what were the causes, course, and consequences of the early years of the cold wars

Historians have identified several causes that led to the outbreak of the Cold War, including: tensions between the two nations at the end of World War II, the ideological conflict between both the United States and the Soviet Union, the emergence of nuclear weapons, and the fear of communism in the United States.

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What were the causes and effects of the Cold War?

Causes of Cold War The Soviet Union wanted to spread its ideology of communism worldwide, which alarmed the Americans who followed democracy. The acquisition of atomic weapons by America caused fear in the Soviets. Both countries feared an attack from each other adhering to mutual mass destruction.

What were the origins of the Cold War Quizlet?

 · The Cold War was a period of economic, political and military tension between the United States and Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991. Following the end of the Second World War, complications arose...

Why was the timing of the Cold War important?

The Cold War: Definition, Causes & Early Events Learn the definition of the Cold War. Identify the genesis of the Cold War and understand the role of Truman, the policy of …

What were the causes course and consequences of the early years of the Cold War?

Historians have identified several causes that led to the outbreak of the Cold War, including: tensions between the two nations at the end of World War II, the ideological conflict between both the United States and the Soviet Union, the emergence of nuclear weapons, and the fear of communism in the United States.

What were the early causes of the Cold War?

Causes of the Cold War in 1945* American fear of communist attack.* Truman's dislike of Stalin.* USSR's fear of the American's atomic bomb.* USSR's dislike of capitalism.* USSR's actions in the Soviet zone of Germany.* America's refusal to share nuclear secrets.More items...•

What were the consequences of the Cold War?

The Cold War shaped American foreign policy and political ideology, impacted the domestic economy and the presidency, and affected the personal lives of Americans creating a climate of expected conformity and normalcy.

What were 5 main causes of the Cold War?

Causes of the Cold WarDifferences in ideologies. The United States and the Soviet Union represented two opposing systems of government. ... Post-war Economic Reconstruction. ... Differences between Truman and Stalin. ... Support of Proxy-wars. ... US Atomic Bomb. ... USSR's expansion west into Eastern Europe. ... The Berlin Crisis.

What were the causes of the Cold War quizlet?

A state of political rivalry and tension existing between the Western Allies (favoring democratically elected governments and independent European states) and the Soviet Union (striving for a Soviet-influenced bloc of communist countries).

What caused the Cold War essay?

The Cold War was caused by the social climate and tension in Europe at the end of World War II and by the increasing power struggles between the Soviet Union. Economic separation between the Soviets and the west also heightened tensions, along with the threat of nuclear war.

What were the causes of Cold War class 12?

i) It is the open, but constrained, conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that emerged after World War II. ii) It was enforced on political, economical, and support the expansion and had only limited use of weapons. iii) After the second world war, it began.

How was the Cold War a consequence of ww2?

As World War II transformed both the United States and the USSR, turning the nations into formidable world powers, competition between the two increased. Following the defeat of the Axis powers, an ideological and political rivalry between the United States and the USSR gave way to the start of the Cold War.

What were the military and political consequences of the Cold War?

What were the military and political consequences of the Cold War in the Soviet Union, Europe, and the United States? The U.S. and Soviet Union built up huge nuclear arsenals, but then worked to limit them through treaties. The U.S. led Western Europe, while the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe.

What was an early event in the Cold War?

What was an early event in the Cold War? Stalin kept troops in Eastern Europe instead of holding promised elections. China continued to threaten an invasion of Japan. The United States refused to include Russia in the Marshall Plan.

What caused the Cold War to end?

During 1989 and 1990, the Berlin Wall came down, borders opened, and free elections ousted Communist regimes everywhere in eastern Europe. In late 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved into its component republics. With stunning speed, the Iron Curtain was lifted and the Cold War came to an end.

What were the causes of Cold War class 12?

i) It is the open, but constrained, conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that emerged after World War II. ii) It was enforced on political, economical, and support the expansion and had only limited use of weapons. iii) After the second world war, it began.

What were the major turning points in the Cold War between 1965 and 1985?

The one conflict that brought both side closest to direct war was the Cuban Missile Crisis. The most significant turning point in the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis, tensions between both sides decreased after both sides realized the risk of starting a nuclear war.

What series of events prompted the Cold War?

The Cold War began after the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, when the uneasy alliance between the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other started to fall apart.

Who was to blame for the Cold War?

