cold war essay grade 12

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Gr. 12 HISTORY T3 W1:The end of the Cold War and a new world order 1989 to the present

This essay focus on Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union in 1989 and its impact on South Africa

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Cold War History

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 26, 2023 | Original: October 27, 2009

The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension marked by competition and confrontation between communist nations led by the Soviet Union and Western democracies including the United States. During World War II , the United States and the Soviets fought together as allies against Nazi Germany . However, U.S./Soviet relations were never truly friendly: Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and Russian leader Joseph Stalin ’s tyrannical rule. The Soviets resented Americans’ refusal to give them a leading role in the international community, as well as America’s delayed entry into World War II, in which millions of Russians died.

These grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity that never developed into open warfare (thus the term “cold war”). Soviet expansionism into Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as U.S. officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and strident approach to international relations. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War; in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable.

Containment

By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called “containment.” In his famous “Long Telegram,” the diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005) explained the policy: The Soviet Union, he wrote, was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree].” As a result, America’s only choice was the “long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.”

“It must be the policy of the United States,” he declared before Congress in 1947, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation…by outside pressures.” This way of thinking would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades.

Did you know? The term 'cold war' first appeared in a 1945 essay by the English writer George Orwell called 'You and the Atomic Bomb.'

The Cold War: The Atomic Age

The containment strategy also provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the United States. In 1950, a National Security Council Report known as NSC–68 had echoed Truman’s recommendation that the country use military force to contain communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring. To that end, the report called for a four-fold increase in defense spending.

In particular, American officials encouraged the development of atomic weapons like the ones that had ended World War II. Thus began a deadly “ arms race .” In 1949, the Soviets tested an atom bomb of their own. In response, President Truman announced that the United States would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or “superbomb.” Stalin followed suit.

As a result, the stakes of the Cold War were perilously high. The first H-bomb test, in the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, showed just how fearsome the nuclear age could be. It created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean floor and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan. Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed radioactive waste into the atmosphere.

The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a great impact on American domestic life as well. People built bomb shelters in their backyards. They practiced attack drills in schools and other public places. The 1950s and 1960s saw an epidemic of popular films that horrified moviegoers with depictions of nuclear devastation and mutant creatures. In these and other ways, the Cold War was a constant presence in Americans’ everyday lives.

HISTORY Vault: Nuclear Terror

Now more than ever, terrorist groups are obtaining nuclear weapons. With increasing cases of theft and re-sale at dozens of Russian sites, it's becoming more and more likely for terrorists to succeed.

The Cold War and the Space Race

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveling companion”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans.

In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

In 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and what came to be known as the Space Race was underway. That same year, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration, as well as several programs seeking to exploit the military potential of space. Still, the Soviets were one step ahead, launching the first man into space in April 1961.

That May, after Alan Shepard become the first American man in space, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) made the bold public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. His prediction came true on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission , became the first man to set foot on the moon, effectively winning the Space Race for the Americans. 

U.S. astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

The Cold War and the Red Scare

Meanwhile, beginning in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC ) brought the Cold War home in another way. The committee began a series of hearings designed to show that communist subversion in the United States was alive and well.

In Hollywood , HUAC forced hundreds of people who worked in the movie industry to renounce left-wing political beliefs and testify against one another. More than 500 people lost their jobs. Many of these “blacklisted” writers, directors, actors and others were unable to work again for more than a decade. HUAC also accused State Department workers of engaging in subversive activities. Soon, other anticommunist politicians, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), expanded this probe to include anyone who worked in the federal government. 

Thousands of federal employees were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. As this anticommunist hysteria spread throughout the 1950s, liberal college professors lost their jobs, people were asked to testify against colleagues and “loyalty oaths” became commonplace.

The Cold War Abroad

The fight against subversion at home mirrored a growing concern with the Soviet threat abroad. In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option. Truman sent the American military into Korea, but the Korean War dragged to a stalemate and ended in 1953.

In 1955, the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made West Germany a member of NATO and permitted it to remilitarize. The Soviets responded with the Warsaw Pact , a mutual defense organization between the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria that set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union.

Other international disputes followed. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy faced a number of troubling situations in his own hemisphere. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year seemed to prove that the real communist threat now lay in the unstable, postcolonial “Third World.” 

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vietnam , where the collapse of the French colonial regime had led to a struggle between the American-backed nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem in the south and the communist nationalist Ho Chi Minh in the north. Since the 1950s, the United States had been committed to the survival of an anticommunist government in the region, and by the early 1960s it seemed clear to American leaders that if they were to successfully “contain” communist expansionism there, they would have to intervene more actively on Diem’s behalf. However, what was intended to be a brief military action spiraled into a 10-year conflict .

