The Cold War

• The era after World War II was a time of economic strife and political tension
• The Marshall Plan loaned billions of dollars to Western European nations to rebuild their respective economies
• The goal of the Marshall Plan was to prevent a communist takeover in Western Europe
• The Soviet Union did not allow its satellite governments in Eastern Europe to participate in the Marshall Plan
• Instead, the Soviets offered the COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to Eastern Europe
• The Berlin Blockade and Berlin Airlift began the Cold War
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created as a military alliance between the US and other Allied nations
• The Warsaw Pact was the Soviet Union's defensive military alliance in response to NATO
• The United Nations (UN) was created as a forum where all participating countries could resolve conflict peacefully
• After World War II, the Soviet Union began to occupy Eastern European nations
• The Soviet Union wanted to spread Marxist ideology and guard itself against the United States
• In March 1946, Winston Churchill claimed that an "iron curtain" had fallen over Eastern Europe
• The Truman Doctrine provided economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey to prevent the spread of communism
• The policy of Containment aimed to prevent the further spread of communism
• After Stalin's death, Khrushchev delivered a speech denouncing Stalin's policies and calling for peaceful coexistence
• However, the Soviet Union continued to suppress uprisings in Eastern Europe, including the construction of the Berlin Wall
• Western European nations began to move towards industry and a market economy, while socialist parties gained popularity in some countries
• The Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, sparking the space race with the United States
• The U-2 incident, where the Soviets shot down an American spy plane, ended the "thaw" in the Cold War
• The devastation of World War II left Europe in a terrible condition after it was over
• The population had suffered greatly due to the loss of life, the economic strain, and the pure exhaustion of living through another global conflict
• The postwar condition of Europe created an atmosphere that was ripe for the next totalitarian regime to take control—the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union)
• Between 1945 and the early 1990s, the United States and the Soviet Union lived on the edge of war with each other with the entire world as their battleground
• During these years, the two world superpowers engaged in something known as the Cold War
• Cold war


  A continual condition of agitation and tension between two global powers
• For most of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of war while the whole world awaited the consequences in an era of perpetual tension
• Gail Halverson , the candy bomber (gave chocolate to children in the soviet union
• Who was the first human in space?

  Yuri Gagarin