The Cold War

WHAT WAS THE COLD WAR?

The Cold War was a long period of political division and tension. It began near the end
of World War II (1945) and lasted until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in
December 1991. The Cold War was dominated by two superpowers, the United
States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. It is sometimes assumed
that the Cold War was a ‘war without ghting’. While the two superpowers certainly
avoided war with each other, the Cold War contained a large number of proxy wars,
coup d’états, hostile confrontations and skirmishes, covert actions and dangerous
A cartoon depicting
incidents. The phrase ‘cold war’ was itself coined by British author George Orwell,
Cold War tensions
rst appearing in an October 1945 essay on the atomic bomb. Orwell predicted that
the rise of atomic weapons would “put an end to large-scale wars, at the cost of
prolonging inde nitely a ‘peace that is no peace’.” This new world, he wrote, would be “horribly stable,
like the slave empires of antiquity”.

Orwell’s dire prediction began to take shape in 1945. The catalyst was
the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe in the last months of World
War II. The Soviet Red Army liberated several eastern European
nations from the horrors of Nazism – but they remained in these places
after the war, shaping and in uencing their post-war reconstruction.
Soviet agents guided and worked with local communists to rig
elections, doctor political systems and install socialist governments. By
the late 1940s, eastern Europe had become a cluster of socialist
republics that took their orders from Moscow. The dangers of Soviet
hegemony were recognised by Western leaders like Winston Churchill,
who in March 1946 warned of an “iron curtain” descending on Europe. The United States also
recognised the threat of communism in war-ravaged Europe. Washington’s response was the European
Recovery Plan, better known as the Marshall Plan. This four-year $13 billion aid package sought to
restore European capitalism and promote liberal-democratic political systems. By the late 1940s,
mainland Europe had separated into two ideological camps: the US-led Western bloc and the Russian-
led Soviet bloc.

At the heart of this post-war division was Germany. In 1945, Germany was
invaded and occupied by the Americans and British in the west and the Soviet
Red Army in the east. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30th
and the Nazi government surrendered to the Allies nine days later. There was
much debate about the future of post-war Germany. Many, such as Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin, wanted Germany broken up into several smaller states, to prevent
An American checkpoint in
any prospect of another war. The four Allied powers occupied Germany which, in the divided German city of
time, evolved into two nations: US-backed West Germany and socialist East Berlin

Germany. The German capital, Berlin, was also divided into two sectors: one
controlled by the Allies, the other by East Germany. For four decades, the divided city of Berlin was the
crucible of the Cold War. In 1948 the East Germans and Soviets attempted to starve the Western
powers out of Berlin; this siege was thwarted by the largest airlift in history. In 1961 the East German
government, facing a mass exodus of its own people, were forced to lock down the city’s transit points
and construct a giant barrier. The Berlin Wall, as it was known, become one of the Cold War’s most
enduring symbols.

The Cold War gave rise to unparalleled levels of suspicion, mistrust, paranoia and
secrecy. The American and Soviet intelligence agencies, the CIA and KGB, carried
covert activities around the world, gathering information about different states,
regimes and leaders. They also supported and supplied underground movements,
uprisings and con icts, sometimes leading to so-called ‘proxy wars‘. There were
frequent accusations of espionage and underhandedness, such as the Powers
incident in 1960, when an American spy-plane was shot down and captured by
Cold War agencies
the Soviets. The most perilous ashpoint of the Cold War occurred in 1962 with
used espionage,
the discovery of Soviet-installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, not far from the United
deceit and trickery
States coastline. The stand-off over the Cuban missiles saw the superpowers
hurtle towards war and a possible nuclear exchange. Tensions were short-circuited at the last minute by
a secret deal between US president John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

The intensity of the Cuban missile crisis was followed by a long period of relative calm. This phase of the
Cold War was known as Détente. There were several factors that contributed to Détente, including the
rise of pragmatic leaders like Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, as well as domestic economic
problems in both the US and USSR. During Détente, leaders on both sides demonstrated a greater
willingness to communicate and negotiate. There were several international visits and summits, while
Washington and Moscow signed arms reduction treaties and other agreements. In 1972, Nixon visited
communist China, visited its leader Mao Zedong and, later, formally recognised his government. The
leaders of East and West Germany, previously hostile to each other, also engaged in state visits and
negotiations. But while Détente facilitated better communication and more cordial relations, many
aspects of the Cold War continued unabated.

The Cold War was reignited in the 1980s. The election of new leaders like
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan produced a revival in hostile rhetoric
and increases in military spending, leading to a new arms race. Reagan
condemned communism and the Soviet Union at every turn, describing the
latter as an “evil empire”. Rather than containing and tolerating communism, as
the leaders under Détente had done, Reagan and Thatcher were determined to
roll it back. Meanwhile, the Soviet economy was stagnating internally, with falls
Elected in 1980, Ronald
in production and shortages of food and consumer goods. The emergence of a
Reagan was well known
for his hatred of new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, heralded the introduction of signi cant
communism political and economic reforms. As Soviet power waned, ordinary people in
eastern Europe began calling for change in their own countries. The year 1989
was a pivotal one, with demonstrations, political reforms and, in November 1989, the fall of the Berlin
Wall. Within two years, the two Germanys had been reuni ed and the Soviet Union was dissolved,
bringing the Cold War to an end.

Ordinary people who lived through the Cold War experienced it in “Hollywood made hay with the Cold War,
real-time – though many did not fully understand it. The Cold War plundering the con ict for pro t and
fuelled some of the most virulent propaganda and fear campaigns propaganda from beginning to end. Cold
War themes appeared in a multitude of
in human history. Leaders revealed information when it had
genres including musicals, Westerns,
propaganda value and concealed it when it had none. Westerners Biblical epics, romantic comedies,
were taught to fear those on the other side of the Iron Curtain. science- ction fantasies, documentaries,
Civilians were warned of the possibility of spies, subterfuge and detective thrillers and absurdist biopics.
The result was thousands of images –
surprise nuclear strikes. School children learned about air-raid
some bland, some compelling – that
drills, bomb shelters and nuclear fallout. Government agencies helped millions of people worldwide to
conducted this symphony of nuclear paranoia but had willing grasp the ‘real’ meaning of a con ict that
accomplices among writers, lmmakers and television studios. The for most of them was peculiarly abstract,
and for many Americans especially was
generation that followed World War II became one of the most
fought solely on an imaginary level.”
prosperous in modern history – but grew up believing that the Tony Shaw, historian
nuclear clock was ticking and the destruction of mankind was
imminent.
1. The Cold War was a long period of international tensions and confrontation between the United
States, the Soviet Union and their allies. It lasted from 1945 to 1991.

2. The Cold War was sparked by political and ideological divisions over the fate of post-war Europe,
particularly the expansion of the Soviet Union and the division of Germany.

3. Though the US and USSR never went to war, the Cold War was marked by several secondary con icts,
proxy wars and dangerous incidents, such as the Cuban missile crisis.

4. The late 1960s and 1970s was a period of Détente or improved communications, however, Cold War
tensions were revived by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

5. The Cold War was brought to an end by the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the reuni cation of Germany
(1990) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991).

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This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation:
J. Llewellyn & S. Thompson, “What was the Cold War?”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/what-was-the-cold-war/.