The End of the Cold War and Effects

Almost as soon as he took office, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) began to implement a new approach to international relations. Instead of viewing the world as a hostile, “bi-polar” place, he suggested, why not use diplomacy instead of military action to create more poles? To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and, after a trip there in 1972, began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing.

At the same time, he adopted a policy of “détente”—”relaxation”—toward the Soviet Union. In 1972, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.

Despite Nixon’s efforts, the Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Like many leaders of his generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, he worked to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world. This policy, particularly as it was applied in the developing world in places like Grenada and El Salvador, was known as the Reagan Doctrine .

Even as Reagan fought communism in Central America, however, the Soviet Union was disintegrating. In response to severe economic problems and growing political ferment in the USSR, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) took office in 1985 and introduced two policies that redefined Russia’s relationship to the rest of the world: “glasnost,” or political openness, and “ perestroika ,” or economic reform. 

Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned. In 1989, every other communist state in the region replaced its government with a noncommunist one. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall –the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War–was finally destroyed, just over two years after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold War was over.

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Grade 12 History Cold War: Angola Notes Collection, with Source-based Questions

Grade 12 History Angola Notes Collection: On this page you will find a compilation of Angola Notes for History Grade 12 subject: Origin of the Cold War, End of Cold War, Source-based Questions, Essay Questions.

From the mid-1970s, the Cold War between the USA and the USSR turned into a ‘hot war’ in Angola. The challenges facing the newly independent Angola were exploited by the superpowers and their allies. This was done in the hopes that they (the superpowers) could expand their sphere of influence into that region. The civil war which broke out in Angola in the mid-1970s was soon fought along Cold War battle lines. In Angola, the Soviets (through their ally, Cuba) backed one Angolan nationalist group and the USA through their ally, South Africa) backed their rival.

History of Angola

Table of Contents

On this section, you will find Grade 12 History Cold War: Angola Notes Collection, with Source-based Questions. This content will be great for Essays

How Africa was drawn into the Cold War

• The USA wanted to limit the spread of communism in Africa, and therefore often supported factions that were anti-communist.
• In Ethiopia, for example, the USA supplied weapons and support to Haile Selassie, to boost his rule against a communist revolutionary movement.
• In Angola, the USA sided with a capitalist-leaning nationalist group, sending weapons and military support via South Africa.
• The apartheid government feared that if its neighbouring countries became socialist or communist, then they would allow the African National Congress (ANC) and the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) to establish military bases in these countries, from which the ANC and SWAPO could launch attacks on South African apartheid forces.
• The apartheid government also wanted to maintain a good relationship with the USA and the UK, which were both powerful allies. The Cold War provided a convenient justification for the USA and the UK to support apartheid, South Africa.
• As is to be expected, a number of African states saw American and British support for the apartheid regime in South Africa as politically suspicious and were therefore wary of forming relationships with them.

Angola under Portuguese Rule

• The apartheid government also wanted to maintain a good relationship with the USA and the UK, which were both powerful allies. The Cold War provided a convenient justification for the USA and the UK to support apartheid South Africa.

Download Studyguide Notes below:

Cold War – Areas & Forms of Conflict: Angola Essay Question Guide

Below is a guide on how to answer the source-bassed questions for Grade 12 History, focusing on Cold War – Areas & Forms of Conflict: Angola.

Note: The Key Question will appear at the beginning of every section in the exam paper. Thisquestion tells you what the OVERALL content to be tested will be. In this case, the KeyQuestion tells us the section will test how The Cold War affected Angola. NB: Learners DO NOT answer this question. 

How to analyse a cartoon  for source-based History Grade 12 Questions

Cartoons will give the artist‟s point of view on a particular topic. They are useful in reflecting the attitudes of the time. When studying a cartoon, teachers will ask the following questions:

• How are the people drawn? Are they realistic? What size are they? Are some of their features exaggerated? How are they dressed?
• What view of the people does the cartoon give?
• What else is included in the cartoon? Is there any writing on the cartoon itself?
• What symbols are used to get the message across?
• What information do the date and caption contribute?
• Where was the cartoon published?
• What is the artist‟s intention?
• Does the cartoon offer a positive or negative perspective on the topic?
• What do you know of the period that might support your view of the cartoon?
• What does the interpretation of the topic tell you about the artist? Can you find bias? Can you work out what issue or whom the cartoonist supports?

In respect of the Cold War, the focus for the exams is on Angola. Angolabecomes the pawn in the balance of power between the Soviet Union and the UnitedStates. One must note that in Angola civil conflict is manipulated by the Cold Warpowers to increase their prestige. 

