Chapter 10 Cold War Tensions and Domestic Transformations
CHAPTER OUTLINE
10.4 Europe Amidst Global Tensions and Decolonization
10.5 Europe and the New World Order
INTRODUCTION
In the period following World War II, leaders like Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union believed communism would light the way to a bright new future for humankind. The United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries regarded communism as a threat to freedom, instead placing their faith in capitalism and democracy to improve human life. The ideological differences between these two groups of countries, and the global-scale struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States for social, economic, technological, and military supremacy, divided the world into mutually hostile spheres in the half-century following the war (Figure 10.1). Their antagonism played out in a real but bloodless conflict known as the Cold War (Figure 10.2).
