The Cold War And The Soviet Union 's Sphere Of Influence

After World War II, only two world superpowers remained: the United States of America and the Soviet Union. The contradictory political regimes of the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union were believed to be mutually exclusive which increased bitterness between them. Inevitably, the apparent tension between the two superpowers led to the Cold War which lasted about 45 years. It was war without bloodshed or battle, instead it was a metaphorical war where the U.S and the Soviet Union increased their weapons and fought for political influence, one always wanting to excel or maintain within the range of the other. The United States’ desperate need to contain the communist political ideology from spreading any further and meet the Soviet Union’s increased development of nuclear weapons led to the their involvement in the Cold War. The impact the Cold War had on life during the 1950’s and 1960’s can be measured through the creation of the House Un-American

With little knowledge of the Cold War I started to read “The Cold War, A New History” by John Lewis Gaddis. As an upcoming student of the Cold War, this book helped me to fully understand what the Cold War actually was. Furthermore, Gaddis was appraised as the “Dean of Cold War Historians” by The New York Times. Still today, Gaddis is a leading

It promotes posturing; encourages speculation; and creates hysteria. This theme permeated American politics and popular culture during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. As WWII ended, nations began to polarize. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the leading economic and military states, and began competing for influence throughout the countries they now occupied upon liberation from Germany and Japan. Under the banner of their own brand of idealism, they individually sought geopolitical control and economic benefit. As the stakes increased, competition between the two powers spread to the atomic arena and the exploration of space. The result for the next 45 years is a saga of fear not only of the other side,

The Cold War, which was considered the “years of maximum danger,” lasted from 1949-1962. This period brought an increasing sense of danger to America because the Soviet Union came into possession of an atomic bomb in 1949; an idea many Americans thought to be impossible unless the Soviet Union had a spy in the United States, which they did. Because the Soviet Union had an atomic bomb, a nuclear war became a reality. In Kenneth Rose’s “One Nation Underground” he told of rising issues associated with the Cold War and the threat of nuclear bombings. The Cold War, in conjunction with the inventions of (total destructive) bombs, generated new dangers, fears, and morality issues among Americans, which led to further increased fears.

The fears of the American people regarding the Cold War in the aftermath of the second World War were numerous and strong, growing in power as Americans began to fear not only the looming threat posed by the Soviet Union but also potential communist activity within the United States itself. The administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower successfully recognized and addressed a number of these fears, passing legislation which improved domestic and international defence capabilities and creating an atmosphere of relative comfort and prosperity within the nation itself. However, despite the efforts of the Eisenhower administration, a strong sense of fear pervaded much of the United States as the Cold War escalated into a greater, more critical

The Cold War was a competition. The US and the Soviet Union raced to become the world’s number one superpower, building up their militaries, improving their arsenals, and developing more advanced weapons. However, weapons in the war were not limited to only nuclear warheads. The weapons used in the Cold War were nuclear warheads, and hope and terror caused by propaganda.

Document A describes how the Cold War was embedded into daily life and how it affected the country and culture as a whole. The Soviet Union and communist expansion, as well as other powers they had on the US terrorized the entire nation, bringing it to a state of panic. As stated by John Buescher, “Science was seen as both a progressive tool for achieving a bright future and death-dealing weapon that might end human life. Fear of an atomic apocalypse (disclosure of knowledge) affected culture and politics. Cold War movies dealt with political espionage (spying).” The

In the 1950’s during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency which was also the peak of the Cold War, The Soviet Union’s development and testing of WMD’s (Atomic, Nuclear and H-Bomb) raised fears of war around the world. The Soviet Union started to expand their idea of communism to democratic nations in Europe, this raised tensions with the U.S. which heighten fear and anxiety of the American public of an imminent nuclear/Atom/H-Bomb war between the super powers.

John Lewis Gaddis, is a leading American Historian of the Cold War. He is the Professor of history at Yale University. He is already the author of six books on the same subject. The Cold War: A New History, however, has been written on a less cosmic level. He has distilled a life time of research into this short but comprehensive book. He has given new avenues to old controversies in worldly and stylish, yet direct and plain-spoken manner. The book offers a lot of summaries to intricate historical issues and provides new avenues of thinking about conflict which arose out of pre-emption and ended in the hope for the world.

The forty-five years from the dropping of the atom bombs to the end of the Soviet Union, can be seen as the era of the new conflict between two major states: United States of America (USA) and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). According to Hobsbawm, ‘cold war’ was the constant confrontation of the two super powers which emerged from the Second World War. At that time the entire generation was under constant fear of global nuclear battles. It was widely believed that it could break out at any moment. (Hobsbawm, 1994) The consequences of the ‘power vacuum’ in central Europe, created by the defeat of Germany, gave rise to these two super powers (Dunbabin, 1994). The world was divided into

In this paper I will discuss what actions and thoughts added up to cause the cold war. The cold war lasted from September 1, 1945 to about December 25, 1991. That is about forty-five years, which is an extremely long time. The cold war was a global competition basically between two sides, the Free World, which was led by the United States of America, and the Communist World led by the Soviet Union. The struggle took place through indirect military conflict, and direct competition in the areas of economics, diplomacy, culture, space exploration, and political theory. It also involved nuclear stand offs, espionage, and global competition for other nations. The cold war has established the framework for most

The Cold War was a state of economic, diplomatic, and ideological discord among nations without armed conflict. The Cold War was between the United States and the USSR because these were the two major powers after WWII. Basically, the Cold War was a series of proxy wars that had taken place back in time involving surrounding countries. One of the main causes for Cold War was that the Soviet Union was spreading communism and the United States didn’t like that so they were trying to contain communism. However, in the end they failed. Many events took place in other countries. In Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, and China, communism took over; however, before it did, major wars had taken place. The cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union worsened the condition of countries involved. The Cold War broke countries into two parts that turned against each other, the United States and the Soviet Union used these countries to fight their war and caused a big disturbance to daily life, and the Communist States fought the Non-Communist States; however, the end results of these wars only caused more damage in these countries.

The Cold War, spanning almost half a century, was a conflict that accelerated the production of nuclear weapons and forced the United States and the other belligerent, the Soviet Union, to make scientific advances at a rate unseen in any other time in human history. The Cold War Comes to Main Street: America in 1950, written by Lisle A. Rose, thoroughly examines the year 1950 in the United States and the effect that the Cold War had on the American populous. Rose examines communism and the military threat that it posed on the nation and how this impacted American society and the generation that endured World War II.

With the dust settling after the end of the Second World War two supers started to emerge. In the Western side of the globe with the power of industry, manufacturing and a free market, capitalist society the United States was growing at the fastest rate in modern times. As a polar opposite to the United States and their form or government almost as if suited for a fiction novel The Soviet Union with the power of a Communist Iron Fist Government was too emerging. Both wielding the power and never seen before destructive power of the atomic bomb squared off in a worldwide chess match using the globe and neighboring countries as their board game and pawns. Both countries tried to spread their form of

The Cold War: A New History written by John Lewis Gaddis (a professor at Yale University who wrote other books such as The United States and the Origins of the Cold War and Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security) delivers a summarized, yet skewed interpretation of what had happened during the era known as the Cold War. Throughout the book, the author attempts to provide history of the Cold War, while adding in generalizations, incomplete facts, as well as flat out bias.