The Cold War
Communism vs. The Rest of the World
The Cold War was started was started at the end of World War II and lasted until the late 1980s without even a shot being fired. After the U.S. dropped the Nuclear Bombs on Japan to end the Second World War, Russia was angry that the U.S. had kept this information from them. Russia believed that since they and the U.S. were allies in the War they should tell each other about the weapons that they are building. Russia had not known that the United States could even build a nuclear weapon so the events that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were a complete surprise to the Allied Powers. Thanks to Russian spies in the 1950s, The U.S.S.R. was sent the information that they needed to build their own Atomic Bomb. Now, both sides felt the need to build up a larger arsenal than the other and the cold war began escalating. One major event in the war was the Cuban Missile Crisis. This was when Cuba became a Communist nation and formed an alliance with Russia. Russia gave Cuba some Nuclear Missiles and then Cuba aimed those nukes at the U.S. After years of threatening each other, both sides decided to disarm. They each defused hundreds of nuclear bombs and decided to make peace. This as a huge issue in the fifties because of the Red Scare but by the late 1980’s, this war seemed pointless. President Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty and the Cold War was over. On the possitive side of this war, NATO was formed and is still in operation today.