Transcript The Cold War

The Cold War
What is the Cold War?
• The Cold War was a
clash of ideologies
between the United
States and the Soviet
Union.
• The difference rested in
the governments of the
two countries.
• Democracy and
capitalism in the United
States, and communism
in the U.S.S.R.
Communism
• Communism is a social
system characterized by a
lack of private property.
• In Communism work is
divided up among all
citizens according to ability
and interest and resources
divided by need.
• There would also be no
rulers. This means no
president, king, or dicatator.
• These are the basic
principles laid out by Karl
Marx in the Communist
Manifesto written in 1848.
History of the Cold War
• Hostility between the
United States and the
U.S.S.R. had its roots
in the end of World
War I.
• After the Bolshevik
Revolution, leader,
Vladimir Lenin,
sought to withdraw
Russia from the war.
History of the Cold War
• In 1918, the United States,
Great Britain, and Japan sent
military troops into Russia.
• They backed the White
Army, the group resisting
Lenin’s Red Army.
• They invaded to restore the
eastern front in the war
effort.
• To Lenin, this was an assault
on their new revolutionary
regime.
History of the Cold War
• During World War II, the
United States and Russia
agreed to stop Nazi
Germany.
• The whole war was
marked by mistrust
between the two
countries.
• The U.S.S.R. was not
aware the United States
had nuclear weapons.
History of the Cold War
• As a result, the U.S.S.R.
developed their own
nuclear weapons.
• By 1949, the Soviet
Union had successfully
tested their first atomic
bomb.
• This was much sooner
than the United States
thought they would
develop nuclear arms.
The Cold War
• As a result of the Soviet
Union developing nuclear
weapons, both sides
engaged in an arms race,
building huge stockpiles of
nuclear weapons.
• Many of the nations of the
world allied themselves
with either the United
States or Soviet Union.
Those who were not
aligned with either country
became known as the
Third World.
The Cold War
• The primary goal of
Joseph Stalin and the
Soviet Union was to
protect its territory from
Western threats.
• At the end of World War II,
the Soviet troops took
control of a number of East
European countries:
Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Romania,
Bulgaria, and the eastern
half of Germany.
The Cold War
• To prevent the
spread of
communism, Harry
Truman began a
foreign policy of
containment, a
policy aimed at
containing the
spread of soviet
influence and
expansion.
Division of Germany
• After World War II,
Germany was
divided into four
zones.
• Each zone was to
be controlled by one
of the four Allied
Powers: France,
Great Britain,
Russia, and the
United States.
Division of Germany
• The Soviet Union
declared East Germany
to be an independent
country-- The German
Democratic Republic.
• Great Britain, France,
and the United States
joined their zones
togeter to form the
Federal Republic of
Germany.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact
• After World War II, the United
States, along with 11 other
countries formed a military
alliance called the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) They formed this
alliance to protect one
another from the Soviet
Union.
• The Soviet Union responded
by forming its own defensive
alliance called the Warsaw
Pact. They were to protect
each other from the United
States and NATO, which were
seen as threats to their own
security.