HI Cold War origins --> topic?

[billabongaa]

Hey guys!

I wanna do my Historical Investigation on the origins of the Cold War.

First I thought about the RQ: "To what extent did mutual distrust between the USA and the USSR cause the Cold War?"

But how would I 'prove' distrust??

So I thought about the ideological differences...

I read several books on it but the topic is sooo huge. I really don't know how to narrow it down.

I thought about the Truman Doctrine or the Marshall Plan but I just can't think of a RQ

Does anybody have an idea?

I've been reading about the origins of the CW for daaays but I still can't decide on something specific.

[HanoBee]

What I wanted to do in Cold War as a question was the Space Race between USA and USSR. What interested me is the Apollo operation and whether or not it actually happened and USA was the one who put the first man on the moon or not. There is no evidence of the original tape in the American archives, they say it's "lost". But how would the archives lose something as important as the video recording of the first man that landed on the moon? This makes you think of the assumption that maybe USA faked the first man on the moon video in order to win the space race with the USSR. Observation of the original video by experts would reveal whether or not the video was a sham, which would explain why it suddenly "disappeared". It's a very interesting topic and I think you can find a lot of information about it online.

Another topic in the Cold War is the solidarity of Poland. What I wanted to write about specifically is how much the Polish Pope was involved in supporting the movement. And whether or not his assassination had anything to do with the almost radical support he gave to the Gdansk event and whatnot. It's also very interesting but I didn't get the chance to do a lot of research about it.

Good luck!

[billabongaa]

Thanks for the fast reply, HanoBee!

Your topic suggestions sound very interesting but I wanted to focus on the 'short-term' origins (around 1945-1951?) of the Cold War.

[HanoBee]

You're welcome

Well how about you investigate the extent to which the nuclear bomb was a "spark" to the Cold War. It was kind of like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand which sparked WWI.

[EMT]

if you wanted to talk about mutual fear being the cause of the Cold War, you could talk about "one-up manship", ie. one gets the a-bomb, then the other reciprocates and so on.

you could also talk about each misinterpreted the other's policies, such as USSR wanted satellite states for protection from the West, while the west saw it as an agressive attack. Maybe also talk about the Marshal Plan being interpreted as 'economic imperialism' by USSR? and how they started their own forms of economic help after that. hope this helps