The Cold War marked a period of geopolitical conflict between the communist countries led by the Soviet Union and the Western democracies, including the United States. During World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States fought together against Nazi Germany, but they weren’t allies. In addition to nuclear weaponry and conventional military deployment, the battle for dominance was pursued through indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, far-reaching embargoes, sports diplomacy, and technological contests such as the space race. The Cold War started not long after the end of World War II. To be more exact, it started 18 months after the Potsdam meeting in Germany. The meeting was between the “Big Three”—Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. They slitted Germany into occupation zones. The meeting was happening because they wanted to forge peace after the big war ended.
The Cold War lasted more than four decades. After the war, the U.S. used atomic bombs on Japan (in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) to force them to surrender, and with that, they showed their power. The war ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The U.S. started to develop atomic weapons, and with that started the “arms race.” In 1949, the Soviet Union also tested its atom bomb. After that, U.S. President Truman said that they were building an even more powerful bomb, the hydrogen bomb, and Stalin (the Soviet Union) did the same. With these powerful weapons, the risk of a third war was really high. Both of the countries tested their weapons. Also, people were living in fear of nuclear war, so they started to build bomb shelters in their backyards. They also practiced attack drills in schools.
Both the Soviets and the U.S. had their missiles pointed at one another. In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis almost started the Cold War. The Soviets kept their missile bases in communist Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida. President John F. Kennedy demanded the Soviets be removed, and in case they struck U.S. territory, it would start the nuclear war. Luckily, the Soviets removed the weapons from Cuba, and the U.S. also removed their weapons from Turkey.
Like already said, the Cold War also included the space race. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet R-7 launched the intercontinental ballistic rocket Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in the world and the first man-made object to be placed in Earth orbit. Sputnik’s launch into orbit was a surprise for most Americans, and not a pleasant one. Also, the U.S. wanted to share space, and it was important to them not to lose to the Soviets. A year later, in 1958, the U.S. launched their first satellite, called Explorer I, into Earth’s orbit. In the same year, NASA was created. The Soviets were one step ahead of the U.S., and in April 1961, the Soviets launched their first man into space. One month later, the Americans sent their first man into space. Americans were the first to land on the moon; they did it on July 20, 1969.
The U.S., together with other countries, was worried about the Soviet influence in the Western world. In 1948, the Soviet Union supported the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, and they started a blockade of West Berlin, which was split into occupation zones controlled by communists in the east and capitalists in the west. To show the east the united front, the U.S. and its allies created a transatlantic mutual defence. It is known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. The treaty signed on April 4, 1949, by the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom agreed that “armed aggression against one or more… shall be deemed to be an attack on all of them.” The Soviets also formed a union in 1955 as an answer to the West’s Their union was called the Warsaw Pact.
In conclusion, the Cold War is called cold because no-one was actually at the war. They were just testing each other. The war was more based on ideological and geopolitical struggles. The term “Cold War” was first used in 1945 in an essay by George Orwell called “You and the Atomic Bomb.” The term came into wider circulation with the comments of Walter Lippmann in the New York Herald Tribune in 1946 and the publication of the book “Cold War” the following year, which brought them together.
Sources:
https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/cold-war/symposium/cleveland.html
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/cold-war