the cold war?

Question

the causes, the events, and the effects on cold war

Answer 1

~One of the worst effects is the distortion of history. For example, the US is depicted as a significant force in the defeat of the Nazis in US history books when in fact Uncle Sam never fired a shot until the outcome was all but certain. D-day and the Normandy invasion was a minor skirmish compared to Stalingrad, Kursk and Leningrad. Or, the Russian winter beat the Germans at Stalingrad, not the superior Soviet troops with their superior weapons, tactics, leadership and resolve. One cannot credit the Red Army for its heroics even though they were our allies when they won the war. And I don't want to hear about lend lease, either. Aid to the Soviets didn't amount to that much. Lend Lease saved the UK, but Stalin did quite well without it. Maybe that's why he wasn't included in the original package and never got any assistance until after Stalingrad and Churchill convinced FDR that the Red Army was the only force on the globe that could defeat the Germans on the continent.

Worse still is the myth of the Cuban Missile Crisis of '62. JFK is the hero and the USSR the villain. The Soviets put the missiles in Cuba for one reason and one reason only. The US had installed nuclear capable missiles in Turkey, well within target range of several prime Russian cities and installations and the Soviets wanted them out. Cuba allowed the missiles to be based in Cuba because Castro was sick and tired of Jack Kennedy's interference on his island (failed assassination attempts, the Bay of Pigs fiasco and petty little things like that tended to upset Fidel). Kennedy is depicted as the hero when in fact he bungled the affair and almost lit up his nukes. Khrushchev is the demon when in fact he was the one who had the guts to make the deal to end the affair. He agreed to publicly pull his missiles out of Cuba immediately on the condition that the US, within 6 months and without fanfare, pull the missiles out of Turkey. The humiliation of Khrushchev in the western press would cost him his job, but he ended the crisis. Final score: total victory for the USSR.

Another effect of the cold war was the ratification of the 23rd amendment. Due in no small part to Khrushchev's comments about it in the media, the residents of Washington DC finally, in 1961, got the right to vote in presidential elections. It would take more than another decade before they could have and be able to vote for a mayor and city council.

Events are too numerous to list. The first biggie was when, as Winston Churchill put it, an iron Curtain fell over Eastern Europe. The next was the Berlin airlift. Radio Free Europe then started to fan the flames.

Back at home, kids were scared out of their wits by A-bomb drills in school, being told that the mad Russians were apt to launch a nuclear strike at any time without warning or provocation and that, when the kids saw the flash (which, they were told, would be the last thing they would ever see), they were to fall to the floor and curl up in a fetal position. Evidently curling up would somehow protect us when our skin burned off, our blood boiled away and our bones reached a temperature of ten thousand degrees. We practiced this foolishness in school repeatedly, generally in unannounced drills, never knowing if the bombs were falling or not. We all made friends with someone whose parents had been duped into building a fallout shelter.

Korea and Vietnam were two of the hot spots in the Cold War.

Robert McNamara came up with the brilliant idea that if we had enough nukes to destroy the Soviets and Chinese several times over, they wouldn't use theirs on us. This caused the Soviets to build up their stocks to like levels. MAD was a great term for mutually assured destruction. Then he and LBJ concocted the 'domino theory' and our fearless leaders told us how we had to go out and kill commies before they tried to kill us. These insane ideas diverted funds to a pointless arms race that would otherwise have been allocated to education, urban renewal and health care in the US and eventually bankrupted the Soviets. Meanwhile, we were told by JFK, LBJ, Trickie Dick and Ronnie Raygun how the 'missile gap' had to be closed when, in fact, according to now declassified documents, the Soviet arsenal never came close to approaching ours.

The space race would have happened without the Cold War. Both sides had their respective German scientists from Peenemunde and those guys wanted to continue their work. The fact that the USSR took the lead with Sputnik and held the lead for 10 years simply accelerated the US project and got Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a little sooner than they would have otherwise done. The Cold War made it happen faster, but it would have happened. And between the space race and military paranoia, computer technology evolved faster and we got PCs and the Internet. Again, these would have happened in a world at peace, but the Cold War pushed them along more quickly.

The causes are fairly simple. Conflicting ideologies, conflicting economic structures and a lust for global hegemony by both sides as against the other is an oversimplification but accurate enough.

There is a whole lot more, but this should get you started.

Answer 2

At the end of WWII Russia felt threatened by the presence of the US and UK in western Europe. Their communist ideology is in sharp contrast to the democracies of these other nations.

An arms race developed where the US and Russia pumped ever increasing money into weapons development and nuclear arms.

Both the US and Russia set up networks of deterrence in Land, Air and Sea nuclear capabilities. This was a philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction... if one nation fired nuclear weapons, they would be assured that a retaliation strike would wipe their cities off he map thus keeping each other in check.

The times were tense to say the least. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when Russia tried to establish a missile base in Cuba almost took us to nuclear war.

A very good book about the spying that went on during that time (dear to my heart because I was a part of it) is "Blind Man's Bluff" about US submarine spying on the Russians.

The end of the Cold War came when Russia's economy collapsed and the Soviet Union split up. They could not maintain the spending on their military that they had before. This left the US as the world's only "super power."

Hope this helps.


g-day!

Answer 3

I will try to answer your question as briefly as possible.

1.0
After the end of world war 2, the world was divided into two camps - the Capitalist led by the US and the Communist led by the Soviets.These two blocks followed economic ideologies that were diametrically opposite to each other.
So it's natural that they didn't like each other.

2.0
This began an arms race between US and Soviet's since both wanted to outpower each other.This resulted in massive spending on Military and Space research.The world was becoming a dangerous place since a posssible nuclear war between the two could anihilate the mankind.
However both sides knew this well and stopped short of actual war.Hence this is called as cold war.

3.0
According to me the Cuban missile crisis of 1972 is the most interesting event of cold war.The soviets planted missiles in Cuba targetting the US east coast.
This was the closest we came to a Nuclear war.
Other events like Armstrong's Moon Odessey, Sputnik,Star wars weapons program are also significant.

Answer 4

Causes
http://www.rpfuller.com/gcse/history/8.html

Berlin Airlift
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/berlin.htm

The Cold War turned hot for the first time in the Korean peninsula in the mid-1950s. Michael Hickey provides an overview of the so-called 'forgotten war'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/korea_hickey_01.shtml

Weapons Race
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nuclear_arms_race.htm

For fourteen days during October 1962, the world held its breath as John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev tried to reach a compromise and avoid nuclear war. Ernest May investigates how Kennedy demonstrated his leadership skills during the crisis.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/kennedy_cuban_missile_01.shtml

Detente
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/detente.htm

Answer 5

The chilly conflict is misnamed. there are a number of diverse suggestions of what a chilly conflict is consisting of a conflict of words, many small skirmishes all over the realm, a conflict that no-one observed, no direct scuffling with between 2 super powers. in actuality, greater human beings died interior the chilly conflict than in WW1 and WW2. additionally, the chilly conflict has no fastened beginning up, center or end. It merely seems to rumble on. For international locations the place armies and massive scale merchandising of armaments are mandatory for the financial equipment, the chilly conflict is massive organization (pointing out no names yet rearrange SUA!)

Answer 6

that is too broad a question! there are whole book written on it!
if you want a quick summary, look on wikipedia