The Cold War

A prolonged state of political and military tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies.

The Cold War was a global rivalry between two superpowers - the capitalist United States (USA) and the communist Soviet Union (USSR) - from the end of the Second World War in 1945 until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. It was 'cold' because the two never fought each other directly; open war between them was deterred by nuclear weapons.

• A bipolar order: most nations aligned with one of two power blocs.
• The conflict played out through ideology, economics, propaganda, espionage and an arms race.
• It was fought in 'proxy wars' - conflicts in other countries backed by the superpowers.

The USA and USSR defeated Nazi Germany together, then fell out over how to remake the post-war world.

During the Second World War the USA, Britain and the USSR were allies against Hitler. As victory neared, their leaders met at Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (July-August 1945) to plan the peace - but deep disagreements surfaced over the future of Eastern Europe, especially Poland and defeated Germany.

• The USA wanted free elections and open markets across Europe.
• The USSR, invaded twice by Germany, wanted friendly buffer states on its borders.
• Mutual suspicion deepened: the USSR distrusted the US atomic bomb; the USA distrusted Soviet expansion.

At its heart the Cold War was a contest between two opposed visions of politics and economics.

The USA committed itself to stopping the spread of communism beyond where it already existed.

In March 1947 President Harry Truman pledged US support for 'free peoples' resisting communism - the policy of containment. In 1948 the Marshall Plan followed, offering billions of dollars to rebuild war-torn Western Europe, both to relieve suffering and to make communism less attractive.

• The USSR saw the Marshall Plan as US 'dollar imperialism' and forbade Eastern bloc states to join.
• Military alliances hardened the divide: NATO (Western, 1949) and the Warsaw Pact (Eastern, 1955).
• Europe was now split into two rival, armed camps.

Europe was split between a Soviet-dominated East and a US-aligned West.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Winston Churchill, Fulton, Missouri, March 1946

Churchill's phrase captured a new reality: the USSR installed friendly communist governments across Eastern Europe - Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and others - creating a bloc of satellite states. Germany itself was divided into a democratic West and a communist East.

• The 'curtain' was ideological, political and eventually physical.
• Movement and information were tightly controlled between the two halves of Europe.
• Berlin, deep inside East Germany, became the Cold War's most dangerous flashpoint.

Divided Berlin became the front line where Cold War tensions repeatedly threatened to boil over.

In June 1948 the USSR blockaded West Berlin, cutting road and rail links to force the Western powers out. The West responded with the Berlin Airlift, flying in food and fuel for almost a year until the Soviets backed down in May 1949. In August 1961 East Germany built the Berlin Wall to stop its citizens fleeing to the West.

• The airlift became a symbol of Western resolve; pilots from several countries, including South Africa, took part.
• The Wall physically divided families and became the enduring image of a divided world.
• Its fall in November 1989 later signalled the Cold War's end.

1. 1945 Yalta and Potsdam conferences; wartime alliance breaks down
2. 1947 Truman Doctrine announces containment
3. 1948-49 Berlin Blockade and Airlift
4. 1950-53 Korean War - the first major proxy war
5. 1961 Berlin Wall built
6. 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis
7. 1965-73 Height of US involvement in Vietnam
8. 1989-91 Berlin Wall falls; USSR collapses; Cold War ends

Each superpower built enough weapons to destroy the other many times over - and that is what kept the peace.

The USA used atomic bombs in 1945; the USSR tested its own in 1949. Both then raced to build ever more powerful nuclear arsenals and the missiles to deliver them. This produced the grim logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD): because either side could annihilate the other in retaliation, neither dared strike first.

• The competition spread to space - the USSR's Sputnik satellite (1957) shocked the USA.
• Deterrence meant safety rested on the threat of total destruction.
• The danger of accident or miscalculation made every crisis terrifying.

For thirteen days the world came closer to nuclear war than at any other time.

When the USSR secretly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, just off the US coast, President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade and demanded their removal. After a tense standoff, Soviet leader Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles; in return the USA secretly promised to remove its missiles from Turkey and not to invade Cuba.

• It was the closest the Cold War came to direct nuclear conflict.
• The crisis showed both the danger of brinkmanship and the value of back-channel diplomacy.
• Afterwards a telephone 'hotline' linked Washington and Moscow to reduce the risk of accidental war.

Unable to fight each other directly, the superpowers backed opposing sides in wars across the globe.

The whole world was pulled into a two-sided struggle - but not every nation wanted to choose a side.

The Cold War created a bipolar order in which most states aligned with either Washington or Moscow. As European empires collapsed after 1945, both superpowers competed for influence in newly independent nations across Africa and Asia, often through aid, trade and support for friendly governments.

• The Non-Aligned Movement (formed 1961) let states such as India, Egypt and Yugoslavia refuse to join either bloc.
• The 1955 Bandung Conference had already voiced this desire for independence from the superpowers.
• Southern Africa, including the war in Angola, was drawn into this global contest - a link to later Grade 12 topics.

A bipolar, ideological struggle - waged through crises, proxy wars and an arms race - that shaped the world without a direct superpower war.

From the breakdown of the wartime alliance in 1945 to the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Cold War divided the globe between two superpowers and two ideologies. It was 'won' not on a battlefield but through economic strain, political change and the eventual fall of communism in Europe - remembered most vividly in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.