Although it began in Europe the spread of the cold war
Uploaded by wiegerp on Nov 09, 2008
Although it began in Europe the spread of the cold war to other regions was a much more dangerous development. To what extent do you agree with this judgment?
Although the struggle of power between communist and capitalist countries started with the disagreement of Germany; it increased to Europe and extended towards other parts of the world throughout the decades of 1950 and 1960. With both ideologies determined to stop each other, there were some dangerous events in Europe where ideology clashed; yet luckily, no nuclear threat was used, only military warfare. Nevertheless, with communists determined to seek the “expansion of communism” around the world, and “secure” the USSR, the Cold War stretched towards other regions of the globe where the clashes of ideologies led to dangerous confrontation; highly more volatile than in Europe as it involved the use of potential military warfare and the possibility of a nuclear war.
In Europe, the main disagreements came within Germany and Hungary. In Germany, the first dangerous event was the Berlin blockade in June 1948. Stalin blocked all traffic, rails and roads to prevent the movement between the east and the west, trying to force the capitalist countries to leave Berlin up to a point of starvation. However Truman flew 13,000 tons daily for 324 days. It stopped in 1949 when Stalin admitted its defeat changing the soviet-American relations. If war had been established, the use of atomic bomb would have been used by the USA. The possible threat that Stalin demonstrated brought insecurity to west Europeans who desired security from communism that led to the establishment of NATO in April 1949.
To counter-rest the NATO, the Warsaw pact was established by socialist countries in may 14 1955, Hungary, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and the Soviet Union were the founding members. They pledge to defend each other if one member was attacked. This divided the capitalist and the west in a dangerous situation that if one country attacked the other in result, they would create a 3rd world war (with the use of nuclear weapons)
The Hungarian revolution (23rd October to 10 November 1956). It was a mayor incident on the cold war because communist military tanks of the communism were used to take back order from the capitalists resulting in a massacre. It started as a student demonstration, and March to the parliament building in Budapest to demand human rights, however he was...