The Freezing Cold War Years

The Cold War is a state of relationship between the USSR and its surrounding regions, and the Western World led by the United States over a period ranging from 1945 to 1991. The Cold War according to Christopher Freville expressed itself in military tension, conflict in political ideologies and economic competition between the two sides.

Bernard Baruch is attributed with first using the term Cold War. He was a presidential advisor and US financier. In a speech delivered on April 16, 1947 in South Carolina he stated that the US was in the midst of a cold war. The media picked it up and a book called Cold War written by reporter-columnist Walter Lippmann further popularized the term.

After World War II, there was disagreement between the Eastern and the Western powers about how they should manage the affairs of the states under their control. Christopher Freville also states that the West started perceiving the East with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as the head more as a military threat to Western Europe. On July 18, 1945 Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin met in the Potsdam Conference where Truman informed Stalin about the Americans’ new weapon, the atomic bomb. Stalin expressed his hope that the weapon would be used against Japan. A week after the conference ended, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The US Government’s stance against the Soviets intensified after the ‘Long Telegram’ by George F. Kennan which accused the western powers of building military strength to achieve supremacy in the event of a new war. The Soviet Union grew by annexing many satellite states including East Germany, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the People's Republic of Hungary, the People's Republic of Romania, the People's Republic of Poland and the People's Republic of Albania.

A dramatic shift in the cold war was affected by the change in leadership in both the United States as well as the Soviet Union. Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed office in 1953 and immediately sought to reduce military spending by a third. In March 1994, after the death of Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev became the head of the Soviet Union and openly denounced the crimes of Stalin. Though Stalin’s death relaxed the Cold War to a certain extent, tensions still prevailed. Germany was also a point of contention during the Cold War. Many of the occupants of East Germany which was under Soviet rule, migrated to the West. Christopher Freville observed that by 1961, almost 20% of the population had crossed over to West Germany through a loop hole in the administrative system. In order to stop further migration, East Germany built a barbed wire along its border with West Germany. This was later strengthened by the erection of the Berlin Wall.

The urge for more powerful military equipment by both groups led to the development of more powerful rockets which ultimately led to the space race which was eventually won by the US when they first set foot on the Moon. The Soviets’ alliance with Cuba led to the Cuban Missile Crisis which brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war than any other event. But the reluctance of both parties to strike first, knowing that there would be no victors in a nuclear war helped contain the situation. The tensions relaxed a little during the times of Nixon and Brezhnev. Christopher Freville feels that further measures taken by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan more or less ended the Cold War.

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