Exploring Events of the Cold War in Europe

Cold War: In 1948, Journalist Walter Lippman first used the term Cold War, borrowing from a French phrase, to refer to a “constant war of the nerves” between the Soviet Union and the U.S. The Cold War was a rivalry between the Soviet Union and the U.S. in which the countries avoided fighting each other directly (which would be a hot war) but blocked each others goals around the world by: helping needy governments that were allied to the major nation while opposing other countries in limited wars, building newer and more powerful weapons systems, and creating favorable images of their own system while using negative propaganda to attack the other country’s system.

Directions In this activity you will learn about and map 12 Cold War Events in Europe. You and a partner will take one event card and read it. Create a visual symbol to represent the essence of the event and draw it on the corresponding countries on the map.

Make a key for each event. For example, you could use colors as symbols and use blue for NATO members and red for Warsaw Pact members. Annotate your timeline. Summaries need not include proper grammar, but should focus on defining the event accurately and succinctly. For example, for NATO you could write “military alliance which linked U.S. with Western Europe, feared Soviet attack.” You will use your map to take a quiz, so do a good job!

Discussion Questions What were the major fears of the superpowers? Motivations? Which Cold War event do you think brought the two superpowers closest to the brink of WWIII? How could the superpowers have prevented the Cold War from escalating? How might the Cold War have affected the rest of the world outside Europe?

The Cold War was like a high stakes poker game