Sputnik Stirs Up Some Trouble

On October 4, 1957, Soviets used ICBM to put the first satellite into the Earth's atmosphere. Sputnik traveled around the earth at 18,000 miles per hour and circled the globe every 96.2 minutes. The launch of Sputnik by the Soviets caused a major blow to America's confidence. Americans felt extremely inferior to the Soviets and also believed they were falling behind in science and technology. In order to keep up with the Soviets, United States made drastic changes to their educational system. Schools were now focusing on improving their science and math courses.There was a lot of competition between the Soviets and the Untied States to see who would be the first in technological advances. Both the Arms Race and the Space Race caused much tension between the two nations. United States was the first to produce the hydrogen bomb but they were working many scientists to the bone in order to catch up in the space race. After many failed attempts such as "Flopnik" and "Stayputnik", United States finally succeeded to put their own satellite in space on January 31, 1958.

H-Bomb Causes Tension to Explode!

The Soviets and Americans were in constant competition to be pioneers in technological advancements. America's prior success with the atomic bomb led them to start work on a much more powerful explosive after Truman's approval on January 31, 1950. On November 1, 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb which put the the atomic bomb to shame by having 67 times as much power. The success was cut short though because just a short year later the Soviets exploded their own hydrogen bomb. This scared many Americans because they no longer had an advantage and now the Russians had as much power as they did. The comfort of knowing the United States would have an advantage if it came down to an attack was gone and the scramble to keep up with all nuclear advancements was on.

U-2 Incident Causes Stress to Mount

America needed to be sure that they were safe from communist Soviet Union and to ensure this, Eisenhower felt it was mandatory to know the Soviet's every move. In Eisenhower's attempt to keep tabs on Soviet's actions, he proposed "open skies" at the Geneva Conference. Open skies would allow Americans to fly over the Soviet Union without getting shot down and vise-versa. It seemed like a good idea because who owns the sky, right? But Khruschev didn't agree with Eisenhower's solution and he ensured Eisenhower that if an American plane was to fly over the Soviet Union it would indeed get shot down. The U.S still didn't know what was going on in the Soviet Union so in order to find out, Eisenhower approved CIA, secret, high altitude flights over Russian territory. The U-2 planes were used for the missions and they were designed to take detailed pictures and to fly high out of reach of antiaircraft fire.
Though the CIA intended that these flights remain a secret, the Soviet Union soon finds out about America's spying. Eisenhower immediately wanted to discontinue the flights in order to allow for negotiations with Khruschev. Though he was convinced the U-2's flights were no longer safe, he was persuaded by John Foster Dulles to have one last flight. On May first, pilot Francis Gary Powers flew a U-2 plane over the Russian's territory for the last time. Powers was shot down by Igor Mentyukov after four hours of observing the Russians. United States denied the shooting and stated that Power's plane had disappeared while making weather observations but Khruschev came out with the truth. He announced that Francis Gary Powers was shot down by a soviet rocket and declared that Powers was captured and that he confessed to America's spying (which America later found out was a lie.) Eisenhower took full responsibility after the incident and Khruschev was so upset that he stormed out of the summit. Now the 1960's started with as much tension as ever.

Containment Can't Contain Nerves

Due to America's intense fear of Communism, it was obvious that the government needed to make some changes in order to put Americans at ease. Officials decided it was time to do something about the Soviet's threat and on February 1946, George F. Kennan proposed the policy of containment. Containment was an effort to stop Soviet's threat in its tracks by creating alliances and supporting weaker nations in return for their promise of anti-communist beliefs. Americans wanted to keep Communism in the Soviet Union to prevent its spread to other countries and to accomplish this goal containment was necessary.
Adopting containment as United State's foreign policy seemed to make the Cold War real and not a fear or figment of one's imagination. The foreign policy made tensions rise drastically during the Cold War.

The Cold War in a Nutshell

The Cold War began in 1947 right after World War II. Although USA and USSR were friendly allies during World War II, there were some differences in government between the countries that stirred up some serious trouble. The Soviets believed in communism as their form of government and U.S. believed Democracy was best for all. Communism was threatening to spread to America and that scared many Americans out of their whits! In order to maintain the peace within the country, USA chose Containment as their foreign policy but Americans didn't believe that was enough. Many thought that Communism would have a domino affect, if one country was under their rule others would follow. In order to prevent this from happening, the U.S. did everything they could to support the anti-communistic nations around the world. During the Civil War in China, United States supported nationalists. The U.S did everything they could to help nationalists like sending military supplies but we weren't prepared to actually fight. Right after the Chinese Civil War, the Korean war broke out and the U.S was once again forced to take sides in order to preserve another "domino" from falling. The Korean War lasted 3 years, from 1950-1953, and it resulted in the splitting of the nation down the 38th parallel. North Korea was now communist while South Korea wasn't.
Since more nations were being taken under Communism, Americans were still very afraid they would be next and their freedom would be taken. This is the reason why Americans looked up to General Douglas MacArthur, the war hero they believed could help them preserve their precious democracy. But MacArthur kept making promises he couldn't keep, for example he kept pushing us to go to war and once we were in he promised all solders would be back by Christmas. President Truman didn't buy into his game, therefore he fired him and many Americans were very upset. He didn't let this bother him though because Truman knew that what is fair, isn't always liked.
Shortly after the Korean War, both superpowers inhabited new leaders. Dwight D. Eisenhower was now president of the United States and after Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev took over as the leader of the Soviet Union. The two nations were in competition to see which one could develop new equipment faster. The Soviets sent Sputnik into space and that wasmajor blow to Americans, so the U.S drastically changed their school's curriculum in hope that more young students would be interested in math and science. Though the Soviet Union was the first to get an object into space, America was the first to create the hydrogen-bomb, a bomb 67 times more powerful than the atomic bomb.
The Cold War were hard and long years for America. It was a time were many innocent people were accused of being communists, the time where Americans were very scared, and years that still affect us today. Many historians argue that the Cold War ended with the destruction of the Berlin Wall but the Cold War was finally over in 1991 after many peace treaties between the Soviet Union and the United States.