cold war history

Cold War History : Red Scare & The Arms Race - The '50s
Korean War, Arms Race, Red Scare, The Soviet Master, Sputnik


Communist power and influence became world threatening by 1950. The Russians exploded their first atomic weapon in August 1949. In China, a bitter civil war was brought to an end with the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong driving the Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-Shek off the mainland to set up a U.S. backed government on the island of Taiwan. More than 500 million people came under communist rule as a result of the defeat. A Cold War hallmark was a U.S. foreign policy to support and defend the Republic of China (Nationalist) government against any attack by the People's Republic of China (PRC), by basically stationing the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet in the Strait of Taiwan.



Korean War

The Korean War was the first "hot" confrontation of the Cold War. Korea had been invaded and occupied by Imperial Japan for 30 years. When American and Soviet troops acc...