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GI Bill
The GI Bill helped give veterans benefits after WWII. They were given benefits like education, low cost mortgages, and low interest loans. -
Truman Doctrine
The U.S. wanted to prevent the spread of Soviet communism so they offered economic and military aid to any countries who needed it to help them not become communistic. Soviet Russia could have seen it as an act against them because we were helping fight against them. -
National Security Act
This created new government agencies to help protect us with the threats from the Cold War. It created the Department of Defense, CIA, and NSC. -
Marshall Plan
The United States gave money to Europe after WWII to help rebuild their cities. We gave them money so they would not turn to communism because it looked more promising for them. This could upset the Soviets because we are making sure their ideas would not spread anymore than they have. -
Berlin Airlift
The U.S. airlifted supplies into Berlin who was blockaded from us. This created tension because the Soviets did not like what we were doing and if they shot our planes down that could have caused a war. -
NATO
NATO is a treaty of several North Atlantic countries. They made NATO to protect each other and others from communism and in turn the Soviets made a pact with several other communist countries which sort of increased tensions. NATO is still active today. -
Brinkmanship
This pushing to the brink of war in hopes that the enemy would back down and this created lots of tension. If nobody backed down then it would have been the start of a war and that would have been bad. -
Warsaw Pact
This was the treaty between Soviet Russia and a lot of the other communistic countries in Eastern Europe. If i war were to break out they would assist each other in the war. This pact came together in response to the NATO treaty. -
Interstate Highway System
This did not really add much tension but it added a way to get across the country for defense and military reasons. -
Sputnik
It was a Soviet satellite and it was the first one into space. This caused the U.S. to ramp up their space administration and their education to help get their own satellite into space. It sort of created tensions because the U.S. did not want the Soviets to think that they were better and ahead of us. -
U-2 Incident
The U.S. had a spy plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union and when they were asked about it they denied everything. It escalated the tensions between everyone because the Soviets did not like being spied on and everyone knew it was the U.S. -
Bay of Pigs
It was a failed invasion to overthrow Fidel Castro. The U.S. gave military aid to Cuban exiles but it failed and many men were captured. This upset Cuba and pushed them even more towards the Soviet Union and communism. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin was a symbol of Communism and was sort of an actual "Iron Curtain". It blocked people from leaving Soviet control in their part of Berlin. This made people upset because they were forcing people to be communistic and other countries did not like that. The wall stood for around 28 years. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
This was the most tension throughout the Cold War. Soviet missiles were placed in Cuba which is right by us. We demanded they removed them and blockaded Cuba to prevent anything else from getting to them. Afterwards an agreement was made to remove the missiles under certain circumstances. -
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
This lowered tensions because it banned anybody from testing nuclear weapons above ground. This limited testing nuclear weapons during the cold war when people were really afraid of them.
