The Cold war is the name given to the conflict that developed between the United States and the Soviet Union after the Second World War. The Cold War was a conflict of opposing ideologies, capitalism, and communism. Although there were no actual battles in the Cold War the fear and hostility it produced on both sides made it as dangerous as a war. Even though the Cold War was between the United States and Soviet Union, serious conflicts extended as far as Korea and Berlin. There were many policies that determined the outcome, and guided the development of the Cold War. .
The United States and the Soviet Union wartime alliance began to unravel before the end of World War II. When the war ended, the Soviet's Red Army occupied much of Eastern Europe. Western Europe felt the presence of communism spreading even farther into their homeland. The Marshall plan, helped restore Western Europe, but other events in the late 1940s kept tensions high. Communist coups in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet blockade of West Berlin in 1948, and the fall of China and the Soviet A-bomb in 1949, were the events that kept the tensions high. The establishment in 1949 of a Western Alliance, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and the 1955 Warsaw Pact between the Soviet Union and its satellites, solidified the two opposing blocks the shaped the Cold War. The nuclear threat and the communist menace brought the creation of the National Defense Education Act.
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union decided to divide Korea at the thirty-eighth parallel. With Stalin's blessings, communist North Korea invaded South Korea. The United States gained world support for South Korea and the United Nations sent a multinational force to turn back the invaders. After early defeats, the United Nations forces push deep into North Korea and appear headed for victory until the People's Republic of China joins the battle.
