How does the "cold war" era affect politics and our lives today?

Similar questions: cold war era affect politics lives today.

The Cold War influenced nearly all aspects of American political and cultural life Psychological Effects of the Cold WarThe civilian population (at least in America) was subject to air-raid drills (hide under your desk! ) and encouraged to build personal bomb shelters in the 1950s. This level of concern faded; however, awareness of the war was a constant.

Fallout shelter signs in large buildings, protests over the placement of short-range nuclear missiles in Germany, the oft-quoted nuclear doomsday clock, photographs of dead bodies in the barbed wire of the Berlin Wall, as well as movies such as WarGames, Threads, Red Dawn and The Day After kept awareness high. The Cold War also inspired many movie companies and writers, resulting in an enormous number of books and movies, some more fictional (such as James Bond) and some less, in particular Tom Clancy made himself a name as a master of vividly describing the agent and espionage war under the surface. The End of the Cold WarEnormous defense spending by America (the implications of which were first hinted at by President Eisenhower's speech on the Military-industrial complex) under President Ronald Reagan is often seen as a major factor in the end of the war.

According to this theory, the robust Western economies could absorb the expenses of programs such as the Star Wars missile defense but the Eastern bloc countries crippled themselves trying to match them. However, Reagan's policy towards the Soviet Union, as elaborated by Jeanne Kirkpatrick and others, defined Eastern bloc governments as "totalitarian", under a doctrine which denied that such regimes could ever undergo internal transformation towards democracy. Thus Reagan's foreign policy was never intended to bring about the changes which actually occurred in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Corrupt governments and citizens' desire for greater personal freedom and greater individual wealth were also major factors in the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite countries. Others argue that the Soviet Union's collapse was already inevitable. There is certainly evidence that the CIA played up Soviet military power through the 1980s.

http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/cold_war1.htmThe Cold War influenced nearly all aspects of American political and cultural life from 1946 -- when Winston Churchill announced the descent of an Iron Curtain separating the Soviet Union and her Eastern European satellite states from the non-communist West -- to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The influence on the American film industry was deep and long-lasting. Hollywood became a highly visible target of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the late 1940s and 1950s.

Uncooperative witnesses were blacklisted by the studios, and some, like the Hollywood Ten, served time in jail. To prove their "Americanism," studio bosses not only fired and blacklisted employees, but they also turned out a string of films warning against the dangers of communism at home and abroad. Less than a year after Walter Lippman coined the term Cold War in 1947, 20th Fox released William Wellman's Iron Curtain (a.k.a.

Behind the Iron Curtain), adapted from the life story of Russian code clerk Igor Gouzenko (Dana Andrews), who, together with his family, had defected to the West with evidence of Soviet espionage operations in North America. Contemporary Cold War events provided the material for a number of films, including Felix Feist's Guilty of Treason (1949), George Seaton's The Big Lift (1950), and Alfred Werker's Walk East on Beacon (1952). Guilty of Treason recounts the fate of Hungary's Roman Catholic Prelate, Cardinal Josef Mindszenty, after the country was taken over by communists in 1948. Charles Bickford plays the defiant Cardinal who endures arrest, torture, and prison rather than capitulate to his godless enemies.

Seaton's film, dramatizes the lives of fliers serving with the Berlin Airlift. Shot on location in Berlin using documentary techniques, the film focuses on the ability of American technology to carry the day, and love affairs between the central characters (Paul Douglas and Montgomery Clift) and two German women stress the importance of seeing Germany not as a totalitarian enemy but as a fledgling democracy and an ally in the struggle against communism. http://userpages.umbc.edu/~landon/Local_Information_Files/Films%20of%20the%20Cold%20War.htm Sources: http://faculty.ucc.edu/egh-damerow/cold_war1.htm .

Cold War is a Webquest over the Cold War era,estimate of the world situation would affect politics. The Cold War is a Webquest over the Cold War era, empasizing both historical and cultural events of the time period. It is designed to be a unit that a teacher can supplement with mini lectures.It contains both individual and collaborative assignments while giving students a well-rounded look at the decades following WWII through the end of the Cold War.

Peace did not arrive when World War II finally came to an end. Instead, the Cold War began. This is an important topic for students to understand, because the Cold War dominated U.S. and world history for almost the entire second half of the 20th century, and its effects are felt today in many ways.

This module will engage students in the study of the Cold War: how it began, how it affected people's lives, how it ended, and how it left a legacy for us today. Although the study of the era following World War II can easily be dominated by a preoccupation with the Cold War, our understanding of present-day American society will be deficient without grappling with the remarkable changes in American society, the American economy, and American culture in the 1950s and 1960s.It should be remembered that the closeness of the period makes it one of continuing reinterpretation, reminding us that historical judgments should be seen as provisional, never cut in stone. The Cold War set the framework for global politics for 45 years after the end of World War II.

The Cold War so strongly influenced our domestic politics, the conduct of foreign affairs, and the role of the government in the economy after 1945 that it is obligatory for students to examine its origins and the forces behind its continuation into the late 20th century. They should understand how American and European antipathy to Leninist-Stalinism predated 1945, seeded by the gradual awareness of the messianic nature of Soviet communism during the interwar years, Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture, and the great purges of the 1930s. Students should also consider the Soviet Union’s goals following World War II.

Its catastrophic losses in the war and fear of rapid German recovery were factors in Soviet demands for a sphere of influence on its western borders, achieved through the establishment of governments under Soviet military and political control. Students should also know how the American policy of containment was successfully conducted in Europe: the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, NATO, and the maintenance of U.S. military forces in Europe under what was called the nuclear “balance of terror. ” Sources: http://74.125.153.132/search?

Q=cache:r4cZjRsDjusJ:nchs.ucla.edu/standards/era9-5-12.html+%22cold+war%22+era+affect+politics+and+our+lives+today&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in .

1 I suppose the major result would be that Kissinger's tri-lateral diplomacy, specifically engaging China in order to pressure the Soviet Union has, in the long run, had negative consequences on the economic strength of the US.

I suppose the major result would be that Kissinger's tri-lateral diplomacy, specifically engaging China in order to pressure the Soviet Union has, in the long run, had negative consequences on the economic strength of the US.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.