Characteristics

1. The Cold War was non-confrontational and no true conflicts were ever fought directly between the USSR and the USA.
2. In 1949, the prospect of further communist expansion prompted the US and 11 other western nations to form the North American Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and other communist nations in Eastern Europe formed their own, rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. The organization of Europe into these two alliances re-erupted WWII tensions and provided the framework for the standoff that continued through the cold war.
3. The members of the Republic of China did not want to be under a communist government (that of the People’s Republic of China) so they fled to Taiwan.
4. The mutual distrust, suspicion, and misunderstandings by both the United States and the Soviet Union, and their allies, caused increasing tensions among people and increased the likelihood of a third world war, which was widely considered to probably escalate to nuclear war.
5. In Germany, the country was controlled by both the west and the Soviet Union, and was divided into West and East Germany. Berlin was divided between the countries as well.