OralHistory+research

Cold War Research for Oral History Interview

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The Yalta Conference between the "big three" really set the stage for the Cold War. Germany is going to be split into four sections, shared by America, Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain and the United Nations is going to be formed. The United Nations is a collection of nations all in an agreement to, "stabilize international relations and create a firm foundation for peace." Containment was the first unequivocal strategy to stop the spread of Communism to Asia and other European countries. To stop the spread, America also supported the Marshall Plan (also known as the European Recovery Plan) to give money to struggling nations to prevent them from falling into the hands of communism. NATO is an alliance formed between the US and multiple other nations. The Warsaw Pact was the Soviet Union's version of NATO.======

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Americans reacted with hysteria during the red scare. The US people feared internal communism and Joseph McCarthy helped to push these views. Americans worried about their own friends and family being communist and even accused their neighbors so that they would not be suspected of any illegal activity. The HUAC (House of Un-American Activities) inspected these communist claims. The most famous arrest was the Rosenberg trial where a man and his wife were executed for giving inside information to the Soviet Union.======

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The space race and arms race waged on during the cold war. Soviets had the first satellite in space and the United States was very worried about the whole situation. They thought the the Soviets could be spying on them from space with Sputnik, the basketball sized satellite. Russia had the first man in space while America had the first man to walk on the moon, successfully ending the space race.======

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The last major part of the Cold War is the undeclared war fought in Korea. South Korea was controlled by the United States while North Korea was under communist rule. UN troops fought under the command of Douglass MacArthur, who publicly criticized the president to a point where he had to be fired from the military. The Korean war wages on and the UN advances into communist China.======