The Cold War Research

The Cold War...

• From 1945 and 1989 the world was divided by the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union. It was an ideological war: U.S. democracy and capitalism versus Soviet Union communism. The Cold War was an indirect war, the U.S. and the Soviet Union never fought it out on the battlefield or in the air because to do so would have been utterly Mutually Assured Destruction; both countries had nuclear warheads that would deplete an entire county of it's population in a nanosecond. 
• The Cold War lasted for about 45 years.
• For ordinary people living in Communist Eastern Europe during the Cold War era, a great part of everyday life consisted of searching and waiting for basic material goods, including food. Women with families, standing hours per day in long lines to purchase meat and potatoes, also shortages of personal hygiene and health items, including toilet paper, feminine products and medicine. Children and teenagers often saw little of their parents, who were away from home each day for long stretches of time as they worked and shopped for basic necessities. 
• The Cold War touched many aspects of American social and cultural, from the civil rights movement survivalism, from Hollywood to the universities. The nuclear threat- and the Communist menace lurking behind it - brought the National Defence Education Act, the interstate highway system, and growing mistrust of government by both liberals and conservatives. 
• After the defeat in World War II, Germany was divided into four zones under the control of the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union .
• Because East Germany was inland, they did not have the access to imports that West Germany had. This resulted in different produce being available in one and not in the other. 
• The East was also largely communist as the USSR had control over it, whilst the West was capitalist. This meant that people would have been generally poorer in the East as wealth is shared equally in communist states, whilst the West would have been quite prosperous. Also, the East would have been under the dictatorship whilst the West would have been democratic.
• ABLE ARCHER- in November 1983, Soviet nuclear forces went on high alert. After months nervously watching increasingly assertive NATO military posturing, Soviet intelligence agencies in Western Europe received flash telegrams reporting alarming activity on U.S. bases. In response, the Soviets began readying their nuclear forces in preparation for a Western nuclear attack. Just as nuclear tensions escalated, the threat of war abruptly ended as the buildup was revealed to be vast NATO conflict simulation named Able Archer 83.