Historical Analysis : The Cold War
In 1945 the second world war was over, over 45 million humans had been slaughtered, Germany was divided in two, Europe was in ruins. The Soviet Union expanded westwards and engulfed independent republics. Using its large armies in Europe to put pressure on the western Allies, the Soviet Union put in place many pro-Stalin regimes (like in Poland and in Czechoslovakia). An "iron curtain" was hung over Eastern Europe and the USSR. The Cold War began. Using every means except direct armed conflict, the two Superpowers struggled for world dominance. Although many may see that this "conflict" was very bad, the space race made available never before imagined technologies. One could say that this "war" was the longest of the 20th century, from 1945 to 1989 over 20 million people died, whether bombed in Vietnam, shot in Afghanistan, or executed by a US supported dictator.
English: USSR stamp, S. Smith, 1985, 5 k. Русс...
U.S. reconnaissance photograph of soviet missile s...
English: The Eastern Bloc - after the annexations ...This conflict engulfed the entire world, not a single continent was spared, the world held its breath in fear of nuclear annihilation.
The US and the USSR had both very different goals. While the USSR wanted to spread communism around the globe, the US wanted to stop that from happening. Both superpowers made mistakes that were more or less serious as well as contradictions that , when looked at, made others lose respect for them and their causes.
One of the first incidents of the Cold War was the Berlin Blockade (from 1948-1949). Stalin restricted the access of any goods or people from Western Germany to the Western part of Berlin in order to make the Allies retreat. This was a mistake however because it only heightened the tension in between the two Superpowers. The Allies decided to pass supplies through the air using cargo planes.
Right after WWII...