the cold war intensifies

• Nuclear arms race

  Competition between the USA and Soviet Union to develop increasingly powerful nuclear weapons
• Nuclear arms race

  • Up to 1949, the USA thought it could use its nuclear monopoly to deter Soviet attack
  • By the mid-1950s, the development of nuclear weapons meant any nuclear war would destroy both sides (Mutually Assured Destruction)
  • This meant the USA and Soviet Union had to find ways to stop disputes turning into dangerous wars involving nuclear weapons
• Warsaw Pact

  Collective defence treaty involving the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states, set up in 1955 in response to West Germany joining NATO
• Warsaw Pact

  • Gave the Soviet Union direct control over the armed forces of its satellite states, strengthening its grip on Eastern Europe
  • Meant there were now two opposing military alliances in Europe, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, facing each other across the Iron Curtain
• After Stalin died, Soviet leader Khrushchev indicated Soviet control would relax, but when Hungary started to move away from Soviet influence, the Soviet Union tightened its control
• Hungary suffered under Stalin's brutal communist rule, with food and industrial products shipped off to Russia and any opposition ruthlessly suppressed
• In 1956, Hungarians started demonstrating against communist control, with statues of Stalin pulled down and local communists attacked
• Khrushchev appointed a more liberal Prime Minister for Hungary, Imre Nagy, who wanted Hungary to leave the Warsaw Pact and become a neutral country with free elections