The Cold War

**aqalieh95** Sat Mar 12, 2011 2:07 pm

Was from the end of World War II, 1945, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1991
It's called a Cold War because there was no direct military conflict, but they had tensions and their allies fought together
Stalin was the dictator of the USSR
In World War 2, he wanted the Allies to attack earlier and open up a western front to distract Hitler from killing so many Russians
He also wanted Poland and the countries between Germany and Russia to have friendly governments to prevent future attacks on Russian soil from France or Germany
Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia became satellite states of the USSR, also known as the eastern bloc, which were nicknamed by Churchill as the "iron curtain"
The Allies divided Germany and the city of Berlin into occupation zones to prevent Germany from uniting and becoming dangerous
France, Great Britain, and the US merged their parts to form West Germany, and made their own currency and government.
In 1948, the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, and since it was so deep in Russian territory there was no way to get supplies, and Stalin wanted them to starve and they would give their part away.
Instead, for more than a year, Truman did the Berlin airlift to help them get food and supplies.
The Berlin wall went up in the 1960's around the entire city of West Berlin
George Kennan suggested the "containment" policy to prevent the spread of communism
The Truman Doctrine sent aid to Turkey and Greece to prevent them from falling to communism because it will stop being appealing - sent $400 million in aid
Marshall aid expanded that idea of aid to all of Western Europe, and added up to about $12.5 billion dollars of aid.
The US started to have much larger budgets for aid, and for military because of NSC-68 which recommended that the US quadruple its military spending, which causes the US foreign involvement during the Cold War
In 1949, Russia makes its first atomic weapon
Also in 1949, China, the most populous nation on earth, becomes communist
And in 1952, Russia develops a hydrogen bomb, and beat the US to it
People suspected a communist plot, because in the same year both China becomes communist and Russia develops a nuclear weapon, which gives rise to these domestic programs in the Cold War.