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Cold War Primary Source Essay

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Cold War Primary Source Essay
The Cold War was a state of tension that transpired coming out of World War II. The central powers involved in this war were the Soviet Union and the United States. There has yet to be full agreement on the starting and ending dates, but the typical timeframe thought to be it was the period between 1947 and either 1989 or 1991. The year 1947, for the beginning of the war, was when the Truman Doctrine released which was a foreign policy which stated that the US would aid nations who were threatened by Soviet expansionism. The years 1989 and 1991 were when communism fell in Eastern Europe and when the Soviet Union collapsed respectively, thus ending the Cold War. This conflict is referred to as "cold" because there was no large-scale combat directly between the two rivals. However, the two main sides each supported regional wars known as “proxy wars.” One of which being the Cuban Missile Crisis. This crisis took place over a thirteen-day span from October 16th to October 28th, 1962, and began when the Soviet Union attempted to arrange nuclear missiles on Cuban soil directed at the United States. It was a excellent location for the Soviets …show more content…

President Kennedy addressed the nation in a speech, told the people the situation, and set forth his plans to steer the Soviet Union away from Nuclear Warfare. The other source was by a Soviet relaying the messages from Chairman Khrushchev to the State Department of the United States. However, in both sources, they show how different strategies were used to try and make the other side back down. The Soviets used scare tactics, threats, and intimidation, whereas the Americans tried to reason with the enemy to come to a consensus that avoidance of a nuclear war was a necessary course of action. Both sources strongly reveal the anxiety and panic that characterized the timeframe the Cuban Missile Crisis took

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