Cold War

Running head: THE COLD WAR

The Cold War

Shannon Kelly Ferrell

Grand Canyon University

History

104

Buckley Foster

December 04, 2009

The Cold War

The Cold War lasted for a decade and some major policies formed during this time. The Containment Policy was one policy formed to stop communism.

Winston Churchill in March 1946, announced that “an iron curtain has descended across” Europe. One side was communist and the other side was not .There were three sources that contributed to the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. These conflicts were the fate of Europe. One source that contributed to the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was that the US wanted to free democratic elections in Eastern Europe. Soviet Union wanted a buffer zone of friendly countries in Eastern Europe to protect it from future attacks from the West. Soviet Union annexed the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland, and Romania. In 1944 Albania established a communist government along with Yugoslavia in 1945, Bulgaria and Romania in 1946, and in 1917 Hungary and Poland. In 1948 communists took over Czechoslovakia. (digitalhistory.uh.edu)

The second source that contributes to the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was the control of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union rejected the US’s proposal for an international agency to control nuclear energy production and research in 1946. The Soviets thought the US was trying to preserve it’s monopoly on nuclear weapons.(digitalhistory.uh.edu) The third source that contributed to the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was post war economic development assistance. The US refused a Soviet Union’s request for loans for a massive reconstruction. Soviet Union called for substantial reparations from Germany, as their response. (digitalhistory.uh.edu) The Soviet Union decided to divide the conquered nation into four...