Cultural Changes Of The Cold War

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Culture Changes of the Cold War in the US
By Isabella Happe

The Cold War was a rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies, which stemmed from the ending of World War II. The war raged from March 12, 1947, through December 26, 1991, when Gorbachev and US President Bush declared the end of the Cold War at the Malta Summit. The Cold War was over an ideological struggle between Capitalism and Communism. The US believed in a Capitalist way whereas the USSR sought a communist way, and because of this, the US saw the USSR as a threat to the entire planet. The US was determined to prevent the spread of communist influence so the Truman Doctrine was created, known as the policy of containment. After the Truman Doctrine was implemented, many key events took place in the hope of stopping the spread of communism. For example, the Marshall Plan provided aid to Western European countries and the Berlin Airlift aided West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade. The creation of NATO was also crucial to preventing the spread of communism. …show more content…

These ideologies were Capitalism versus Communism. The US was solely based on capitalism and democracy, while the USSR was based on communism. With this, the Cold War brought about potent anti-communism within the US. The United States hated Communism which led to the shift of the political ideology in the US. Once McCarthyism began, political ideologies shifted even more. As the Cold War developed, so did McCarthyism. McCarthyism began in the 1950s and was a time when Joseph McCarthy produced a series of investigations in an attempt to expose communists within the US government. This idea led American citizens to become obsessed with eliminating the remaining communist in America. In 1954, McCarthyism ended, but the Cold War still waged on and would for another 30-plus years. In this, the Cold War ultimately shaped the political ideology in the US