The Cold War was the longest war in U.S. history, starting in 1947, ending in 1991, and lasting for four decades. It is also the first war where the weapon of fear was the primary weapon instead of violence and bloodshed. The first stage of the Cold War began in 1945 with problems, attempts to solve those problems, and the effects of the solutions. The problems included the United States’ lack of faith in the Soviet Union and their opposing ideas of what the government and economy system should be like. The solutions to those problems were the Cold War, the arms race, and the nuclear deterrent and the effects of those solutions were the large amounts of money used to create more war-related supplies, rebuild Europe’s economy, and stop the Soviet Union’s communist government from spreading.
The problems of the Cold War from 1945 to 1960 were the lack of trust in the Soviet Union from the United States and the differing opinions and ideas about government and economy. Firstly, the distrust in the Soviet Union goes back in World War I when the Soviet Union pulled out of the war, allowing the German troops to cross over to fight American, British, and French soldiers. The doubt continued when Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union at the time, mass murdered around 20 million people during the 1930s and when the Soviet Union signed a peace treaty with Germany and obtained control of the Baltic states. Secondly, while the United States believed in capitalism and democracy,