5 Things You Didn't Know: The Cold War



To bring you up to speed, we present five things you didn’t know about the only war that categorically could have ended all wars through total and complete annihilation -- the Cold War.

1- It cost the U.S. about $8 trillion


2- It was predicted by Adolf Hitler



3- Its first casualty was a Christian missionary


4- It ended in part because of Apple
The hobbyist culture and the economic flexibility in the U.S., both largely absent in the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc countries, encouraged guys like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to take on industry giants like IBM. As a result, the information age erupted, spreading information that wasn’t spun by news outlets or crafted by governments into propaganda, but expressed by everyday citizens.

The most remarkable testament to this comes from Professor Karen Dawisha, director of Miami University’s Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies. Dawisha quotes a Czech microcomputer maker in the mid-1980s moaning about the impact of PCs: “With these computers comes not only technology, but also ideology… Children might soon begin to believe that Western technology represents the peak and our technology is obsolete and bad… [I]n 10 years’ time it will be too late to change our children. By then they will want to change us.”

5- At one point, the U.S. had more communists on its side than the USSR
In 1969, the CIA concluded that there was no possibility of an alliance with the People’s Republic of China. At the same time, Soviet troops were exchanging gunfire with Chinese troops along their shared border, leading China to wonder how far the Soviets would take the aggression, and further, what they could do to prevent it. The solution was to open discussions with their most imminent new enemy’s biggest enemy: the U.S.

Meanwhile, the U.S. wanted China in their corner regarding their increasing troop commitment in Vietnam. President Nixon’s 1972 trips to China proved a diplomatic coup for both countries, and following them both, Henry Kissinger penned a memo to Nixon calling China “a tacit ally,” swinging 870 million communists to the U.S. side. This shaky alliance is considered a pivotal moment in bringing the Cold War to an eventual end.

Why is it Searched?
Although the 2007 release of the Tom Hanks film Charlie Wilson’s War has spurred some renewed general interest in the Cold War, the topic itself is fascinating -- and terrifying. It is almost incomprehensible to imagine that world diplomacy and foreign affairs were directly guided by a concept as staggering as Mutually Assured Destruction.

Length on the public's interest?
In December 1989, George Bush Sr. and Mikhail Gorbachev declared an official end to the Cold War, but it’s hard to believe either man actually believed this. Fallout can still be seen on many fronts, thanks in part to more than a few examples of strange bedfellows, particularly in the case of the U.S.: the backing of future Chilean monster Augusto Pinochet; the CIA-backed coup that brought the Shah to power in Iran and led to 1979’s Islamic Revolution; and contributions from the U.S., Egypt, the UK, and Saudi Arabia in support of Mujahideen rebels during the Soviet war in Afghanistan which, when ended by the Geneva accords, left the country in ruins and paved the way for groups like the Taliban.

Finally, before a conflict as massive and globally important as the Cold War can be evaluated with any accurate historical perspective, a certain amount of time must pass, key people need to die or start talking, and a number of classified documents need to be declassified. This information, dispatched by books and movies, should sustain a moderate level of public interest for some time to come.

source: askmen.com

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