So ill do a basic coverage of literally the entire subject really quickly. Please bear in mind i do not study this but have a very good understanding of the time period irregardless. So after the 2nd world war ended fascism (Hitler and Mussolini) has been defeated leaving 2 other main ideologies in the world.
Socialism and
Capitalism, I attached links
. Basically, Americans were worried that socialism would become too strong and take over the world whilst the Soviets worried capitalism would become too strong and take over the world. This lead to huge tensions between the two, so much so that the borders between the allies of the Soviets and Americans were blockaded off, creating what was called 'the iron curtain' between the two alliances (called NATO for america and the Comniform for the soviets). After world war two germany was split into two countries, the east followed socialism and the west followed capitalism, but Berlin (which was in the eastern side) was half owned by the western government. The soviets refused to let any supplies into the western half of Berlin due to tensions but NATO used bomber planes to drop supplies into the city (which was called the Berlin Airlift). While this happened China had a civil war between a socialist government (lead by mao tse-tung/ mao zedong) and a capitalist government, the socialists eventually won. After ww2 korea (which was Japanese) was divided equally between the US (who got the south) and Soviets (who got the north) but after time the two went to war, causing the korean war ending with no clear winner (which created north and south korea today). A similar thing to China happened in Vietnam, with the americans using chemical weapons (like
napalm) but losing embarrassingly to the much inferior Vietcong (the socialists). To simplify the space race and arms race, basically both were babies and had to have what the other had if it was slightly better so competed to make the biggest achievement (sputnik, Soviets, was the first satellite into space, where as Apollo (america) was the first to the moon. Then theres cuba, so
Fidel Castro led a socialist revolution in Cuba (which is right next to america) which worried america as they didnt want to be invaded. America had built nuclear missle bases in Turkey (near Russia) which worried the Soviets a lot so they wanted to build a nuclear missle base in Cuba to even things up. The americans got very worried at this and the conflict near created a nuclear war between the two powers. If not for the careful coordination of JFK (the american president) the americans would have started a war that could have killed millions. Sorry i know this is a long message and is missing A LOT of details and events but i hope this helps you atleast a little. if you take away anything
please look at the links, they are very usful. If you need anything more please contact me