The Cold War

By: Beryl Otieno and Valyne Laibuta

 Brief History

• Began after the second World War (1945), when the shaky alliance between the USA and
Great Britain with the Soviet Union dissolved.
• It lasted 45 years.
• It occurred due to conflicting ideologies: Capitalism vs. communism.
• After the WW2, Germany was divided into 4 zones each controlled by the USA, France,
Great Britain and Soviet Union.
• Soviet Union refused to bring in a democratization in their German zone but brought
about a puppet communist party instead.
• By 1948, countries all over Eastern Europe were under the control of communist parties
and they wanted to spread communism all over the world.
• The USA and Great Britain feared Soviet domination in Eastern Europe and Soviet
communist parties coming to power in Western Europe.
• In 1948-49, the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded Western held sectors of Berlin with the
Berlin Wall erected in 1961 and in the same year NATO was formed.
Brief History Continued

• In 1949, the Soviets launched their first atomic bomb, thus the US lost its monopoly of atomic
weapons.
• In 1953-57, tensions relaxed after the death of Joseph Stalin.
• In 1950-53 the USA and the Soviets supported the Korean War.
• In 1955, the Warsaw pact was formed among the Soviet Bloc countries and in the same year
Western Germany joined NATO.
• In 1958-62, tensions solidified sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis which almost led to a war
between the Soviets and the US before an agreement could be reached.
• Throughout the war, both nations avoided military confrontation but instead engaged in actual
combat to keep allies from defecting to the other side or to overthrow them if they had done so.
• Thus, the Soviet Union sent troops to preserve communist rule in East Germany (1953), Hungary
(1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979). For its part, the United States helped
overthrow a left-wing government in Guatemala (1954), supported an unsuccessful invasion of
Cuba (1961), invaded the Dominican Republic (1965) and Grenada (1983), and undertook a long
(1964–75) and unsuccessful effort to prevent communist North Vietnam from bringing South
Vietnam under its rule.
Factors that lead to the Cold War.
• Western democracies had been hostile to the idea of a communist state. The United
Stated had refused to recognise the USSR 16 years after the Bolshevik takeover.
• Stalin was enraged that 21 million Russian citizens perished during the WW2 while the
Americans and British took a long time to open a front in France which would have
relieved the pressure on the Soviet Union from the attacks of the Nazi Germans.
• Stalin made promises during WW2 that he would democratize Eastern Europe which he
did not do after the war.
• When the Soviet Union entered the war between the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the United States no longer needed their aid, but Stalin was there to collect on
Western promises.
• In 1957 the Soviets launched the world’s first satellite into the Earth’s orbit known as the
R-7 missile which was seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the US.
 Effects of the cold war
• It broke the international relations ties.
• It brought about the division of Europe and Germany in
particular.
• It increased tensions within International communities
due to the actions of super powers.
• Cuba Missile crisis in 1962.
• Divided world into three camps
• Transformation of Japan to second most powerful
economy in the world.
How it was resolved?
• The rivalry was a multifaceted affair in regard to ideology, culture and
political styles.
• Many peace researchers and activists involved in Moscow’s depth of
change.
• The 1988 treaty language offered by the soviets to reduce
convectional forces in Europe.
THE END.