Cold War

No

Eastern Europe had endured the chains of communism since World War II. They would endure them no longer. Protests against communist rule broke out all over the communist bloc. Hungary began, by voting to increase personal freedom and allow the formation of other political parties, making Hungary a multiparty democracy, rather than a communist dictatorship.

In November 1989, East Germany opened its border with the West. In Berlin, people began to climb over the "wall of shame."

His 'Red Scare" policy in which he accused people left and right (but mostly 'left') of being Communist sympathizers. Although he almost never produced a single scrap of hard evidence, he browbeated people in either confessing to having Communist - also meaning 'Socialist', or just liberal - leanings, or he threatened to 'expose' them unless they named others.

Although he had been accusing political rivals and basically anyone who crossed him of being Communists for all his adult life, he now had world events giving him some credibility: the recent installing by the USSR of Communist regimes in eastern Europe, plus several cases of USSR espionage in the US, especially in the field of US atom bomb technology. And he had an eager supporter of his Communist witch hunt: the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover.

When he started to also accuse hundreds of public servants of being 'secret' Communists and - even worse in the eyes of his fellow Senators - promised to 'expose' members of US Congress as Communists, his fellow Senators finally stepped in. In an official report by the US Congress it was shown that he had in almost all cases persecuted people for no good reason and without any proof. It proved to be the end of McCarthy's career.

Brinkmanship increased cold war tension by increasing the fear that there would be a catastrophic nuclear bomb dropped on some poor unsuspecting village of inocent people.

Crowston made us awnser this on May 13th 2013. :(

An ICBM is long range and its warheads are falling more or less ballistically, even if you "shot them down" they would continue on almost the same trajectory still hitting their target. You can't just shoot them down you must have the accuracy to totally destroy them (and they are under 1 foot in diameter and traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour).

The plan, which was promulgated during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, was called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but known by the nickname "Star Wars" because its goals were seen by many as overambitious. This was essentially a space-based extension of anti-missile systems designed to intercept ICBM's launched by an enemy against the US.

The plan was denounced by the Soviet Union because it seemed to violate the spirit of previous treaties to ban space-based weapons systems. In the US, the concept was viewed with skepticism because it required technologies far in advance of what existed at the time. In retrospect, SDI is often seen as a "bargaining chip" in limiting nuclear weapons, and as a major increase in military expenditures that the USSR could simply not afford to match.

Atomic Weapons started the cold war. Cold War means Stand-off.

Military cutbacks and western investments.

Joseph Stalin

It would depend on how you gauges accuracy. the Strategic Air Command ( Jimmy Stewart as recalled Bomber Pilot) had live footage of B-36's and B-47"s in action by SAC. This was in the cold war period. On the Naval side- the Bedford Incident was certainly plausible- there are two alternate endings- one of which the civil war correspondent ( played by Sidney Poitier) survives the counter-attack by the Russian sub and is in fact taken aboard. sorry no sequel. Few films were done ( at the time of conflict) about the Vietnam war as it was seen as box-office poison- that is a side- and very hot theatre of the Western-Communist aggression angle. so it goes.

Some scientists believe that the world will keep crashing in on it's self and over a period of time a new world will then form and this will happen again and again, But if the world did end it would be in a long time, some people thought about 2 years ago it would be the end of the world when the scientists tested that tunnel i think it was but nothing happened

It lead to a division of Europe into two spheres: one that was communist and allied with the Russians and one that was non-communist and allied with the Americans. The dividing line ran roughly from Rostock in eastern Germany to Trieste on the Adriatic Sea and down to the borders of northern Greece and Turkey.

Germany was partitioned big time. One third of its territory was lost to Poland and the Soviet Union and one third of it became communist East Germany which the communists called "The German Democratic Republic." The remaining third became the German Federal Republic also known as West Germany. Berlin, the German capital was also partitioned into a Soviet (Russian) zone in the East and American, British and French zones in the West.

For about 10 years after East Germany was officially created (1949), the Russians and their East German communist puppets allowed people who didn't like it in East Berlin and East Germany to leave the country. At first, they thought it was a good policy and would allow them to get rid of a lot of ex-Nazis and Anti-Communist conservatives in the East German population. However, by 1961, communist government of East Germany realized that they were losing a lot of their best talent and brains in the flights to West Berlin and West Germany.

