Download -The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension and

Viqar, Omar
Period- 3
Chapter 31 Section 1: The Cold War
-The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension and competition that existed primarily
between the United States and the Soviet Union and those countries' respective allies from the mid1940s to the early 1990s. (Bulliet, 821)
-The wartime alliance between the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union was very uneasy.
(Spodeck, 651)
-Western leaders began to consider the Soviet Union the center of world revolution because of its
ability to launch a very destructible war. (Bulliet, 822)
-Throughout the 1900s, the conflict was expressed through military coalitions, espionage, weapons
development, invasions, propaganda, and competitive technological development, which included the
space race. (Spodeck, 651)
-The Soviets wanted all of Berlin to be within its control, so they cut off land access to Berlin from the
west, this was known as the Berlin Blockade. (Princeton Review, 253)
-The conflict included costly defense spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and
numerous proxy wars. (Princeton Review, 253)
- After the United States and the countries of western Europe established the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization military alliance in 1949, Soviet leaders felt surrounded by hostile forces just when they
were trying to recover from the terrible losses sustained in the war against Axis. (Bulliet, 822)
-Although the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France were allied against the Axis powers
during the last four years of World War II, disagreements existed both during and after the conflict on
many topics, particularly over the shape of the post-war world. (Spodeck, 651)
-At the war's conclusion, most of Europe was occupied by those four countries, while the United States
and the Soviet Union possessed the two most powerful military forces. (Princeton Review, 253)
-In July 1944 over forty countries met at Bretton Woods, to devise a new international monetary
system, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
-The International Monetary Fund was to use currency reserves from member nations to finance
temporary trade deficits, and the World Bank was to provide funds for reconstructing Europe and
needy countries after war. (Bulliet, 822)
-Due to the World War II, there was a very high demand in many work fields, as a result the United
States escaped the effects of the great Depression. (http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgibin/page.cgi/jb/wwii)
-The economy of western Europe was heavily damaged during World War II, as a result the United
States prospered the were able to support the reconstruction of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan
which gave 12.5 billion dollars to European countries. (Bulliet, 823)
-The line between the East and the West was known as the Iron Curtain because neither western or
eastern influence could crass it.
-The Soviet Union created an Eastern Bloc of countries that it occupied, annexing some as Soviet
Socialist Republics and maintaining others as Satellite states that would later form the Warsaw Pact.
(Princeton Review, 253)
-Western Europe , including Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, West Germany,
and eventually Greece became part of the Western Bloc.
-The Cold War saw periods of both heightened tension and relative calm. On the one hand,
international crises arose, such as the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the
Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989),
NATO exercises in November 1983 and especially the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. (Bulliet, 826-29)
-Direct military attacks on adversaries were deterred by the potential for mutual assured destruction
using deliverable nuclear weapons. (Andrea, 470)
-The Helsinki Final Act, known as the Helsinki Accords affirmed that o boundaries should be changed
by military force. (Bulliet, 830)
-Space exploration was another offshoot of the nuclear arms race. (http://www.enotes.com/1960government-politics-american-decades/cold-war-continued-nuclear-arms-race-arms-control)
-The Cold War drew to a close in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The United States under President
Ronald Reagan increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on the Soviet Union, which was
already suffering from severe economic stagnation. (Spodeck, 651)