Writing a Cold War Essay: 5 Things You Should Mention

History students should know how difficult it might be to write an essay on the subject of the Cold War. There are many reasons for this, the major one being that so many relevant things happened during those years that mentioning all of them will turn your essay into a novel. However, it will be very bad if you miss some important point.

Thus, the problem is to learn how to differentiate between the things that must be included and the ones that can be omitted. Unfortunately, only experience will teach you this fine art.


If you want to write a high quality essay on the subject of the Cold War, you will need to include the following things into it:

  • Winston Churchill’s speech on March 5, 1946
  • Technically, this speech largely contributed to the beginning of the war. During it, Churchill made several anti-communist remarks that paved the way for the biggest conflict humanity has known.

    Unlike the First and Second World Wars, this particular conflict didn’t take millions of lives, but it continued for almost half a century. Officially, the Cold War was considered to be over only in 1991 when the Soviet Union broke down.

  • The Marshall Plan
  • This plan was initiated by the US after the Soviet Union took over several Eastern European countries at the end of the WWII. The Marshall Plan was implemented in order to provide the devastated countries with provisions and help them rebuild their economies.

  • The Zhdanov Doctrine
  • This document served as a response to the Marshall Plan and proclaimed the USA to be a country seeking global domination.

  • Propaganda war
  • In the Zhdanov doctrine the Soviet Union claimed that they aim to protect the democracy in the European countries they conquered from what they called “American imperialism”. However, a country run by communists cannot be considered democratic, so this political position was heavily criticized by the US and many European countries.

    In response to this, the Soviet Union launched a propaganda campaign that was so strong, that even today people struggle to overcome the preconceptions they have about the Americans.

    It should be said that the US government did the same, building a similar stereotype of the Soviet Union.

  • Nuclear confrontation
  • There has never been a nuclear conflict between the USSR and the USA, but the creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb prompted the armament drive that has been active till this day.