A History of the Cold War

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“As crossfire raked his body, the second boy fell back onto the strip of now churning sand. Wounded, moaning for help, he lay only 300 yards from a unit of United States troops. But the American commanding general issued orders: ‘Stand fast. Do nothing.’ Fifty-five minutes later Peter Fetcher was dead, and his body was carried away into the recesses of the city from which he had tried to escape.” This excerpt, from The Cold War: From Yalta To Cuba by Robin W. Winks shows how, despite its name, the Cold War was anything but cold.

World War II is considered by most experts to have ended in 1945, when the Japanese signed an unconditional surrender to Allied powers. Although World War II ended, the Cold War was just warming up. A very big part of the Cold War was the arms race. When the United States of America dropped the first atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we had displayed our power and jumped ahead in the race. This was a huge surprise to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They grew uneasy and distrustful of the US and other hidden powers we may possess (Trueman). After World War II ended, Europe was left in shambles. The US, not nearly as devastated as the rest of the world, developed the Marshall Plan to try and rebuild Europe. While the main goal of this plan was to help Europe rise from the ashes, a secondary goal was to stop the spread of Communism that Stalin was trying to promote (Marshall). Upset and frightened by the attempt to spread American ideas, the USSR developed the Zhdanov Doctrine. This doctrine “claimed that the United States was seeking global domination through American imperialism, as well as the collapse of democracy. On the other hand, according to this Doctrine, the Sovie...

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..., Ambassador. "LOOKING BACK: The 1986 Reykjavik Summit." Arms Control Association. Arms Control Association, Sept. 2006. Web. 05 Sept. 2015.

Il, Theodoros, J.D.-M.A. "How Did the Cold War Start and End?" Today I Found Out RSS. Today I Found Out, 13 Nov. 2013. Web. 02 Sept. 2015.

LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1971. Second ed. New York: Wiley, 1972. Print.

"The Marshall Plan." The Marshall Plan. George C. Marshall Foundation, 2009. Web. 02 Sept. 2015.

"Treaty Between The US And The USSR On The Elimination Of Their Intermediate-Range And Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty)." U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State, n.d. Web. 04 Sept. 2015.

Trueman, Chris. "The Cold War." The Cold War. History Learning Site, n.d. Web. 01 Sept. 2015.

Winks, Robin W. The Cold War: From Yalta To Cuba. New York: Macmillan, 1964. Print.

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