What maintained the intensity of the cold war during the 1950s?

a. the possession of nuclear weapons on both sides
b. ideological confrontation
c. the leaders of the time
d. all of the above

I'm not even going to look this one up. I think that "all of the above" is the best answer.

A)Imagine a kid from your school has pictures of you or your best friend doing something embarrassing and that they are going to show the whole school if you don't do what they want. And you also have something that will really devastate them. That's what nuclear weapons were to the U.S. and soviet union.

B)Ideological confrontation, means that they had different ideas and that they were in a fight about it. Like if a bully wants you to give you all your lunch money, or he or she doesn't want you to kiss his or her sister or brother and you do.

C)The leaders of the time... were a bunch of bullies. If you can't talk things out and have to resort to threats, fights, and insults then you are not very mature and you should not be running a country is the lesson that we all need to learn from the cold war, and from recess. It doesn't take two to start a fight... both countries were being bullies, and the U.S.A. was probably the bigger bully since they were bigger and richer in some ways than the Soviet Union.

Play Command and Conquer, Red Alert, if you want to know what it's like to fight against the soviets. My seven year old neighbor knows more about the cold war than I do, although he thinks thinks that we were fighting against the "so be its"

The Cold War immediately followed World War II by a couple of years. People all around the world had seen the video of the nuclear bombs and there was a profound fear and mutual distrust over what the new weapons could and would be used for. People were building bomb shelters in their back yards. Fear was the fuel behind the Cold War for both sides.

If you read the history of the United Nations you will find there was a lot of talk over that 20-30 year period. I don't know of any angle that wasn't discussed over and over. The Cold War facts were that neither side was willing to disarm when they knew the other side was building a nuclear arsenal.

The Cold War was about defensive positioning, not bullying. After experiencing World War II, everybody back then clearly understood it wasn't a playground fight or a child's computer game. A better analogy would be a situation where two people are sitting across a table and both are assembling shotguns. Each one believes if he doesn't get his put together before the other he'll get shot.