Questions & Answers: U. S. History - The Cold War

Review military alliances and border restrictions hurt the relationship between the East and the West.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, came into being in 1949. It essentially amounted to an agreement among the US and Western European countries that an attack on any one of these countries was to be considered an attack against the entire group.
Under the influence of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European countries of USSR, Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Romania, Albania, Poland and Czechoslovakia responded with the Warsaw Pact, which created a similar agreement among those nations. In 1961, a wall was built to separate Communist East Berlin from democratic West Berlin. A similar, though metaphorical, wall lay between east and west, as well, and was referred to as the Iron Curtain.

Review some of the U.S. plans that led to the Cold War.
Marshall Plan—sent aid to war-torn Europe after WW II, largely focusing on preventing the spread of communism.
Containment—proposed by George F. Kennan, Containment focused on containing the spread of Soviet communism.
Truman Doctrine—Harry S. Truman stated that the US would provide both economic and military support to any country threatened by Soviet takeover.
National Security Act—passed in 1947, this act created the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council.
The combination of these acts led to the cold war, with Soviet communists attempting to spread their influence and the US and other countries trying to contain or stop this spread.

Review the advanced weapons used during the Cold War and the end of the Cold War.
After the war, major nations, particularly the US and USSR, rushed to develop the atomic bomb, and later the hydrogen bomb, as well as many other highly advanced weapons systems. These countries seemed determined to outpace each other with the development of numerous, deadly weapons. These weapons were expensive and extremely dangerous, and it is possible that the war between US and Soviet interests remained “cold” due to the fear that one side or the other would use these terrifyingly powerful weapons.
In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev ruled the Soviet Union. He introduced a series of reform programs. Also during this period, the Berlin Wall came down, ending the separation of East and West Germany. The Soviet Union relinquished its power over the various republics in Eastern Europe, and they became independent nations with their own individual governments. With the end of the USSR, the cold war also came to an end.