A Brief Overview of the Cold War 1945-60

As soon as World War II ended, the old war alliances crumpled as the United States and Soviet Union rose as superpowers. It was a battle between democracy and communism. By 1947, the communist threat had grown so much that Winston Churchill described it as "an iron curtain" dividing the European continent. By the end of the 1940s, the Soviet Union tested their first nuclear weapon and the arms race was on. New alliances formed as the Western Democracies faced off against the Soviet Union. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was signed in 1949 only to be counteracted with the Warsaw Pact a few years later. If any war broke out between two nations there would almost certainly be another world war as each side pledged to back their member states up.

In the beginning of the 1950s there a growing fear of communist spies in the United States and the hunt for communist spies was on. Led by Senator Joe McCarthy, this ushered in a new age of censorship and mass hysteria. Besides the threat of nuclear weapons, Americans had to worry about spies. Overseas, The Korean War broke out between North and South Korea with North Korea being the aggressor and being seen as a Soviet puppet meanwhile in Vietnam, Vietnamese nationalist were fighting French colonial forces only to win in 1954 but the country was divided into North and South Vietnam by the Geneva conference. By April 1956, all of the French troops were gone from Vietnam, and communist North Vietnam began invading in 1958. At home and aboard, as the decade of the 60s crept closer the pressure from politics, society, and culture were built as the years of turmoil were about to explode.