The Cold War : A Great Impact On Modern History

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.

The US and the USSR maintained their diplomatic relations, and yet, behaved like enemies. Many historians refer to the war as “diplomatic war”. The Cold War was defined by Fleming as “a war that is fought not in the battle field, but in the minds of men; one tries to control the minds of other.” Unlike a standard war, it was fought in the diplomatic channels and the United Nations forum. As the Cold War progressed, its nature underwent many changes during over four decades, however, three primary characteristics of the Cold War were recognized by the historians C. Kegley and E. Wittkopf, they are the

The Cold War began in 1947 and was, obviously, a war fought between the Western and Eastern Blocs. The Western Bloc consisted of the United States and the allies in the National Atlantic Treaty Organization (which was formed 2 years after the war had started). The Eastern Bloc consisted of the Soviet Union (now Russia) and other communist countries like Cuba. The reason the Cold War got its name as a war that cold is because there were no large battles ever fought, it was a war of technological advances that paved the way for the types and usage of technology that our government and the governments of other countries empower today in their militaries. For this research paper the focus will primarily be on the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. The aim of this paper is to answer the research question of “How did the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis affect the Cold War and the 3 major countries that participated in the war”? Both positive and negative effects of the war will be discussed and researched and at the end, there will be a final understanding of what truly occurred because of the Cold War and if there really were any true loser or winner.

John Gaddis is a professor at the University of Yale. Gaddis field of interest are the “U.S Cold War history; Historical methodology; Biography; Grand Strategy (Yale University." John Gaddis. http://history.yale.edu/people/john-gaddis). Since his field of interest is in the U.S Cold War history, he wrote a book about it by the name of The Cold War A New History. Gaddis’s book is written for his undergraduate Yale students that he lectures to every Monday and Wednesday afternoon. His real purpose in this book is to make his Yale undergraduates understand what the Cold War was since “hardly any of them remember any of the events I’m (he is) describing”(preface).

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.

President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Inaugural Address is considered by many to be one of the best inaugural speeches in American history. I found the speech to be gripping, thought-provoking and very rousing. Aside from the speech being incredibly well written, I was also fascinated by its historical context. The speech itself truly captures Kennedy’s vitality and determination as he addresses in particular a ‘new generation of Americans’.

The term “Cold War” refers to the second half of the 20th century, usually from the end of the World War II until 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since the 1940s and 1950s the scholars have disagreed on the topic of the origins of the Cold War. There are several groups of historians and their interpretations are very different, sometimes even contradictory. The three main schools are the orthodox, the revisionist and the realist. The classification is not completely accurate because we can find several differences in theories of scholars within the same group and often the authors reevaluated their ideas over time.

Throughout the Cold War, Korean War, and Vietnam War the main problem was communism. Although the United States and the Soviet Union were allies in World War Two, during the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union were known as enemies. The Soviet leaders bragged to other nations that communism would “scrape apart” free-enterprise systems around the world. This attitude angered the capitalists which led into the fifty year Cold War. The United States tried creating many tactics and strategies to contain the “bleeding” of communism, but during the cold war, communism spread faster then it could be restrained. The United States used the Marshall Plan , the Trueman Doctrine, and the Berlin Airlift to help lead people to a

“As crossfire raked his body, the second boy fell back onto the strip of now churning sand. Wounded, moaning for help, he lay only 300 yards from a unit of United States troops. But the American commanding general issued orders: ‘Stand fast. Do nothing.’ Fifty-five minutes later Peter Fetcher was dead, and his body was carried away into the recesses of the city from which he had tried to escape.” This excerpt, from The Cold War: From Yalta To Cuba by Robin W. Winks shows how, despite its name, the Cold War was anything but cold.

The Cold War period was a time that a lot of countries needed to develop their science and technology. They needed new weapons to win the war, and their commanders could not confine themselves with those old tactics that were already known by their enemies. In order to win, lots of changes were made and they affected not just the arms race and the space race, but also research in agriculture, biomedicine, computer science, ecology, meteorology, and other fields. Many people find that

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 certainly shaped history in the 1900s as a major global threat due to vast political and military tensions. Historiographical studies have shown that the Cold War was primarily due to conflicting ideologies in the world, in addition to America and the USSR’s ulterior motive for global expansionism. The Americans feared Soviet expansionism across the world, and feared the outcome of Communism spreading. Likewise, the USSR feared a capitalist spread. This essay will outline the differing historiographical perceptions of the Cold War and will address the notions as to whether the Cold War was solely to do with a clash of ideologies, a clash of superpowers, or whether they were both vital aspects in explaining Cold War history.

Following World War II, the United States entered into a Cold War with Russia. To win the Cold War, the United States had to develop sophisticated weapons systems with such destructive power that any aggressor knew that the retaliatory capability of the United States could and would inflict vast destruction.

What was the Cold War? When did it happen? Who was involved? What happened during the Cold War? The main focus of this paper is to open the realization that the Cold War was not what most people believe it to be, a short period of time when no conflicts actually took place. In reality, the Cold War took place over a period of more than 30 years and involved considerable death and destruction.

What was the Cold War and what impact did it have globally during the 20th century? To understand the Cold War and the many sides that there were to it, you must understand how the world got to that point. Many contributing factors led to this conflict and existed during this time. The purpose of this paper is to examine the cause and effect that this “war” had on the planet and its effect is holds on history, even to this day.