Cold War Dbq

Introduction The Cold War was a conflict that began shortly after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union over their differences in ideologies (Koenig, The 1950's and the Cold War 1). The United States being a free market capitalist democracy, while the Soviet Union was a totalitarian communist regime. These two countries came out of World War II as the most powerful and given their difference in ideologies there was a rush to exert their influence onto third world countries to become the undisputed superpower of the world.
Cold War gets Hot The War between the Soviets and Americans was named the cold war because there was no direct fighting between the two countries. However, there were plenty of proxy wars that were fought indirectly with the Soviets backing one side and the Americans on

This is where the cold war got warmer. On June 25th, 1950 North Korea would invade South Korea and it became clear to the United States that this attack was planned by Moscow. President Truman responded by waging war under the United Nations and did not ask congress for a formal declaration of war. Truman ordered American forces and supplies to help South Korea and the Soviets did the same with North Korea (Koenig, The 1950's and the Cold War 4). So although the United States and Soviet Union both aided different sides in the Korean war they were not technically fighting directly against each other. The closest these two global superpowers got to directly fighting each other and starting World War III would be during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States had missiles in Turkey pointing at the Soviet Union if they were ever going to need too. The Soviet Union was obviously not a fan of the situation so they installed their own missile system in Cuba right off the coast of Florida to directly threaten the United States mainland (Koenig,