Key Terms

 

What was the Cold War?

  • Increasing tension between America and the West on one side, and the Soviet Union and later, its satellite states, China and other countries on the other side

  • A war without fighting

  • An ideological war: liberalism and capitalism versus communism

  • A war of words, e.g. different definitions of democracy and freedom, and propaganda, e.g. placing blame on each other, winning more gold medals or the race to the moon

  • Yet a war about power, economic and military power; influence and control over their different power blocs; soft power too, e.g. aid

  • Involving an arms race that spilt into space

  • And with crises from the Berlin Blockade to the CMC and Solidarity, and proxy wars, e.g. Korea

 

What was the iron curtain?

  • A term first used by Winston Churchill in a speech in Fulton, Missouri

  • The border between the Soviet bloc, countries controlled by the Soviet Union, and the West stretching from Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic

  • The separation of free democratic states from communist dominated ones

  • It ran right through Europe and, in the eastern half, right through the centre of Berlin

  • It came to be a heavily defended border

  • Churchill said that Soviet actions were a threat to Europe and to world trade.