The Cold War began as a result of WWII tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union who had differing philosophies, which split Europe on either side of the iron curtain and the use of policies of control providing economic and military aid. The iron curtain was a name given by Winston Churchill in a famous speech made on March 5, 1946 after WWII ended. With Europe in ruins both physically and economically Eastern European countries were swept up by the Soviet Union creating a separation of those nations and nations exercising self-determination thus the iron curtain was born. In Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech, he spoke of the “increasing measure of control from Moscow and how communist parties were raised to power to obtain totalitarian control” (Documents 1 & 6). …show more content…
These controlled nations took on the name soviet satellites or soviet bloc. Some countries, however, were provided with aid to prevent them from being taken over by the Soviet Union.

A policy of containment was exercised by the United States. George F. Kennan developed the idea of containment to stop Soviet Union expansion; this idea would be supported economically and militarily. The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan are two of the most well-known forms of containment. As President Truman stated in his speech to Congress on March 12, 1947 the Doctrine provided economic aid to Greece and Turkey exclusively, Turkey would become quite useful when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred (Document 2). The Marshall Plan was developed by Secretary of State George C Marshall and provided aid to European