The Cold War 01

This KS3 History quiz is our first on the Cold War. The period of history that is called the Cold War lasted from the end of World War II until 1991, when the Soviet Union (USSR) collapsed. During WWII, The Soviet Union and other Eastern European communist countries fought alongside the Allies in order to help to defeat the Nazis. After the war, the temporary alliance ended. The reason was distrust. The boundary between the communist countries and democratic countries was referred to as the Iron Curtain. Churchill used this nickname because it was heavily guarded and many Eastern Europeans trying to escape to the west were either shot, or captured and imprisoned.

A few months after the war, the organisation known as the United Nations (UN) was formed. It was intended to ensure world peace. The principles of the UN were negotiated between the four main WWII allies - UK, USA, China and USSR but when it was established, 51 nations signed up. The USA and USSR did not agree with each other much and so the UN was generally able to carry out peacekeeping in situations that did not involve those two countries.