SS310: Exploring the 1960s
Unit 2 – Cold War
By: Carey LaFour

Historians to date have not reached an agreement of when exactly the Cold War started but it safe to say that the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union began when President Truman declared the Truman Doctrine and launched the Marshall Plan in 1947. The Cold War would last for over forty years; during that time, unforgettable events took place. During my research, I found that it would be important that we understand some known facts about the Cold War before comparing them with the interviews of three people.
In the 1940s the war was mainly a more political war than a military war however, each were dangerous to the affect that they possessed nuclear weapons and the means to launch them. They were the two superpowers of the world following World War II.
In 1950, Dwight Eisenhower was the first Republican president elected to office in twenty years. “I like Ike” (GlobalSecurity) was the campaign slogan we all remember. However, Eisenhower shared Truman’s views on the foreign policy and communism. During his term, he tried to ease tension between the two nations by working with the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev; however, in 1959 the relations went south when an American military plane was shot down and the United Stated admitted to spying on the Soviet Union.
By 1960, John Kennedy became president and during his term, he faced the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. During his second year in office, American intelligence discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba. Although the Soviet Union original denied it, photo proved they were there and within a week, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles, which ended the crisis.
The United States involvement in the Vietnam War was to prevent communist takeover of South Vietnam; supporting the Truman doctrine to stop the