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Jay Cai
History 1700
Professor Moore
April 30, 2015
Soviet vs America

America has been scared of the Soviet Union ever since the end of
World War Two, the finally of the great war started the another war, ironic
because the two great wars were known to end all wars, the war that is
known to have thrown America and the Soviet Union into conflict, also known
as a the Cold War, was not as rough as the wars that everyone knows, its
more of war that were not use to with all the gun fire and conflict, was more
of a spy vs spy era. This is what led America to start taking away
governments democracies.
Americas first off disliked the Soviet Union from the very beginning;
they didnt really have a good relationship with them after Roosevelts terms
ended. The United States of America and the Soviet Union had this awkward
mindset to the point where they had to figure out each others move before
the other one did, basically they always made suspicions of each other, it
was like if something bad happened anywhere in the world, Americans
would be pointing their fingers towards Communism and the Soviet Union
would be pointing there finger at Capitalism. It was constant finger pointing,
but taken to the extreme, while the United States wanted to take a more

defensive approach on these situations, theyd be more discrete and even


contain the situations at times. Places like Iran and Guatemala had big
political ties within the government, the United States would send in their
CIA to start a Coup d'tat and make sure the world wouldnt know it was the
United States behind all this, of course the United States
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was only containing the situation and all, but in cases like these, the sought
to exterminate the Communist grip on these nations. Ironic is that most of
the time, people who rose to power over took the nation peacefully and
decide on Communism, which means that the Soviet Union has never had a
hand in the affairs of foreign nations, but the United States being so scared
by the Red Scare from the 1920s, they couldnt sit and this and would
conduct this secret Coup d'tats.
In other areas of the world, like Germany for example, was where most
of the conflict was residing. Since the end of World War Two, the Allied
Nations of World War Two (United States, Great Britain, France, and the
Soviet Union) all sought to agree that Germany would be better separated
and have each allied nation have a sphere of influence and parts of
Germany, they even split up Belgium. Eventually in 1976, they (American,
France, and England) decided to merge the Eastern side of Germany which in
turn helped Germany solidify more. Well, the West side that is, the Soviet
Union on the other hand was bit mad and confused, if the Soviets were

scared of anyone, itd probably have to be Germany and there unification


again, so with Soviets anger, they created a wall; called the Berlin Wall,
which separated the East and West. Since Berlin was in Eastern Germany,
the Soviets cut off supplies from the United Nations (America, France, and
England). America had already started this plan called the Marshall Plan, it
was put in place to help rebuild German after the war that had completely
destroyed it, but seeing as the Wall was put in place and supply lines cut off
by the Soviets, Truman and his advisors stepped their game up and decide to
put in place the Berlin Airlift. This was a simple but very
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costly plan that they had intact to fight off the Soviets, great thing about it is
that it worked wonderfully, every day the airlift would deliver the basic
necessities of a family would need or want during that era.
I talked a little about the Truman and his advisors but what they did is
much more than that, Truman started something called the Truman Doctrine,
which is kind of similar to the Monroe Doctrine, Monroe doctrine is to contain
the European out of the Western Hemisphere, while the Truman Doctrine is to
contain Communism in certain areas or even countries, not only did they do
this in foreign countries but, they also tried to find Communists in America.
They worked together with a group called HUAC (House Un-American
Activities Committee) which is a group that was form to take out Communist.
They would send spies to meetings called Front Groups which some people

thought was a Meet new people place but some knew it was a place for
Communist to gather and determine whether some peoples ideas match up
with the Communist minds, but the main goal of HUAC was to sort out
Communists in the American government, they had issued out yellow cards
that had workers sign and agreed that they had no affiliations with the
Communist party what so ever. Of course they would have to deal with
people who wouldnt sign their cards so they were the first to be brought in
for questioning. An honorable mention is McCarthyism; it was named after
Joseph McCarthy, a Republican Senate at the time when he disclosed his
hatred for the Communist party. McCarthy hated, and I mean hated
Communism, he tried everything to sought it out, he was the definition of
Anti-Communist, he got to the point where he claimed that the United States
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government had Communist or were helping hide Communists. Lets just say
it didnt end well for McCarthy and McCarthyism, which is now a joke.
The United States curtailed democracy and freedom from foreign and
domestic countries and cities because of Communism, at the time, they
believe the root of all their problems would be the communist regime, so
whenever they had to fix a problem or whenever there was problem to be
fixed, they pointed finger towards the Soviet Union.

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