Cold War Tension Dbq

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Around 1945, tensions began arising between the US and the USSR, which lead to the Cold War. During a 40 year time period, each nation tried to spread their political and economic systems. Both the US and the USSR wanted to spread their ideologies across the world. The origin of the Cold War was distrust; in “fighting” this war, the political and military tactics were the most effective. Distrust between the US and the USSR lead to many years of tension. During the Yalta Conference of Feburary of 1945, Stalin promised free elections for Eastern European. Stalin broke this promise, and created a buffer zone with East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Those nations were turned communist, and divided Europe, which lead to Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech. Churchill stated, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, and iron curtain has descended across the continent. […] All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in the Soviet sphere and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and increasing measure of control from Moscow” (Document 1). Stalin was spreading communism throughout Europe, going against the agreement made at the Yalta Conference. The US no longer trusted the USSR. …show more content…

Starting in 1969, the USSR majorly increased their ICBM’s (Document 9). Because each country had nuclear weapons, no one wanted to be the first to use them. This was the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Both assured one another that they could destroy each other, so they did not attack each other. This helped in fighting the war because the US was ready for attack. The Nuclear Arms Race also prevented nuclear war. No one wanted a nuclear war, and Kennedy and Krushchev started to communicate with each other over the Red Phone, which was a direct line from DC to