracy is that people should be able to choose their own government free elections and that the government should protect their rights. And capitalism means that people should be free to chose their work and how they live their lives. The communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union believed that the government should control the society so as to improve the economy of the country and raise everyone’s standard of living. The Soviet Union saw as its goal to spread communism to other countries – which it did in the countries of Eastern Europe it captured at the end of World War Two. Anyplace the Soviet Union ruled, the government took away people’s private property and eliminated their personal freedom. The United States was opposed this.

The Cold War took the form of non-violent hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union because both countries had large arsenals of nuclear weapons. The United States developed the first atomic bomb and used it twice against Japan to end World War Two. Soon after this, the Soviet Union was able to build its own atomic bomb due to spies that stole the secrets from the United States. Both countries built large arsenals of nuclear weapons so they were able to destroy the world several times over. While this was very dangerous, the reality was that it was safer that both countries held nuclear weapons. This was because no country could use nuclear weapons without being destroyed by the other country. The phrase “mutually assured destruction” described how both the United States and Soviet Union knew that decision to use nuclear weapons in a conflict would be self-destructive. During the Cold War, the United States used the threat of nuclear war to force the Soviet Union to pull its nuclear weapons out of Cuba in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union affected the whole world because both countries were able to use their military and economic power to control and influence events around the world. The United States and the Soviet Union were both called “Super Powers” because they could project their power around the world. During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union often fought against each other through other countries in conflicts that were called “proxy wars”. They chose to fight proxy wars because they could not directly fight each other without risking nuclear war. In this global Cold War conflict, the Soviet Union supported groups that were fighting to spread communism around the world and the United States supported groups that were opposed to communism. The American wars in Korea and Vietnam and the Soviet war in Afghanistan are examples of proxy wars in which local conflicts became part of the global Cold War conflict.

The first area affected by the Cold War was Europe. During World War Two, the United States and the Soviet Union had been allies against Nazi Germany. At the end of the war, Europe was divided between areas that had been liberated by the United States and the areas liberated by the Soviet Union. The United States was interested in having the countries of Europe return to being democratic capitalist countries, the way they were before World War Two. However, the Soviet Union turned the countries it had had “liberated”in Eastern Europe into communist dictatorships – even if the populations in those countries did not want this. Winston Churchill described this division of Europe by saying that Europe was divided by an “Iron Curtain". The United Sates developed the policy of Containment to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding communism into new countries. The United States rebuilt Western Europe as democratic capitalist countries through the Marshall Plan which paid to rebuild Europe after the destruction of World War Two. The United States also organized the countries of Western Europe into a military alliance called North American Treaty Organization (NATO) and said it would give military assistance to any country trying to resist a communist take-over - a policy called the Truman Doctrine. However, the United States did not support Eastern European countries, such as Hungary or Czechoslovakia, that revolted against Soviet rule. This was because it wanted to avoid a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union. The symbol of the Cold War division of Europe was the Berlin Wall that was built by the Soviet Union to prevent people in communist East Germany from escaping into democratic West Germany. When the citizens of East Germany revolted against their communist government and broke down the Berlin Wall in 1989, it was seen as marking the end of the Cold War.

The Cold War also affected Asia and led to several wars. The Soviet Union supported the communist leader Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War. China became a communist country when Mao Zedong won the Civil War in 1949. After China fell to communism, in 1950 the Cold War conflict spread when communist North Korea attacked democratic South Korea. The United States fought to defend South Korea and the Soviet Union supported North Korea. The war ended after several years of fighting with a cease-fire that kept Korea divided between a democratic South Korea and a communist North Korea. The next Asian country to become a Cold War battlefield was Vietnam. Vietnam was, like Korea, divided between Soviet supported communist North Vietnam and United States supported democratic South Vietnam. This war began when the Soviet Union supported the North Vietnamese in a war to make all of Vietnam a communist country. The United States fought to defend South Vietnam from communist a takeover from the early 1960's to 1975, when the United States pulled out of the war and Vietnam became communist.

The Cold War in the Middle East helped fuel the conflict between the Jewish Israelis and the Arab nations. The nation of Israel was created in the Middle East as homeland for the Jewish people after the Holocaust in World War Two . The near destruction of the Jewish people in the Holocaust convinced them and the world that the Jewish people needed their own country. However, many of the Arab people in the Middle East opposed the creation of Israel because it was being formed on Arab land. The Palestinian people were an Arab people who wanted their own country of Palestine in the area where the nation of Israel was created. The Palestinians, along with the other Arab nations declared war on Israel when it was created in 1948. The new nation of Israel was victorious in this war. After this, the Arabs nations with military support from the Soviet Union fought two more wars against Israel. Israel was able to win both of these wars because of the massive military assistance the United States gave Israel. However, Israeli victory did not bring peace to the Middle East. The Palestinian people lost their country in the 1948 War and were forced to live in refugee camps. A military-terrorist group called the Palestinian Liberation Organization continued to fight against Israel terrorist attacks. This is part of a conflict that continues to this day – long after the Cold War ended.

