From the closing days of World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall, our nation led the struggle to save the free and democratic countries of the world from communist aggression. In addition to the thousands of service members who fought communist forces during "hot" wars such as Korea and Vietnam, many risked -- and some lost -- their lives while collecting vital intelligence on military forces of the Soviet Bloc, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea during "peacetime." The sacrifice made by these Cold War Warriors enabled the United States and our allies to contain the threat of communist expansion until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since its creation in 1993, DPMO has continued our government's efforts to resolve the case of every American service member who remains unaccounted for. Specifically from the Cold War era (1946-1991), we have continued to investigate the fourteen missions in which aircrew members were lost and remain unaccounted for.

http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/coldwar/coldwar_history.htm

OVERVIEW

As Allied victory in Europe became a certainty in 1945, tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union emerged. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945 the allies "Big Three," (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) discussed a peaceful post-War Europe, but Stalin was determined to maintain and increase Soviet influence and control of Eastern Europe.

The Cold War (Russian: Холо́дная война́, Kholodnaya voyna, 1947–91) was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition existing after World War II (1939–1945), primarily between the Soviet Union and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. Although the primary participants' military forces never officially clashed directly, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, a nuclear arms race, economic and technological competitions, such as the Space Race.

The alliance that defeated Nazi Germany in World War II would not long survive the peace. Within a few years, the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a Cold War, a competition of ideologies and systems: democracy versus communism, capitalism versus socialism. American leaders adopted a policy of containment of communism, which defined the U.S. efforts for the next four decades. The Soviet Union's explosion of its own atomic bomb in 1949 transformed the Cold War into a nuclear standoff. The conflict spread worldwide pitting the Soviet bloc against a series of U.S. dominated alliances, the most important of which was NATO (formed in 1949). The "third" or developing world proved a new battleground for the two superpowers.

Despite being allies against the Axis powers and having the most powerful military forces among peer nations, the USSR and the US disagreed about the configuration of the post-war world while occupying most of Europe. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing some as Soviet Socialist Republics and maintaining others as satellite states, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991). The US and some western European countries established containment of communism as a defensive policy, establishing alliances such as NATO to that end.

There were periods of extreme East-West tension, such as the Berlin Blockade of 1948, the Berlin crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963. The United States called upon its democratic ideology, its military forces, its industrial might, and its technological strength to withstand the challenge thrown down by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev who in 1956 famously promised, "We will bury you."

Several such countries also coordinated the Marshall Plan, especially in West Germany, which the USSR opposed. Elsewhere, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR assisted and helped foster communist revolutions, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back, with mixed results. Some countries aligned with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and others formed the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Cold War featured periods of relative calm and of international high tension – the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), and the Able Archer 83 NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides sought détente to relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack, which would likely guarantee their mutual assured destruction with nuclear weapons.

The Cold War also witnessed actual conflicts, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Soviet War in Afghanistan. Yet, the ultimate achievement of the Cold War was the avoidance of a direct, major war, particularly a mutually destructive nuclear conflict, between the Soviet Union and the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

END OF THE COLD WAR

End of the Cold War came as a surprise, although there were signposts on the road to a post-Cold War world: East Europeans were never reconciled to Soviet domination as evidenced by East Germany demonstrations in 1953, the Hungarian uprising in 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, and the rift between China and the Soviet Union which shattered the myth of monolithic communism.

A series of Strategic Arms Control agreements and treaties (Anti-Ballistic Missile and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) throughout the late 50's into the 1960s reduced, at least in perception, the danger of mutual destruction. Signed in 1972 by President Richard Nixon and Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty brought a respite from Cold War tensions. The treaty remained in place until the US unilaterally withdrew from it in June 2002.

In the 1980s the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on the Soviet Union, which was suffering from economic stagnation due to a draining war in Afghanistan, growing opposition among the populations of client states, and increasing social discontent due to the failures of its command economy to meet the rising demand for consumer goods. In the mid-1980s, under Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union undertook a series of reforms; "perestroika" (reconstruction) and "glasnost" (openness).

President Ronald Reagan, who had once described the Soviet Union as "an evil empire," underwent his own transformation as he witnessed Soviet client states of Eastern Europe gaining greater independence from Moscow and dramatic political and economic changes in the Soviet Union itself. On June 12, 1987, Reagan stood before the Berlin Wall, the symbol of a Europe divided between East and West, and declared: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization…Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" On December 21, 1989, East and West Germans began dismanteling the wall as border guards watched. For the next two years, the Soviet Union moved towards reform and democracy, which an attempted military coup in August 1991 could not derail. By the end of 1991 the Soviet Union officially dissolved itself. The Cold War, which had dominated the second half of the 20th century, ended.

DPMO ACCOUNTING HISTORY

While tensions among the superpowers in the late 1940s through the 1960s brought us perilously close to major conflict, most Americans understood the term "Cold War" to mean a "non-shooting" war. It was anything but that for the U.S. servicemembers shot down or otherwise lost while performing their duty. DPMO tracks more than 120 who are still missing in action from that conflict. DPMO specialists continue to pursue all leads and have succeeded in bringing the remains of many of these men home again through their work with Russia and China.