The Cold War era

Cold War was a period of great danger and international tension, brought on by the power struggles between the United States and the Soviet Union. The communist ideology -- which the Soviets were aggressively trying to spread through Europe and elsewhere -- was seen as an enormous threat to the U.S., while the capitalist / democratic ideology was seen by the Soviets as a threat to their way of life as well. This paper delves into the post-WWII background to the Cold War and reviews the situation in the U.S. given the threat of nuclear war between the two superpowers.

How did the Cold War Begin?

The Cold War began after the conclusion of WWII due to the political struggle for ideological control of countries, including several European nations. The question asked by Allied leaders was this: how would post-war Europe be shaped now that Nazi Germany is defeated?

By 1948, the Soviet Union had made its power and its presence felt in Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. The United States and principal ally, Britain, were trying hard after the war to prevent the Soviets from setting up communist regimes in Western Europe. One of the problems that was taken into consideration, according to www.globalsecurity.com was that there was a certain appeal to the idea of communism in Europe because the communists were fighting Nazi occupation. The possibility existed that even Western European countries like France and Italy could go communist, and this was a red flag for U.S. President Harry Truman and Winston Churchill in England.

Maarten van Alstein writes in the journal Cold War History (Alstein, 2009, p. 310) that nuclear arms control was also a source of tension between the U.S. And the Soviets; whereas the Soviets and the U.S. had been allied against Hitler, after the war both sides suspected the other of striving "for world domination of their socio-economic system." In Eastern Europe, the Soviets applied "tough techniquesrepression, oppression, and disciplining" (Alstein, 313), which indicated to the U.S. that the Soviets would go to great extremes to spread communism wherever they could. The Cold War began, as was noted earlier, began in the aftermath of WWII, but as it progressed into the 1950s, it became a war of nerves as both the U.S. And the Soviets had nuclear weapons poised on top of long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

When John Kennedy ran for president in 1960, the candidate received a lot of votes based on his "strident anti-Communism" and "the vigor" with which he promoted his "anti-communism" pitch (Farber, 1994, p. 28). As the new president, Kennedy's inaugural speech ("we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty") was a clear message to the Soviets and to the American people that Kennedy intended to be take a tough stand during the Cold War. To take his vehement opposition to communism to the maximum number of people, Kennedy went to the Berlin Wall and spoke to tens of thousands of people "who had stood as nuclear hostages to a war of nerves" (Farber, 39). "There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future," Kennedy told the Berliners in June 1963, "Let them come to Berlin" (Farber, 39).

Specific Threats to American Citizens

In October 1962, Kennedy confronted the most dangerous threat to American that grew out of the Cold War: the Soviets were installing ICBMs in Cuba. Kennedy's quarantine of Cuba (preventing any more Soviet ships from bringing missiles to Cuba), and his ability to call the Soviets' bluff, eased the tension and forced the Soviets to remove their ICBMs from Cuba.

Kenneth Rose writes in his book (One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture) that American citizens knew that the Soviets had an arsenal of long-range nuclear missiles, and that the U.S. also had those weapons at the ready. What would a male citizen do to protect his family if there was a nuclear attack from the soviets? The federal government entertained many proposals to build bomb shelters (also called "fallout shelters") including a proposal that might cost "as much the total of all the country's personal income tax collections for one year" (Rose, 2004, 26). Many of the ideas and proposals were patently absurd in hindsight.

Preparations to Protect Families

The many proposals for bomb shelters and for evacuations of entire cities never gained much credibility, and that includes the proposal from the so-called "Father of the A-bomb," Edward Teller, who believed $7.5 billion would be enough to build shelters for Americans (Rose, 34). Knowing that a nuclear blast could spread deadly radiation hundreds of miles caused many families to invest in bomb shelters. The typical shelter used concrete walls 12 inches thick, and the federal government recommended that shelters should be built in the basement "or buried in the back yard," in order to get as much "mass as possible between survivors, the detonation, and its after-effects" (u-s-history.com). A "do-it-yourself" project might only cost about $200, the government explained to American citizens. The main problem was ventilation, fresh air, and staying inside a concrete-block prison for weeks at a time (u-s-history.com).