The United States and the Soviet Union both contributed to the rise of the Cold War. They were ideological nation-states with incompatible and mutually exclusive ideologies. The founding purpose of the Soviet Union was global domination, and it actively sought the destruction of the United States and its allies.

What was the Cold War?

The Cold War was an ongoing political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies that developed after World...

How did the Cold War end?

The Cold War came to a close gradually. The unity in the communist bloc was unraveling throughout the 1960s and ’70s as a split occurred between Ch...

Why was the Cuban missile crisis such an important event in the Cold War?

In the late 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union were developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. In 1962 the Soviet Union began...

What was the Cold War?

Definition of the Cold War. The Cold War was a period of economic, political and military tension between the United States and Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991. Following the end of the Second World War, complications arose centering on the shifting of international power. The Soviet Union wanted to acquire additional territory while ...

What was the most important thing that happened during the Cold War?

However, one of the most important happenings within the first several years of the Cold War was the passage of National Security Council Report-68 , or NSC-68. The report called for significant military enlargement by the United States. The Truman Administration believed that the Soviet Union had totally disregarded international authority with its nuclear weapons testing, and was primed to exert itself throughout the world. NSC-68 authorized military expenditures that included the development of surface-to-air missile sites. The rapid buildup and response of the United States would be tested in Korea.

Why did the Truman Doctrine come into existence?

In 1947, the Truman Doctrine was issued in an attempt to combat the Soviet menace.

What countries did the United States believe in communism?

Containment was eventually enlarged as the United States suspected communism in places such as Laos, Germany, Vietnam, Korea and Cuba. During the Truman presidency, several other notable Cold War events transpired.

Why did Truman suspend the Lend Lease Act?

In September 1945, as a means of limiting Soviet economic reconstruction, Truman suspended the Lend-Lease Act, which was an infusion of monetary and military aid from the United States to beleaguered nations during the Second World War . This aid helped nations such as Britain, France and the Soviet Union economically survive the war years.

What was the purpose of the National Security Act of 1947?

All of this was done in an effort to combat the Soviet Union and communism. Containment.

Who developed the containment policy?

The containment policy was developed by George Kennan, and was the foremost strategy of battling international communist aggression. Upon learning of the Soviet Union's nuclear program, the United States passed NSC-68, which enlarged funding toward anti-communism programs.

What are the different schools of thought that have been studied during the Cold War?

In this lesson, you will learn about the various schools of thought, including realism, traditionalism, revisionism and post-revisionism.

What was the period of distrust between the Soviet Union and the United States known as?

The period of distrust between the Soviet Union and United States was known as the Cold War. Learn about the origins of the era, essential events and the shaping of the national security state.

Which countries were involved in proxy wars in the second half of the 20th century?

In this lesson, we explore several of the world's conflicts in the second half of the 20th century that ended up becoming proxy wars between the United States and the Soviet Union in their Cold War standoff.

What was the Cold War?

The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in ...

How long did the Cold War last?

It was waged mainly on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and lasted until 1991.

Why were both superpowers wary of using their nuclear weapons against each other?

The conflict showed that both superpowers were wary of using their nuclear weapons against each other for fear of mutual atomic annihilation. The signing of the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty followed in 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing.

What was the Cuban missile crisis?

This sparked the Cuban missile crisis (1962), a confrontation that brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles. Cuban missile crisis. Aerial photograph of Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) Launch Site 1 near San Cristóbal, Cuba, taken on October 25, 1962.

Why did the US and Soviet Union not use nuclear weapons?

The Cuban missile crisis showed that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union were ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other’s retaliation (and thus of mutual atomic annihilation). The two superpowers soon signed the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty of 1963, which banned aboveground nuclear weapons testing.

What happened in 1962?

In 1962 the Soviet Union began to secretly install missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S. cities. The confrontation that followed, known as the Cuban missile crisis, brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles.

What was Gorbachev's reforms?

Gorbachev’s reforms meanwhile weakened his own communist party and allowed power to shift to the constituent governments of the Soviet bloc. The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, giving rise to 15 newly independent nations, including a Russia with an anticommunist leader.

What was the Cold War?

The Cold War was an indirect conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union that began at the end of the Second World War and it spread throughout almost half of the 20th century. This confrontation took place in the fields of politics, science and technology, sports, the military and the social.

Why was the Cold War called the Cold War?

