America and the Cold War

America and the Cold War, 1945-1990

I will be hosting a live class at 1 pm MT on Thu, 2-11 on the topic of the Cold War. At the end of WWII, Allied armies occupied all the territory the Axis nations had conquered during the war. The original post-war arrangement was that the Allied troops would occupy the newly liberated nations only until they could get back on their feet and run their own affairs, but Joseph Stalin had other plans. By the summer of 1945, it was apparent that the Soviet troops would remain in the nations they now occupied, setting up communist, pro-Soviet, "puppet" regimes and in the process creating a new Soviet Empire. Winston Churchill summed up the situation in 1946 by stating that an "Iron Curtain" existed from the Baltic to Adriatic Seas, separating Europe-and the world-into two ideologically opposed camps dedicated to each others' destruction. Weary from fighting WWII, the US and former Allies decided to meet this threat by "containing" communism to the Soviet Union, and would wage a 45 year long "Cold War" against communism until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. This live class tells the story of the Containment Policy, as it became known, and compares nations and systems on either side of the Iron Curtain. Project Credit: Attendance in this live class will fulfill the requirements of your live class assignment for this unit. To get into this class please click the following link: Trehal's Live Office/Classroom   

This class applies to the following courses:

Vietnam Era Unit 1

Didn't get a chance to attend the live version of this class? No problem, watch the video below.