all right so World War II is over and oh man is it going to be nice just to chill for a while not have to deal with all the tensions that caused the war in the first place a crap here comes the Cold War yes right on the heels of the close of World War II another global conflict started brewing and in this video I'm going to tell you all about it so if you're ready to get them brain cows milk containment style then let's get to it now as you can imagine after the cataclysmic proportions of death and destruction that occurred in World War II everyone wanted to return to normal scene but even before the war ended a new tension was brewing between the United States and the Soviet Union now near the end of the War The Big Three which included Great Britain and the Soviet Union and the United States meant a series of three conferences and in these conferences among other things they negotiated what a post-war Europe would look like after their Victory one of the key agreements was that Eastern European nations would be allowed to choose their leaders and governments through democratic election that of course was great for the United States and Britain but over in the Soviet Union Stalin was like but regardless they made the agreement and went ahead and finished fighting the war and by the way if you want unit 9 summarized in a single video along with practice questions and everything you need to get a five on your ex am in May then check out my AP review pack which is linked in the description now another one of the major agreements they made was that the League of Nations was kind of a tur now remember that after World War I was over the Victorious Powers established the league as an international body that would provide a place for heads of Nations to work their problems out through diplomacy instead of War but just by the fact that there was a World War II which was even more destructive than World War I should tell you that the League of Nations couldn't really do what it was intended to do so the big three agreed that another International body ought to be created this time called the United Nations which would hope hopefully be able to do what the League of Nations could not namely avoid another International War but despite the establishment of the United Nations after the war it could not keep the Cold War from happening you see after the war was over Stalin decided that those Eastern European nations were not really ready for self-determination instead the Soviet Union absorbed those Nations into what became known as the Soviet block these satellite nations became communist and their economies were made to serve the Soviet Union instead of themselves but remember the agreement between the big three was that these nations would hold Democratic elections but from Stalin's point of view these states could act as kind of a buffer zone between Europe and the Soviet Union and so as a result of that move the suspicion and mutual distrust began and then to add further distrust between the US and the Soviet Union the handling of post-war Germany further divided the two superpowers after the war Germany was divided into four occupation zones the Soviets the French the British and the US each claiming one quadrant now this occupation was meant to be temporary but East Germany dominated by the Soviets quickly became another communist state the Soviets wanted to keep Germany weak so that they would be less of a threat and you know you could hardly blame Stalin on this count like so far in two world wars Germany had caused Untold destruction and death in Russia but if you remember from the last video the US wanted a strong Germany because that would lead to a stable Europe but Stalin would have none of this and so instead he tightened his grip on East Germany and thus more tension so by this point it was clear that there was a significant ideological and political tension in Europe so much so that former British prime minister Winston Churchill said that an iron curtain had descended across the continent in other words the division between Democratic Europe and communist Europe was complete now we're going to talk about how the cold war was waged in a moment but in order to understand why the Cold War took the shape that it did you have to understand the United States policy of containment now because Stalin appeared to want the whole world made over in the image of Soviet communism American president Harry Truman articulated what became known as the Truman Doctrine of which containment of Communism was a significant driving force basically the Truman Doctrine said that any country who felt itself under the threat of Communism could expect financial and Military assistance from the United States now the first testing for the Truman Doctrine became a Civil War in Greece and the two factions fighting for control in Greece were would you know it communist and anti-communist forces so Britain began supporting the anti-communist while the Soviet Union supported the Communist cause however Britain ended up having to step out and deal with their own problems for a while and so under the egis of the Truman Doctrine the United States stepped in to provide financial aid to the anti-communist forces so that Greece would not fall to Communism now as it turned out the anti-communist forces won and that Victory only further increased the division manifest in the Cold War tension okay so the Cold War by definition was not an armed battle between the United States and the Soviet Union rather it was called a cold war because the two Nations stood in direct tension with one another and could go to war at any moment but ultimately they did not however that doesn't mean that war was not waged and here we need to look at how these two Powers waged their decades long standoff first the Cold War was waged through propaganda campaign on the European continent Radio free Europe broadcast signals into Soviet territories extoling the virtues of freedom and democracy and so in order to combat this Soviet propaganda emphasize the capitalistic greed of the West not to mention the profound racial tension in the United States like how good could democracy be if those realities still exist second the Cold War was waged through covert actions and here we're talking about those juicy made for television realities of spying and espion the United States created the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA to handle all of its clandestine operations the United Kingdom had their secret intelligence service and the Soviet Union had the KGB and all these agencies were responsible for sending spies into enemy territory to gather information on the buildup of weapons and to discover what their next steps in the Cold War should be and third the cold war was waged in the form of an arms race which is to say the buildup of especially nuclear weapon now remember the United States had developed and deployed the world's first nuclear bombs at the end of World War II which devastated Hiroshima Nagasaki and Japan and as it turns out stal got his authoritarian feelings hurt when the US used these bombs and never told him that they had such a technology again as I said before the distrust started before the end of the war so what's the Soviet Union going to do when the only other superpower in the world has developed this city destroying explosive technology do they realize the horrible implications of nuclear proliferation and refused to play that game don't be crazy now Stalin got to work developing the same technology to that end the Soviets successfully tested their first atomic bomb in 1949 not to be outdone Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb which had something like a, times more destructive capacity than an atomic bomb to which Stalin said You know guys I think this has gone too far and I I don't want to live in a world where hydrogen boms no the Soviets went ahead and developed a hydrogen bomb too so the point is it was very unlikely that either superpower would ever deploy these bombs against one another because to do so would virtually guarantee Mutual assured destruction but regardless this kind of one upmanship was a key feature in how the Cold War was waged and then fourth the Cold War was waged through a series of proxy wars now a proxy war is a war in which major Powers support opposing sze of a smaller War so the US and Soviet Union never officially started firing at each other directly but they did get involved on opposite sides of smaller conflicts and therefore could fight each other without actually fighting each other and you do need to know a couple of these so let's start with the Korean war after Japan was defeated in World War II its former Colony Korea was divided along the 38th parallel the Soviets occupied the North and the US occupied the South and in 1949 both armies withdrew and North Korea became communist while South Korea was more democratic in 1950 the Communist North invaded the South and the US and Soviet Union almost immediately got involved with money and truth and ultimately after both sides gaining and losing territory the war ended right where it began with the two countries divided by the 49th parallel now another similar proxy war was the Vietnam War and I say similar because Vietnam was also divided into North and South after World War II with more of a us- friendly government in the South and a communist government in the north the fighting began and the South Vietnamese were supported by the United States while North Vietnam was supported by China and the Soviet Union ultimately this War cost millions of lives on both sides and basically like Korea it ended in a stal and under this heading finally let's talk about the Soviet invasion of Afghan now in 1979 there was trouble in Afghanistan at least from the Soviet perspective anti-communist gorillas were attempting to overthrow the communist government there so the Soviet Union invaded to support the Communists and while the United States didn't send troops they did send a metric buttload of weapons to support those who were attempting the overthrow and this became a long and protracted war that really only ended with the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989 so the point is even though the Soviets and the Americans didn't come to blows directly during the Cold War they did fight each other through these otherw World conflicts Okay click here if you want to keep reviewing unit 9 of AP Europe and click here if you you want to grab my APO review pack which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May I'll catch you on the flipflop I'm Lou