Germany has been defeated and the end of World War II is here. All is well in the world, or so one would think. Little did the United States know, the end of World War two and the division of Germany would lead to another conflict; the Cold War. The downfall of Germany, and the eventual rebuilding of the nation created a conflict between the two superpowers(CITE).
At the end of World War II the United States, Soviet Union, and British held a conference in Potsdam, Germany. This conference was known as the Potsdam Conference. During this conference we saw the differing ideologies of the United States and Soviet Union. Dr. Prince states in his lecture that the Soviet Union was very paranoid at the end of World War II, so they wanted to create these buffer states, so that they had more time to react if there was to be an invasion(CITE). The United States was against this. During the Potsdam conference, a conference that was supposed to speak about the division of Germany, eventually led to threats and a bit of a ‘flexing’ competition. President Truman tells Stalin about the atomic bomb the United States had. Truman expected this to be a shock to Stalin, but he had already learned about the bomb through intel soviet spies had acquired in the United States(CITE). This caused a lot of mistrust between the two superpowers and started an arms race between them. The Potsdam conference can be attributed to creating the tension that led to the Cold War.
Technological advancements were also made during the Cold War. As stated earlier, the tension at Potsdam led to an arms race. The two superpowers were trying to edge each other out and see who could make the worlds most powerful weapon. Dr. Prince established that the Manhattan project was so unknown that almost no one knew about it.(CITE) The Vice President of the United States was not even informed of this. The United States also came to the conclusion that it would take many years for any other country to catch up to their developments regarding the nuclear bomb. However, we learn that the Soviet Union had a successful prototype bomb in 1949. This led to the American people fearing the communist ideology of the Soviet Union and thus began the attempts at the superpowers fighting for superiority. As stated earlier, there was an arms race. Ballistic missiles were invented due to the cold war, as well as long range planes bombers. Submarines that could launch ballistic missiles were invented. The AK-47, a well known rifle was invented during the cold war as well(CITE).
The Cold War did not only bring about military technological advances, it also brought satellites into the mix. The Soviet Union was the first superpower to successfully get a satellite into space with Sputnik; a soviet satellite that could orbit the earth(CITE). When the United States learned of this, they decided that they would not be beat in the exploration of space by the Soviet Union, and this is what causes the space race. In 1958 the United States was able to launch their own satellite into orbit. The satellite was named Explorer I, which was developed with the help of Wernher von Braun(CITE), a former Nazi. As time went on the developments in the space race were getting more advanced, and President Kennedy claimed that the United States would be able to land on the moon before 1970. On July 20, 1969 the United States accomplished this, and had their first moon landing.
All of this competition had a lot of affect on the American society. People began to have the red scare(CITE), which was the fear that the communist ideologies would permeate the United States. With this, we had a lot of people claiming others were committing treason and espionage. The Cold War definitely affected the American citizens because not only were they afraid of the ideologies coming into the United States, there was also the fear that nuclear war could arise.
When looking at the Cold War as a whole, there were a lot of things that went on in those 43 years. The first major event that took place during the cold war was the Berlin Blockade. The Berlin Blockade was an attempt by the Soviet Union to block all access to Western Berlin for the allies. This resulted in the allies having to air drop supplies to the people of West Berlin. Another key point was the space race. It was important to both the Soviet Union and the United States to be the first one to have the technological dominance in space exploration. Following the space race, there was the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. This is when the United States attempted to invade Cuba and overthrow the Communist government there(CITE). This was important to the United States because they did not want a communist country so close to the United States. Following the Bay of Pigs invasion, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. This was when the Soviet Union moved their missiles to Cuba and armed them for the possibility of a hot war. This was in response to the United States having their missiles close to the Soviet Union in western Europe(Italy). The final major event was when Germany was reunited in November 9, 1989. Communist Eastern Germany and Western Germany were finally reunited and communism was no longer in Germany.
The Cold War was a long war that had many events take place within it. It was different than that of a normal war, because there was no actual fighting. The Cold War not only lead to the further development of arms, but also caused innovation in space technology as well as military technologies. The Cold War, although a scary time for the world, lead to a lot of innovation that is still present today.
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