The phenomenon was named Cold War because his opponents never got to attack directly. Source image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cold-war-2-investwithalex.jpg. The end of the Second World War placed in evidence the two great powers that were rising in the world: the United States of America and the Soviet Union.

What was communism based on?

For the United States, communism was a doctrine destined to failure, and that was based on collective misery. To prevent the Soviet Union from gaining strength in territories of the American continent, it was proposed to intervene in an evident way in the political scenarios of Latin American nations, promoting military dictatorships as ...

What was the Cuban Revolution?

The Cuban Revolution it was an event of great weight in the development of this phenomenon.

What field was another where there was a confrontation between the two blocks?

Neither of the two blocks wanted to find themselves at a disadvantage, so the scientific and technological field was another where there was a confrontation between the two.

What did the tension of an eventual attack do?

The tension of an eventual attack did nothing but strengthen the nuclear and military arsenals of many nations.

How did the development of nuclear weapons by its rivals keep the United States on guard?

The development of nuclear weapons by its rivals kept the United States always on guard, increasing its own arsenal gradually and reinforcing its defensive capabilities located outside its own national territory. They could not find themselves as an easy target of the opposing armament.

Why did the Cold War start?

The Cold War started because Europe lost power at the end of World War II. This left the Soviet Union and the United States competing for economic and military rule. Both countries believed their policies were the best and ultimately wanted all others to follow.

Why was the Cold War different from the other wars?

The Cold War is different from most wars for the simple reason of it was a war that was never actually fought.

Why could the Cold War not have been avoided?

The Cold War probably could not have been avoided since there were too many differences between the United States and Russia. With so many controversies between the leaders it is hard to believe that anything could have been done to have made them see eye to eye. Share this: Facebook. Facebook logo.

How long did the Cold War last?

Not only was it a war of diversity, but a war of great length that lasted about fifty years. What made this time so significant was that the whole world was involved in this war in some way. The world was split into two opposite teams ...

Why did the Soviet Union block Berlin?

One major crisis of the Cold War involved the Soviet Union blocking grounds to Berlin in attempt to allow Communist to start supplying fuel and food. The Soviet Union wanted control over the city of Berlin and they thought by cutting off all ground supplies they could do so.

What was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, was created as a result of the Cold War and was designed as a defense mechanism against communism. “Doubtless the Warsaw Pact, multilateral military alliance with a combined command structure, was largely what it appeared to be-a mirror image of NATO (Hammond, 1969: 57).”.

Why did Russia join the Warsaw Pact?

Russia formed the Warsaw Pact as a comeback to the establishment of NATO. Our membership in NATO today is still necessary for peace among the nations. After World War II, the Soviet Union strengthened its military power enough that it felt able to challenge the United States in Europe.

Why did the Cold War happen?

This ideological conflict caused the Cold War because it displayed the difference in worldview between the two nations. As such, the United States and the Soviet Union differed greatly in their views of how the world should be organized following the major events of World War II.

Why were the early years of the Cold War important?

These early years were important to the growing tensions and anger between the two superpowers. Because of the development of nuclear weapons, the two nations did not trust each other. As a result, they each spent the first few decades of the Cold War developing large arsenals of nuclear weapons.

What was the Yalta Conference?

The Yalta Conference, along with the Potsdam Conference, was an important event for the end stages of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. The Yalta Conference occurred from February 4th to the 11th in 1945 and was a wartime meeting of the Allied leaders, including: Franklin D. Roosevelt , Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.

Why was the Yalta Conference a major event in the Cold War?

However, the Yalta Conference is now viewed as a major event in the Cold War as well, because it highlighted the divide between Stalin and the other two leaders.

What happened to Japan in 1945?

Japan was defeated soon after in August of 1945 with the atomic bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki . During these final stages of World War II, the partnership between the Soviet Union and the other Allied nations began to fall apart. This is best evidenced by the Allied wartime conferences in Yalta and Potsdam.

Why was the difference in ideology a major source of the conflict between the two nations?

This difference in ideology was a major source of the conflict between the two nations because throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union sought to expand communism to other regions and the United States sought to stop it with its policy of containment.

What was the alliance based on?

At the time, the alliance was based around destroying the fascist regimes in the Europe and Japanese expansionism in the Pacific. However, by 1945 the major fighting in both the European Theater and Pacific Theater began to come to an end. For example, World War II in Europe essentially ended with the death of Adolf Hitler on April 30th, 1945.

What was the Cold War based on?

