During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers. However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians.
James Dean |
Little Richard |
CHINA & KOREA
Korean War
The Korean War began as a civil war between North and South Korea,
but the conflict soon became international when, under U.S. leadership,
the United Nations joined to support South Korea and the People’s Republic
of China entered to aid North Korea.
BRINK OF NUCLEAR WAR & SPACE RACE
Warsaw Pact |
Sputnik |
The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force
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It was a key Cold War event beginning with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Sputnik crisis led to the creation of NASA and the start of the Space Race.
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Elvis Presley
Elvis was the king of rock and roll and the star of 33 Hollywood films, and he’s also America’s most famous Cold War veterans. In 1958–60, he served in Germany in a tank unit during the Berlin Crisis. The East Germans regarded Elvis as a problem they had to counter; the U.S. military regarded him as an opportunity they could exploit