Angola is potentially one of the richest countries in sub-Saharan Africa with extensive petroleum reserves, rich agricultural land and valuable mineral resources. Few countries in the world have experienced aswell as sustained the degree of violent conflict seen in Angola. The intervention has diminished but has not disappeared. Angola‟s abundant natural resources continue to attract outside interests from industrialised nations globally. In the competition for oil, diamonds and other precious resources in Angola, interests external to Angolacontinue to play a large and decisive role, both in suppressing conflict and in sustaining it. The end of the Cold War changed the political landscape of Africa since the 1990‟s and opened new vistas for the continent, it helped in reshaping international relations as well as the emergence of new concepts of security and self-interest. It eliminated the division of Africa into two ideological camps and eliminated a source of external support that was taken for granted.

Note: Learners must answer all questions in FULL SENTENCES, as bullet points are not acceptable in an exam situation. They must also be specific as to which source and which part of the source they are referring to in their answer. When asked to quote, learners must make sure they answer using quotation marks and that the quotation includes only the relevant phrase or sentence. 

Source-based Questions: Source A

• The source refers to violent conflict in Angola. This violent conflict began with Angola‟s independence in 1975. Briefly explain why independence sparked violence in Angola.
• According to the source why is Angola continually an arena for external intervention? Quote from the source to support your answer?
• The source refers to two ideological camps during the Cold War. What were these two ideological camps?
• The MPLA and UNITA were the two main opponents in the Angolan Civil War. The name which ideological camp supported the MPLA and which camp supported UNIT A.
• Briefly explain how the involvement of the above camps would accelerate and prolong the conflict.

An extract from a speech by Fidel Castro at the First Congress of the Communist Party ofCuba, Havana, December 1975. Quoted in D. Deutschmann (ed), Changing the History of Africa , 1989 . 

When asked to compare sources, the learner must be reminded that sources can be opposite or similar. They may entrench a viewpoint or be in opposition to each other. Learners need to examine the origin of the source (whose view is this, secondary or primary etc.) and then examine the content itself. They can then decide whether the sources complement or oppose each other and give a detailed explanation as to why they came to this conclusion.

Source-based Questions: Source C and D

Explain in detail how Source C and source D compare. In your answer, refer to both content and origin.

Note: When asked to evaluate the value of a source, learners are being asked to decide on whether or not the source enhances their study. They must always ask themselves the following questions: Does the source display bias or not? If so what can that bias teach them? What element and knowledge does this source impart and why does this help them understand the topic more clearly? The type of source is also relevant. 

Source-based Questions: Source E

• Is Source E a primary or secondary source?
• What is the value of Source E in our study of the Angolan civil war?
• What impact would the image in Source E have on the Angolan economy in post-civil war days?

Source-Based Question: Conflict in Africa: Angola- Ending the Cold War in Southern Africa

The first glimpse of peace in Angola‟s interminable (never-ending) civil war came in 1990 as the Cold War drew to a close. Throughout the 1980‟s Angola had remained a pawn in the Cold War, a theatre in which the US and the Soviet Union used proxy (outside representative) forces to compete for ascendancy power and control). While the Russians and the Cubans continued to prop up the MPLA‟s (Popular Movement for the liberation of Angola) Marxist regime in Luanda, the Americans, along with the South Africans, sustained Jonas Savimbi‟s rebel UNITA( National Union for the Total Independence of Angola)movement.

In 1990, after the Russians had lost interest in Angola, the MPLA formally abandoned Marxism-Leninism and pronounced itself in favour of economic reform. The MPLA followed with the decision at its congress in December 1990 to adopt a multiparty system and moved, albeit haltingly, towards market-orientated economic policies, after finally obtaining membership of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The forms it instituted, however, provided yet more business opportunities for the elite, notably the privatisation of state assets.

An extract from: Conflict in Africa: Angola- Ending the Cold War in Southern Africa

Essay Question on Angola History

Describe why Angola became an arena for Cold War ideologies and examine how this developed into a Proxy War with Cuban and South African involvement. Your answer must include your own knowledge and you can use the sources provided in the short questions.

Note: The essay question counts 40% of the exam. Learners need to learnthe format and how to refer to sources. No bullet points allowed! 

• Using the source and your own knowledge, explain why and who Russia used to fight their Proxy War in Angola?
• Using your own knowledge, why did the Soviet Union support the MPLA?
• According to the source and your own knowledge, why did the MPLA abandon Marxism in favour of market-orientated economic policies?

Answers and Memos for the above source-based questions

Download the Answers and Memos for the above source-based questions from the document below:

Independent Africa: Case study-Angola

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