The Cold War
(1947 - 1991)
1. World War Two ended and so does the US and USSR’s uneasy alliance, due to differing ideologies.
2. The Soviet Union spreads communism through many European countries including Poland, Romania and East Germany.
3. The US tries to prevent the spread of communism, which started a build-up of atomic weapons and spurred an arms race.
4. Competitiveness spread with the race to space, and the US did not want to lose ground to the Soviets as they had already spread communism so far around Europe.
5. There was a series of intense events over the decades of the Cold War, most relating to the superpowers wanting to spread their influence or prevent communism. These events included: The Vietnam War 1955 - 1975 (the US’s attempt to prevent communism spreading through Vietnam), the Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 (the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war), and the Building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (and its destruction in 1989/1990) where the Soviets split East and West Berlin after Germany was split into four regions in 1945.
6. The Cold War ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell, due to a combination of a struggling economy, growing opposition to communism and modernisation attempts. In December 1991, all 15 of the Soviet republics became independent.
Allies: the United Kingdom had a special relationship with the US due to their economic difficulty, and sided with them in the Cold War.
