Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The cold war quizlet
Short note on cold war
American life during cold war
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The cold war quizlet
I was about six years old and I didn’t understand a thing when my mother had first told me about it. I remember her and father talking about the spread of communism a lot at breakfast.” “I remember when I first read in the newspaper that Joseph Stalin, after all those years of being dictator, had died. I remember thinking about all those Russians who were mass murdered, and how unstable his army was. So, to answer your first question, the when I hear “Cold War”, I just think of all those people who died.” There was this huge poster I once saw that read ‘Is This Tomorrow? - America Under Communism!’ In the picture people were killing eachother and there was fire….they shaped my impressions heavily. Each time I saw something like that I wondered
Communism has had an extremely negative impact on Americans—many people got fired for false accusations by the government. The case of Rosenberg has to do with this topic because Ethel Rosenberg did nothing wrong against the U.S., yet she was executed without evidence to support the government’s decision. Typical humans make harmful decisions when in fear, however, those decisions ensure safety for everyone
One of the biggest fears of the American people is that the concept of communism contrasts drastically from the concept of capitalism, which the United States was essentially founded upon. The United States, as the public believed, was not a land of perfect communal equality, but rather a land of equal opportunity. However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower who compared the spread of communism as the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it...
The government would inaccurately portray communism many times to make them look more egregious than they really were. “In the wake of the Cold War, Americans felt it was their patriotic duty to buy consumer goods to help the economy grow. In turn, the U.S. became the world’s dominant economic power” ("Cold War Influences on American Culture, Politics, and Economics"). Americans started to become more patriotic before the Cold War and did whatever they had to do to stop communism. In this instance, Americans bought more consumer goods to boost the economy, and to also show that the American way of life was superior to the communist way of life.
However, evidence that is presented may indicate otherwise, as Joseph Stalin provides adequate counter claims for discrediting the “simplicity” of “yes”. Within this controversial topic, two authors provide their sides of the story to whom is to blame and/or responsible for the “Cold War.” Authors Arnold A. Offner and John Lewis Gaddis duck it out in this controversial situation as each individual leads the readers to believe a certain aspect by divulging certain persuading information. However, although both sides have given historical data as substance for their claim, it is nothing more than a single sided personal perception of that particular piece of information; thus, leaving much room for interpretations by the reader/s. Finding the truth to either claim is the obligation of the reader and outside research would accommodate the authors potential inadequacies and personal fallacies.... ...
In 1917 the Russian revolution took place. Many Americans were suspicious that Russian immigrants might spread communist ideas. This shows that Americans were scared of/ didn’t want communism as it contradicted the American Dream and took away personal advancement by hard work. In January 1920, 5 elected members of the New York State Assembly could not take
Wall, Wendy. “Anti-Communism in the 1950s” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Web. 2007
Former U.S. President Richard Nixon once said, “Communism is never sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.” From 1919 – 1921, a hysteria over the perceived threat of communism spread like wildfire across the nation. Known as the First Red Scare, the widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism quickly invaded the infrastructure of the U.S. government and radically influenced the American people. American citizens, such as Sacco and Vanzetti, were convicted and found crimes that evidence showed otherwise only because they supported anarchism. The US government arrested and deported radicals only because of their political standing. Although The First Red Scare may have begun as a cultural movement, private business owners actually catalyzed and facilitated the wide spread hysteria over communism.
In this essay, I am going to discuss various policies and wars that were a huge part in America’s history of fighting against the spread of communism throughout the 1940s and 1950s. These things were policies and ideas that helped to shape and mold our nation’s foreign policies as well as touch on events that forever changed our country.
I recollect as a child how I cherished the way my mom took care of me and made all my executive decisions. I recall getting excited about my weekly allowances and about her picking out my clothes for school. However, when I became a teenager I wanted my independence. I know longer wanted her to buy my clothing and I wanted to financially support myself by getting a job. I was so tired of her telling me what to do and how to do it that I revolted. At first it was difficult trying to establish independence in my mother's house, but after a while it seemed as if I had won the battle. Unbeknownst to me that battle would be short-lived and ultimately my mom won the war. Basically, I had constructed my own crazy revolution against my mother. You see a revolution is “a fundamental change in political organization; especially: the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another by the governed .Activity or movement designed to affect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation (Webster Dictionary).”One revolution that is said to have inspired communism was the Russian Revolutions of 1917.
At the height of the Cold War, a new cartoon emerged. Little blue people called Smurfs sang and skipped into the hearts of the American populace. The good, clean antics of the Smurfs were the model of American values, or were they? One should look closely at the Smurfs, their values, their cultures. Surprise! The Smurfs were not capitalistic at all. They were Communists! Communist practices and doctrine have not only infiltrated American television, but they have also become integral parts of America itself. Communism has even become a part of the American education system. How has communism been adopted into the American educational system? Some examples of this infiltration into the classroom include one of the Ten Planks of Communism, atheism, controlled learning, propaganda, school to work programs, and busing.
The First and Second Red Scare of the United States paved the way for a long standing fear of communism and proved to be one of America’s largest periods of mass hysteria. Throughout the years authors and analysts have studied and formed expository albeit argumentative books and articles in an attempt to further understand this period of time; the mindset held during this period however is shown to be completely different compared to now.
Along with the Korean War, many Americans were also affected by the tensions between America and communist Russia. The Russian hydrogen bomb of 1953 had scared people into believing that Communist Russia could start an atomic war, ending life as most people had known it. Scholars of the time period were scared to teach anything about what Marxism (communism) was about. According to Daily Life in the United States, 1940-1959, Shifting Worlds (Kaldin, 2000). There were also very few communists teaching at universities such as Harvard during the 1950s because of the fear that Americans had of communists during this time. From the years 1951 to 1957, 300 teachers were fired from New York City public schools because they did not give the names of teachers who were supposedly communists. This shows how uneasy of a topic communism was for Americans to talk about, even when the culture had started to become more liberal towards the end of the decade, when the 1960s began.
America, throughout the ages, has always despised Communism and Communistic beliefs; however, during the 20s to around the 90s, there was a deeper hatred for Communism and a fear that lingered in most Americans’ hearts. Communism is a political theory that was derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. The majority of Americans strongly disagreed with
Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signified, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold but not clothed. " There was never a war that this idea could be more correctly applied to than the Cold War. According to noted author and Cold War historian Walter Lippman, the Cold War can be defined as a state of tension between states, which behave with great distrust and hostility towards each other, but do not resort to violence. The Cold War encompasses a period from the end of the Second World War (WWII), in 1945, to the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1989. It also encompassed the Korean and Vietnam Wars and other armed conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, that, essentially, were not wars for people but instead for territories and ideologies.
What does this nation’s people remember most about the Cold War? Is it the fear, terror, and the absolute uncertainty of not knowing if tomorrow you might not wake up or worse, wake up to all out nuclear hell? “The most terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts - we have learned only recently how close we were to war - but I knew enough to make me tremble”-Joseph Rotblat. During those October days of 1962, John F. Kennedy and the United States braced for a nuclear attack that nobody was sure was coming. On the other side Nikita Khrushchev was hungry for power after being dominated by the U.S. for years during the long years of the Cold War. Khrushchev wanted to have the nuclear upper hand in the western hemisphere. With the help of Fidel Castro, Khrushchev could put nuclear weapons in Cuba.