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The Cold War was a conflict that lasted for decades between the communist countries of the world, led by the Soviet Union, and the non-communist countries of the world, led by the United States. It was a conflict in which both sides tried to dominate the world with their ideology. It is called “cold” because it was not an actual “shooting war” between the US and the USSR.
The Soviet Union was a communist country. Communists believed that their ideology was superior to that of the democratic, capitalistic countries of the West. They believed that communism would eventually take over the world and they wanted to speed that process as much as they could.
The United States was strongly opposed to communism. It felt that communism was economically inefficient and that it trampled on people’s fundamental human rights. For these reasons, it wanted to prevent the spread of communism.
After the end of WWII, the Cold War started. The US and the USSR tried to influence other countries to take their side. Sometimes, wars ended up being fought, as they were in Korea and Vietnam, to try to prevent the spread of communism. At other times, the competition between the two ideologies took the form of athletic competition or competition to land a man on the moon. The purpose of such competition was to show which side had a superior system.
The Cold War ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The Potsdam Conference<span>, 1945. The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry </span>Truman<span>—met in </span>Potsdam<span>, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II.
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Explanation:
Instituted in the hope of avoiding war, appeasement was the name given to Britain’s policy in the 1930s of allowing Hitler to expand German territory unchecked. Most closely associated with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, it is now widely discredited as a policy of weakness. Yet at the time, it was a popular and seemingly pragmatic policy. Hitler’s expansionist aims became clear in 1936 when his forces entered the Rhineland. Two years later, in March 1938, he annexed Austria. At the Munich Conference that September, Neville Chamberlain seemed to have averted war by agreeing that Germany could occupy the Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia - this became known as the Munich Agreement. In Britain, the Munich Agreement was greeted with jubilation. However, Winston Churchill, then estranged from government and one of the few to oppose appeasement of Hitler, described it as ‘an unmitigated disaster’. Appeasement was popular for several reasons. Chamberlain - and the British people - were desperate to avoid the slaughter of another world war. Britain was overstretched policing its empire and could not afford major rearmament. Its main ally, France, was seriously weakened and, unlike in the First World War, Commonwealth support was not a certainty. Many Britons also sympathised with Germany, which they felt had been treated unfairly following its defeat in 1918. But, despite his promise of ‘no more territorial demands in Europe’, Hitler was undeterred by appeasement. In March 1939, he violated the Munich Agreement by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia. Six months later, in September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and Britain was at war.
One of the major reasons why Americans distrusted public institutions like the government was because of the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. This series of government documents that were supposed to be classified, essentially showed that the US federal government had been lying about the progress the US was making in the Vietnam War. These documents caused outrage all over the country, as thousands of American men were drafted into this military conflict for what seemed like a failed mission.