The Cold War in the Middle East took an unexpected turn in 1979 when the American supported government of Iran was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution. The new Iranian government declared that it was an "Islamic republic" and an enemy of the United States, which it called "the great Satan". However, Iran also opposed the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union feared that the ideas of the Islamic Revolution would spread to the country of Afghanistan and possibly destabilize the Soviet Union. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan violently opposed the Soviet invasion and the United States supported them in a proxy war against the Soviets. The Soviet War in Afghanistan lasted until the end of the Cold War, when the Soviets withdrew from the country. After this, Afghanistan fell into chaos and became center of Islamic extremism - which led to the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

The Cold War also affected Latin America, which the United States considered its "sphere of influence" or the area under its control. In the 1950’s, the Fidel Castro over threw the Cuban government that was supported by the United States. The Soviet Union supported Castro’s communist government. The United States tried to overthrow Castro by supporting Cubans to attack Cuba in 1961. After that failed, the Soviet Union moved to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. However, in an event called the "Cuban Missile Crisis", the United States threatened war if the Soviets did this. The Cuban Missile Crisis marked the point in the Cold War when two countries came closest to nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended with the Soviet Union withdrawing its missiles and the United States promising to not overthrow Castro's communist government. Cuba has remained a communist country to this day - long after the end of the Cold War. After Cuba became communist, the United States actively supported many dictators in Latin America to prevent any other country in the region from becoming communist. For example, the United States assisted the army in Chile in overthrowing the democratic government of Chile because it supported many communist ideas and worked closely with communist governments. Many of the governments that the United States supported in Latin America were brutal dictatorships that violently suppressed any group that opposed them.

The Cold War came to a close in the 1980’s as it became clear that the communist countries could not compete with the democratic countries. Quite simply, people in the democratic capitalist countries in Europe, North America and Asia (Japan and South Korea) were freer and enjoyed a higher quality of life than people in the communist countries. All across the communist world, governments tried to reform communist, it it could not be easily fixed . In the Soviet Union, the leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to power with the goal of reforming the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War with the United States. He succeeded in negotiating an end to the Cold War with American President Ronald Reagan. However, his efforts to fix the communist system in the Soviet Union result in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Quite simply, when people were given a choice about communism, they chose to get rid of communism. First, in 1989, the countries of Eastern Europe which has been communist since the end of World War Two, rebelled against Soviet rule and became democratic countries. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and country of Russia was reborn. The collapse of the Soviet Union lead to the end of communism in most of the world (Cuba and North Korea are the exceptions). In some places, governments still claimed to be “communist” but they became more capitalistic. This is the case with the communist government in China. The Chinese communist government began to reform by making the country more capitalist and less communist and allowing American and European companies to build factories in China.

Cold War Source Materials

Source # 1 - Video on effects of atomic bomb on people - click here

Source # 2 - Map and Description of American-Soviet Nuclear Weapons Race. Important Note - ICBM stands for "Intercontinental Ballistic Missile". This was a missile that could carry between 1 and 8 nuclear warheads. These missiles would take 40 minutes to fly from the United States to the Soviet Union, or the other way.

Source # 3 - Video on the nuclear weapons stand-off between the United States and the Soviet Union - click here

Source # 4 - Cartoon of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The person on the left is Nikita Khrushchev ( leader of Soviet Union) and the person on the right is John Kennedy (President of the United States).

Source # 5 - World Map of Cold War Conflicts (click on the map to open a larger version)

Source # 6 - Cartoon of how the United States viewed the Soviet Union in Cold War (note - the bear is a symbol of Russia and the Soviet Union)

Source # 7 - Cartoon of how the Soviet Union viewed the United States in Cold War (note - the bear is a symbol of Russia and the Soviet Union)

Project Requirements - Your project needs to include the following things:

• Map showing where the event took place

• Timeline showing when event took place and important points in the event (minimum of five dates)

• Short text description of the event

• Short text description of how the event fits in the Cold War

  • A bar chart or pie chart showing statistics about the battle (extra credit for a second bar chart or pie chart)

• An iconograph about an important part or aspects of the event

Steps Involved in Completing Project:

1. Choose a event from this list: Berlin Wall, Korean War, Vietnam War, Afghanistan War or Cuban Missile Crisis. Please talk to me if you want to do the project about another Event.

2. Research the Event and gather information to use in your project.

3. Draw a rough draft of your visual on a piece of paper. I will review your draft with you and approve you for the next step of making your visual in Google Slides.

4. Build your visual in Google Slides. You will use Google Sheets to create your bar chart of pie chart - click here for directions on using Google Sheets.