In August 1961, the East German dictator, Walter Ulbricht ordered a wall built between East and West Berlin so that no more people in his country could escape. He gave East German soldiers orders to shoot anyone trying to escape on sight.

Walter Ulbricht died in 1973, however the wall did not come down until 1989. There was lot's of partying and celebrating when it finally did.

During this period, the people of Hungary rose up in rebellion against their communist masters, in 1956, but the Russian communists put it down brutally using Mongolian troops. They were afraid to use civilized Russian soldiers because they felt that they might not be brutal enough. Many of the Mongolian soldiers carried typhus and there was a typhus epidemic which broke out in Hungary afterward killing many people. Some Hungarians escaped to Austria, the U.S. and Canada. Communist rule finally ended there too in 1989.

In 1949, the United States created the NATO military alliance in Western Europe along with Greece and Turkey in an effort to contain Russian communist expansionism. In 1955, the Russians countered by creating their own NATO-type alliance called "The Warsaw Pact." West Germany belonged to NATO while East Germany belonged to the Warsaw pact. In 1960, Charles DeGaulle pulled France out of the NATO alliance and put France on its own nuclear weapons program. He did not trust the United States to come to Europe's defense in the event of a massive Russian attack. On the other hand, Britain remained in the NATO alliance and decided not to follow France's example.

They sure were. Communism was and is (China/North Korea) an extremely persecuting style of governing. Half the world it seemed, at times, was under one red flag or another. What started out as an attempt in Russia to make everyone equal, with equal rights, soon deteriorated into the rich at the top getting everything; and the ordinary people getting the scraps. Secret police forces came to life in communist countries to protect "the system" and yet got so bad they ended up murdering anyone they thought was "anti-system". That wasnt going to happen to western Christian democracies.

There was NO place in the Cold War that had action. That is why it was called " cold" . If any action had taken place it would have resulted in total war.

The encouragement of economic expansion in the united states is that we need to expand our industries to foreign countries. Military intervention is their own thing as it has nothing to do with economy.

There were many countries involved in the Korean War. United States of America sent over 5 million soldiers to Korea before the conflict ended three years later, but the war also involved service members from nations including United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Colombia, Greece, Ethiopia, The Philippines, Thailand and Turkey. The UN and South Korea forces suffered a final casualty toll of 200,000 people, including 37,000 US servicemen, before the independence of South Korea was restored. -Michelle See the related link. It gives information on all the participating countries on both sides. A very informative and well researched site.

Mikhail Gorbachev

For Great Britain, everything evolves around "WWII"; so when Britain says on televison, "post war" they're saying WWII. WWII was Great Britains "...We stood alone, ...and so many owed so much to so few (RAF pilots during the Battle of Britain),...and "we will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them in the air, we will never surrender! (Winston Churchill). So...when one thinks of Great Britain, one must think in terms of World War II (this is their time line).

The cold war has little to do with Britain; other than the fact that Britain was a major US ally (under NATO) and that the US had many military installations in Europe and Britain. Other than that, the US invented and used atomic bombs, no one else has ever done so. The cold war was between the super-powers of the US & USSR, with everyone else falling behind them, second, third, fourth, etc.

Mutually Assured Destruction: MAD-

A CIA spymaster named Orrin DeForest wrote a great book about Vietnam called "Slow Burn." In it he says the North Vietnamese started violating the ceasefire before the ink was dry.

Mao Zedong/ Mao Tse-Tung.

Yes, but then I live in the West.....What the contemporary Russians think, or are taught in school about this time in History I have no idea. I am currently reading a very good book about the repatriation of POWs at the end of WW2. It is suggested, to put it very mildly, a very different perception of the reception of POWs returning to Britain & the US, & those Russians & Ukranians & others, forced to support the Germans, captured in France, to be returned to the USSR. It appeared obligatory that if Britain & the US wanted our captured soldiers & airmen returned from the Russians then these poor people were to be sent to their deaths.