The Cold War is defined as the state of political and military tension and hostility between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc.
The Eastern Bloc
Made up of the Soviet Union and its allies.
Also known as the Second World.
Also known as the Warsaw Pact (named after Warsaw, Poland).
The Western Bloc
Made up of the US and its allies.
Referred to as NATO.
Proxy Wars
The Cold War involved proxy wars because direct war between the US and the Soviet Union would have destroyed the whole world due to both sides being nuclear powers.
Proxy war: A war instigated by a major power that does not itself become involved.
Both US President Harry Truman and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin predicted war between the US and the Soviet Union directly after World War II.
Iron Curtain
In a March 1946 speech, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill argued that an "iron curtain" had descended across Europe.
The Iron Curtain was metaphorical but prevented information from getting out of Eastern Europe.
Almost every statistic for a communist country during the Cold War was not applicable because these countries did not report any information.
The Iron Curtain separated democratic and free Western Europe from Soviet-controlled communist Eastern Europe.
The Iron Curtain also spilled over into Alaska because of the close proximity between the Soviet Union and the United States in Alaska. Lots of emphasis was placed on military prowess in Alaska during the Cold War because of this closeness between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Proxy wars took place in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Malaysia, The Middle East that occurred in Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Germany After World War II
After World War II, the powers that be (Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt) decided to divide Germany into four zones of occupation.
Germany's capital, Berlin, would also be divided into four zones of occupation.
Each zone of occupation would be controlled by one of the major world powers.
There was an American-controlled zone of occupation, a French controlled zone of occupation, a British controlled zone of occupation, and a Soviet controlled zone of occupation.
These zones of occupation would help rebuild and restructure Germany, with the intent to then have one single unified Germany and Berlin.
However, after World War II, the Soviets weren't so best friends, and they wanted their zone of occupation in East Germany and East Berlin Soviet friendly and not Western democratically oriented.
The Soviets blocked off all land, rail, and water routes to West Berlin (the Berlin Blockade).
This cut off West Berliners from resources.
The US and its allies responded with the Berlin Airlift to bypass the land rail and water routes and directly drop cargo into Berlin through airplanes.
The Berlin Airlift caused the Berlin Blockade to be an utter failure, and it was ended in May of 1949.
The Berlin Wall
By 1961, as many as 1,000 people a day were immigrating from Eastern Europe into West Berlin.
In the first twelve days of August 1961, 18,000 East Germans crossed into West Berlin.
The Berlin Wall was completed in two weeks.
Its official purpose was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany, but the armed guards posted at the border typically shot East Germans trying to leave.
Over the duration of the wall, at least 71 people were killed.
Even with the wall surrounding West Berlin, people still left East Germany and got into West Berlin.
People tunneled, hid in trunks of cars, jumped out of building windows, and used makeshift silent gliders to get over the wall.
The border was officially opened by accident on November 9, 1989.
Over the next several days, Berliners tore down the wall on both sides with whatever they could, hammers, picks, bulldozers, and cranes.
Because November 9 was the date of the Kristallnacht, they decided to make the official reunification date October 3, 1990, so as to not overshadow the memory of the Kristallnacht.
The Korean War
North Koreans crossed the 38th Parallel, invading South Korea in an attempt to unify the Korean Peninsula under a communist government.
In June 1950, the United Nations Security Council condemned the actions of North Korea.
The United States sent troops to aid South Korea.
When US and South Korean troops pushed North Korean troops up to the Yalu River (the border between North Korea and China), China pushed US and South Korean troops back down to the 38th Parallel, where they would stay.
North and South Korean troops fought with each other for about three years, back and forth over the 38th Parallel.
In those three years (1950-1953) of the Korean War, 815,000 Korean lives were lost (only combatants).
Over 500,000 of those lives lost were North Koreans.
In July 1953, North and South Korea agreed to an armistice.
The Soviet-Afghan War
In 1978, the communist government was installed in Afghanistan.
The Afghan government forged ties with the Soviet Union and started to purge opposition and implement land reforms similar to Stalin's great purge and collectivization, which were both unpopular with the people.
The Afghan government turned to the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union sent in about 100,000 troops to help the Afghanistan government.
This four years (1978-1982) of civil war created a huge refugee crisis, and over 4,000,000 Afghan people fled Afghanistan in those four years, seeking refuge either in the neighbors of Iran or Pakistan.
The Soviets began bombing campaigns of rural areas.
The United States then got physically involved, as well as other arms and military training.
Ten years after the civil war began, in 1988, the Soviet Union was close to collapse.