America and the Cold War essays

America and the Cold War essays Americans have always wanted the "best" of things. Brand new cars, big houses, and flashy clothes have historically been an American way of life. Even in the face of extreme hardships, Americans being Americans, go to extreme measures to preserve their way of life. Of course, we Americans have our liberties, our freedom, and our democracy, but other Nations do as well, but our version of democracy has a certain allure to it. Rock and Roll, Hollywood, and muscle cars were not discovered by the French. That being said, with this "American" state of mind comes with a strong sense of paranoia that someone is going to take all these things away from you. In a post war America, paranoia was the new enemy. After suffering through the Great Depression, and winning the biggest war the world has ever seen, you would think we would have been caring free and relax. Not the case at all, Americans were first concerned about entering into another Depression with the return of millions of out of wor k soldiers. The economy boomed when our soldiers came back, and people had savings that they earned during the war and went shopping. So a quick summary of events in the United States, we enter a depression, come out of a depression and go to war, win the war, have the atomic bomb, and the economy is starting to boom. Life is good, but wait for a second, what about that communist? Thus begins a forty-five-year struggle of political ideals, Capitalism versus Communism, between two Nations, the United States versus the Soviet Union. This struggle is known as the Cold War. In 1945, the "Big Three" (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) met in the Yalta conference to discuss post war diplomacy and peace. One major issue between Roosevelt and Stalin was the state of Eastern Europe. To Stalin controlling Eastern Europe was important for Russia's national security. Roosevelt agreed that Poland and other Eastern European countries would fall under the Soviet "sphere...