The Cold War: A Captivating Guide to the Tense Conflict between the United States of America and the Soviet Union Following World War II

By Captivating History

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Cold War, then keep reading...

The seeds of the Cold War were sown toward the end of World War II. During the war, the United States and the Soviet Union were reluctant partners. The communist doctrine of the Soviets was decidedly at odds with the US notion of capitalism, free enterprise, and rugged individualism. But as is often the case in history, despite their differences, America and Soviet Russia had a common enemy that brought them together—Nazi Germany.

But soon after Truman took over the presidency of the United States, American and Soviet relations began to rapidly go south. Before the war was even over, disagreements arose over how the postwar world should be administered.

In The Cold War: A Captivating Guide to the Tense Conflict between the United States of America and the Soviet Union Following World War II, you will discover topics such as:

• Berlin: The Lines Have Been Drawn
• Stemming the Tide of Communism in East Asia
• Fighting the Soviets for Supremacy in Space
• How the Cold War Calculus Affected the Middle East
• Cuba, Vietnam, and Increasing Social Unrest
• An East African Cold War
• Cold War Secrets and a Place Called Area 51
• Soviets, Afghanistan, and a Little Bit of SALT
• Ronald Reagan and the Evil Empire
• Poland, a Polish Pope, and Cold War Solidarity
• Star Wars: The Biggest Bluff in History
• The Cold War Comes to a Close
• And much, much more!

So if you want to learn more about the Cold War, scroll up and click the "add to cart" button!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Captivating History
• Release date: Feb 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224897445

Book preview

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Introduction

The seeds of the Cold War were sown toward the end of World War II. During the war, the United States and the Soviet Union were reluctant partners. The communist doctrine of the Soviets was decidedly at odds with the US notion of capitalism, free enterprise, and rugged individualism. But as is often the case in history, despite their differences, America and Soviet Russia had a common enemy that brought them together—Nazi Germany.

And so, when Germany’s ally, Imperial Japan, attacked the US, sending the nation on a collision course with the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy, it was only natural that the Americans turned to the Soviet Union, which was already being fought to a standstill by the Nazi advance in Eastern Europe. It was due to the efforts to defeat the Axis that American misgivings about Soviet ideology were temporarily put to the side. And during the course of the conflict, American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually came to be on fairly good terms with the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin.

During the war, strategy meetings—or summits as they were called—were held between FDR and Stalin, and the two seemed to develop quite a rapport with each other. It was a relationship that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill found troubling since Churchill intuitively knew that a new conflict between the Soviets and free Europe would most likely begin immediately after the war’s conclusion.

President Roosevelt abruptly perished in April of 1945, not living to see the end of World War II. When American ambassador William Averell Harriman famously informed Stalin of FDR’s passing, Stalin was said to have seemed genuinely sad. Choking back his tears, the communist dictator, knowing that Harry Truman was next up for the presidency, steadfastly declared, President Roosevelt has died but his cause must live on. We shall support President Truman with all our forces and all our will.

But soon after Truman took over the presidency of the United States, American and Soviet relations began to rapidly go south. Before the war was even over, disagreements arose over how the postwar world should be administered. The first real disagreement was over the main aggressor of the war—the defeated Axis power of Nazi Germany.

By May of 1945, America and her British ally jointly occupied Germany with Soviet Russia—a joint occupation that would turn into a partition based on ideological grounds. One side of Germany would be administered by the Russians, and it would be communist. The other would be administered by the Allies, and it would be a haven for democratic capitalism.

One of the first flashpoints in this occupation was over the massive influx of German refugees from the Soviet sector to the American zone. The Soviets and Germans had fought a very bitter war, with much bloodshed on both sides. Most of the German population, knowing that the Americans would be much more benevolent occupiers than the Russians, fled to the American side.

The Russians wanted to put a stop to this, and they asked the Americans to turn away asylum seekers. However, American military commanders often refused to cooperate. By the late 1940s, the Soviet Union had installed puppet governments in much of Eastern Europe, including what would ultimately become East Germany. This epoch of communist consolidation is a moment that Winston Churchill captured quite well when he gave his famous Iron Curtain speech, also known as the Sinews of Peace, on March 5th, 1946.

During this speech, of which President Harry Truman himself was in attendance, Churchill famously declared that an iron curtain of tyranny had descended across Europe due to Soviet domination. Churchill’s American allies, which were already at odds with the Soviets, took the speech fairly well. The Soviet Union, of course, did not. But Churchill’s speech was not a call to arms as much as it was a progress report of the events that had been rapidly unfolding since the end of the war.

Churchill solemnly declared, From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow.

Churchill’s speech confirmed what many government officials in both the East and the West already felt. Less than a year after the end of the fires of World War II had been put out, the icy chill of another, more lasting conflict began to permeate the air. The Cold War had begun.

Chapter 1 – Berlin: The Lines Have Been Drawn

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

-Winston Churchill

The city of Berlin dates back to the Middle Ages and has long been considered one of the most vibrant and cultured European cities, even during World War II. Sadly enough, Berlin, as was the rest of Germany, became hijacked by Hitler’s Nazi Party. This previous center for literature, music, and art had its reputation terribly besmirched by the atrocities of Adolf Hitler. But even after the demise of Hitler on April 30th, 1945, Berlin’s problems were far from over.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Berlin was jointly occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union, effectively splitting the city in two. Germany had already been split between East and West, but out of all the cities in Germany, Berlin’s situation was the most precarious since the whole city was technically within Soviet-occupied territory.

Although West Berlin would remain free of Soviet dominion, it was an island of democracy surrounded by the communist-backed ideology of East Germany. The Soviets would maintain their stranglehold on Berlin for much of the rest of the Cold War, eventually building a wall right through Berlin and beyond. But perhaps one of the most harrowing yet inspiring moments in the Berlin standoff during the Cold War occurred in the summer of 1947, during the so-called Berlin Airlift, also known as Berliner Luftbrücke in German (Berlin Air Bridge).

At this point, the sections of Germany previously controlled by the United States, Britain, and France had united into one entity known as West Germany. America was working hard to turn West Germany into a prosperous nation, even while the Soviets were forcing communist doctrine down the throats of East Germans. This flashpoint was intense, and things came to a head on June 24th, 1948, when the Soviets blocked the roads and rail lines that allowed access to the west side of Berlin.

This was done partly in response to the news that the Allies had established a new Deutsche Mark monetary currency in West Germany. The Soviets were against this. After World War II had come to a close, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did not wish for an economically viable Germany