The Cold War

U. S. President, George H. W. Bush, and Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared that the Cold War was over on December 3, 1989, in a meeting off the coast of Malta. The "war" had escalated since 1946 before it began to wane. The end of World War II basically left the United States and the Soviet Union as the top world powers, and yet they had vastly different ideologies, economic strategies, and political systems. As other Eastern European nations fell under Soviet control, tensions increased, and phrases like "Soviet Block" and "Iron Curtain" became buzzwords of the day.

As a part of these differences, the communists built a wall between East Germany under Soviet control and the more democratic West Germany. It was started August 13, 1961. Perhaps the climax of this Cold War occurred in the standoff between President John F. Kennedy and the Soviets over Cuban missiles in October of 1962. During these early sixties, Americans were encouraged to build bomb shelters due to the severe threat. Even the space race became a part of cold war posturing. 

 George Orwell had first popularized the term "Cold War." In 1945, he wrote an essay, "You and the Atomic Bomb," in a British newspaper. Following that, he wrote about the country being "in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours." The announcement in 1989 was an official declaration that some of these tensions had eased, and the world breathed a sigh of relief. 

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