The cold war was mainly a war of the mind based on mutual hostility and fears of the protagonists wedged on ideological intensity. It was about power beyond the borders of the protagonists.At no point did it get physical between the United States and the Soviet Union instead it was fought by proxy and by the allied states.

What was the period of the Cold War?

THE PHENOMENON OF THE COLD WAR The cold war mainly revolved around Germany and how to deal with her after her defeat in the 2nd world war. Other countries were also affected during this period. The Berlin blockade arose due misinterpretation of principles laid down in the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.

What was the Cuban missile crisis?

The Cuban missile crisis was another disaster looming and it had the effect of paralyzing the whole world. Russia sought and was granted Cuba’s consent to place her missiles in Cuba. The construction was stopped after several political interventions between Russia and the United States.

Why did Western Europe agree with the United States?

In Western Europe some countries agreed with the United States simply because it had established itself as a super power and so ensured their security from a soviet attack. It cannot therefore be said with certainty that there was a common goal. It was a case of who dangled more carrots.

What was America's main aim in the Just War?

The scarcity of raw materials in the west led to violation of borders as was evidenced in the invasiion of Kuwait by Iraq.America intervened again on the just war theory backed by the United Nations but her main aim was to secure the oil wells to ensure consistent supply for her industries.

What is the Just War Theory?

In the Just war theory [7] war is allowed in self defense and as an instrument of maintaining social order.Fo cuses on two doctrines i. e. the justice of war (jus ad bellum) and the justice in war (jus in bello) decisions in war are made by a legitimized body of authority. That the war will be won at a tolerable cost of life.

What does Clausewitz say about war?

Clausewitz states that war is the continuation of political intercourse with addition of other means [1]. For You For Only $13.90/page! He goes on to state that war is a tool that is used to impose ones will on the adversary and to compel the adversary to submit.

How did the Cold War develop?

The Cold War developed as differences about the shape of the postwar world created suspicion and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. The first - and most difficult - test case was Poland, the eastern half of which had been invaded and occupied by the USSR in 1939. Moscow demanded a government subject to Soviet influence; Washington wanted a more independent, representative government following the Western model. The Yalta Conference of February 1945 had produced an agreement on Eastern Europe open to different interpretations. It included a promise of "free and unfettered" elections.

Who was the first president to fight the Cold War?

Harry Truman was the first American president to fight the Cold War. His judgments about how to respond to the Soviet Union ultimately determined the shape of the early Cold War. Probably the most important, certainly the most forgotten, and surely the most controversial, was the decision to concentrate on the European theater, rather than the Pacific. Avoiding a two front war has long been a fundamental strategic choice. Germany during the 20th Century was bedeviled by two front wars, and the Allies gave preference to the European theater [where the Soviet Union was engaged with Germany] over the Pacific theater [where the Soviets remained at peace with Japan]. Truman was in a sense re-affirming the geographical preferences of the struggle against the Axis in his priorities in the struggle against Communism.

What was the Soviet Union blocking in Berlin?

The conflict came to center on the future of Germany, and the Soviet Union blockaded all surface transport into West Berlin in June 1948. In June 1948 the Soviets blocked all ways into the western part of Berlin, Germany. President Truman quickly ordered military planes to fly coal, food, and medicine to the city. The planes kept coming, sometimes landing every few minutes, for more than a year. The United States received help from Britain and France. Together, they provided almost 2.5 million tons of supplies on about 280,000 flights. Gradually there was a massive build up of an airlift of supplies into that city through until September 1949, although the blockade was officially lifted in May 1949.

What was the Truman Doctrine?

"It must be the policy of the United States," he argued in what became known as the Truman Doctrine, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The Truman Doctrine was a plan to give money and military aid to countries threatened by communism. The Truman Doctrine effectively stopped communists from taking control of Greece and Turkey.

What was the purpose of NATO?

NATO was a joint military group. Its purpose was to defend against Soviet forces in Europe [or, as the saying went, "to keep Russia out, America in and Germany down"]. The first members of NATO were Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States. The Soviet Union and its east European allies formed their own joint military group -- the Warsaw Pact -- six years later.

Economic Destabilization in Other Nations

• The international decisions made by both the United States and the Soviet Union in terms of their benefits had a serious impact on the internal political and economic systems of smaller nations, both in Latin America and in Western European regions. The deterioration of the economic system that would lead to the end of the Soviet Union also affecte...

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