Cold War
The Cold War was a conflict of values and ideologies between the United States and the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Western countries wanted the liberated states of Eastern Europe to be ruled with a democratic government and a capitalist economy. Joseph Stalin felt entitled to rule the Eastern European countries it occupied in World War II. Stalin wanted these countries to be used as a buffer to protect USSR boarders. Communist governments in these Eastern European countries would be under the control of the USSR thereby protecting it. The Russian army, ready to attack Berlin was halted so that the Yalta Conference between the "Big Three" (Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt) could determine the wars end. The purpose of the Yalta Conference was to re-establish the countries destroyed and conquered by Germany. Poland and Yugoslavia were given their own governments; Germany was to be divided into zones to be controlled by each of the four countries (US, Great Britain and France and USSR). Berlin was promised to the USSR as part of the eastern half of Germany upon its surrender and Russia agreed to join the war against Japan when the war in Europe was over. Roosevelt was harshly criticized and was
The first real conflict of the Cold War started in the divided Berlin. The country was divided into four zones, where each superpower controlled a zone. In 1946, after reparation agreements broke down between the western and Soviet zones, the west wanted to merge the British, French and American zones. The west wanted to stimulate the German economy and unite all of West Germany as one. The Soviet Union opposed this since it would give one combined zone more power than its own. When the western powers introduced a new currency into their zones, the Soviet Union responded by ordering the blockade of West Berlins' roads and railways, cutting off all travel by land into the sea. A twenty-mile wide air corridor was the only access to West Berlin. The United States, did not want to relinquish West Berlin; as part of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift delivered enough goods into West Berlin over 320 days to support the city; airplanes landed on an average of every three minutes. The Soviets tried to distract the airplanes with spotlights and balloons and successfully caused a few crashes. Stalin backed down on May 12, 1949 and West Berlin remained allied with the west until the unification of 1989. West Germany had an economic boom and East Germany gradually rebuilt its economy under the Soviets however, a shortage of skilled workers in West Germany lured many East Germans to flea to the west. East Germans were able to use public transportation to West Berlin and automatically receive West German citizenship. To prevent its citizens from fleeing to the west, in August 1961, Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall physically dividing the country into Eastern communism and Western democracy. In 1954 the United States created the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), and in 1955, the Baghdad Pact. This was an attempt by the United States along with NATO and its military ties in the Far East (S. Korea, Japan, Taiwan) to contain the Soviet Union. The intent of the Baghdad Pact was to be a Middle Eastern alliance comprised of Arab states and led by the United States and Great Britain. Iraq was the only Arab state that joined. In March 1955, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser created an Arab alliance including Syria and Saudi Arabia to counter the west's influence in the Middle East. Nasser felt this would establish his independence
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1574
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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