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The Cold War

Driving Question: What were the causes of the ideological struggle of the Cold War, and how did it impact global conflicts and alliances?

How did the Cold War start? At the end of World War II, the victorious allies lost both their shared enemy and their shared purpose. The two most powerful allied nations, United States and the Soviet Union, swiftly moved to consolidate their relative positions, resulting in the division of post-war Europe. The two nations soon became known as superpowers as they avoided direct conflict by involving themselves in the opposite sides of other countries’ conflicts, while also promoting their favored ideologies of capitalism or communism.

Learning Objectives

  1. Explain the causes and effects of the ideological struggle of the Cold War.
  2. Use the historical thinking practice of sourcing to assess different perspectives of who started the Cold War.
  3. Use the historical thinking practice of causation to categorize the multiple causes of the Cold War.

Vocab Terms:

  • capitalism
  • communism
  • containment
  • ideological
  • nonalignment
  • self-determination
  • superpower
STEP 2

Sourcing: Who Started the Cold War?

Want to know who started the Cold War? And does the answer to that question change depending on who’s making the claim? Compare two different sources to get to the root of this important question.

STEP 3

Cold War: An Overview

Was the Cold War an economic crisis? A political crisis? Ideological struggle? Or was it all those things and more?

STEP 4

Causation: Cold War

As you’ve seen throughout this lesson, the causes of the Cold War are varied and complex. Use your causation skills to evaluate the most important ones.