Cold War 5 Essay, Research Paper

In November of 1989, the Berlin wall came collapsing down, and a feeling of relief and excitement filled the hearts of many worldwide. The Cold War was a terrible drawn out process that made the world realize just how close we were to coming to the brink of destruction. Germany was split into two over sides fighting over different political beliefs. Luckily the United States has never had to deal with a division through the middle of our territories, splitting our west side from the east side, as Germany had to deal with for many years. The end of the Cold War was a day of rejoice and happiness that will go down in history, not only in the minds and hearts of the Germans, yet of all the people of the world that was impacted by the breaking down of Germany s divider. A good feeling ran through my family when the news spread to our living room through our television set. Although I was young, I still knew that it was a sign of relief and I understood that no more division meant no more fighting within the German country. This would bring peace to many people, as now the United States would not have to continue this cold war with the USSR and it s allies and their fight for communist power.

For a war to continue for years, as this did, makes me feel ill that our nations can not get along or find a compromise to live by. Families across the world must have lived in fear of what may have happen at any given moment since actions taken were so unpredictable at that time. My feelings at the end of the Cold War can be summed up into a single word: Relieved. I was glad to know that nothing was going to continue, now that they had taken the first step to solving their problem. The Berlin wall separated what should have been joined together the whole time. Finally after the land had been

divided, the country was finally considered once again as one country. There was no longer a west and east side of Germany; nor was there any longer a Democratic and Capitalist side of Germany and a Communist side in the same country.

The Cold War was a terrible, drawn out fight which made me realize that the world was very unpredictable in the outcomes of our foreign issues that the U.S. gets involved with. Today the technology has made it even more unpredictable and frightening to think of what could occur if another was as this was to irrupt. The main power that was served in the Cold War came from man and the military. Today it would be our technology that makes us fearful of another world war to come, or anything like the cold war to reoccur. We can only hope that our foreign issues are better understood between our nations to prevent this tragedy to occur in the future. Our technology is far to advanced in all countries for us to ever survive each other s power and nothing but bad would come out of such an ugly incident.

Yet in regards to the Cold War and its end, I think that it was the best thing that could have happened. I agree with the Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher when he stated, There is no socialist German nation, and there is no capitalist German nation, there is only one German nation. It is better that there is no longer a division of any kind in a country that should be united. A country is like a family and when there are sides of the family fighting, it always causes more problems within the family as a whole. Things just work out better when the whole family gets along and learns how to compromise with each other. This is the way I feel now as a college student studying Politics, and it is the way I felt when I was a nine year old girl hearing about the fights in Germany that were occurring within it s family . Although at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall I did not see the situation in the same way as I see it now, I still felt the same way and my heart is in the same place for peace between and within all of our nations.