Ben+Za's+oral+history+research

====The cold war was a state of tension between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, without direct combat between the two superpowers. The Cold War started at the Yalta Conference in 1945 and ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the Yalta Conference, the "big three" (Stalin, FDR, and Churchill), met together for the last time to discuss plans for post-war Europe. The conference basically signaled the beginning of the end of positive relationships between the West and the East. There was much tension and discourse during the Conference, and the final agreement had Eastern European countries having "free elections" to choose their government (free elections is used in quotation marks because the governments chosen would have to be Soviet friendly). It also saw Germany being split into four administrative districts, with the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the U.S.S.R. each controlling a district. The U.N. was also created, and while this may sound like a positive thing, in reality it had a negative effect on the overall situation of the Cold War as big disagreements erupted in the U.N. between the Eastern and Western nations.==== The U.S. had a big distaste of Communism, and did whatever was possible to try and stop the spread of it. They adopted the policies of the Truman Doctrine, which said the U.S. would lend countries money in order for them to rebuild without the aid of the Soviet Union. The Marshall Plan further progressed this policy. The U.S. also adopted the foreign policy of containment, where they would not interfere with countries already communist, but rather try and stop other countries from becoming communist. At this point relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union continued to sink. The U.S. and its allies were involved in NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which said the U.S. and its allies would defend each other in case of attack. The Soviet bloc responded with the Warsaw Pact, in which the U.S.S.R. and its allies agreed to help each other out military wise. A big symbolic move of the early years of the Cold War was the erecting of the Berlin Wall, which separated Eastern from Western Berlin, personifying the deep political divide between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

None of this was made any better by the fact that the public in both the East and the West was constantly in a state of hysteria. During this time period, the Eastern and Western nations competed to gain the most conventional and nuclear arms. This made the people in both the superpowers nervous of nuclear war. Also, people were terrified by rumors of spies in there country.

The most powerful weapon of the Cold War was not nuclear arms, but propaganda. In the U.S., the media would propel exaggerated information at the public in order to intensify the situation, and even children's cartoons warned of nuclear war. One of the most notorious figures in American Cold War propaganda is Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. He accused many prominent movie business and political figures of being communist, and ruined many of their careers. He crossed the line, however, when he accused President Eisenhower himself of being a communist.

The Soviet Union also used the media very effectively, but in addition they also used their military power to their advantage. Through big military parades, they showed the public that they were ready to take on any threat. Soviet Propaganda generally more directly criticized the U.S., but it worked just as well.

After years of tension and unrest, the cold war finally ended in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Two years prior to that the Berlin Wall was taken down.

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"Allies to Enemies: Origins of the Cold War (Overview)." //American History//. ABC-CLIO, 2010. Web. 27 May 2010. .
  "Cold War." //Global Security.org//. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 May 2010. .

Karrington, Kelly. "American and Russian Propaganda Techniques During the Cold War." //associated content//. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 May 2010. .