Compare And Contrast Essay Over The Cold War Dbq

After fighting along the United States against Nazi Germany in World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States soon became enemies, locked in the grip of the Cold War with the fear of a nuclear holocaust. Fear was a constant emotion throughout the entirety of the United States, no one knew exactly what was going to happen. The Soviet Union’s leader, Joseph Stalin, believed in communism, in fact the reader can concur that Americans were taught that communism was a bad thing, which worried most Americans. Textbooks should emphasize the Soviet society and economy versus the United States, as well as including the Great Terror, and military strength. The Soviet society and economy in numbers versus the United States, varies tremendously. For

The USSR simply had way more money that the United States, buying themselves bigger missiles and an even larger nuclear arsenal (Doc. E). Countries dared to start anything with the USSR because they knew how strong their nuclear arsenal was. Statistics show that the USSR had 165 billion dollars to spend, in which the US only had 131 billion in comparison (Doc. E). If the USSR didn’t have such a strong military, what would have broken out from the Cold War? Both countries felt the need to avoid a nuclear war. Although textbooks do cover over the Cold War, they still lack the amount of detail they should contain. Textbooks should emphasize the differences in the two countries. They should be highlighting what each country's strengths and weaknesses are and compare them to each other, their different tactics when it came to avoiding nuclear disaster. Textbooks should also emphasize the Great Terror, which resulted in 1,548,366 innocent people being executed or imprisoned because their beliefs were different than those of Joseph Stalin. Most importantly, military strength should be emphasized