The Butter Battle Book is the allegorical story of two opposing archrivals, the Yooks and the Zooks. Both sides are similar in every way, except the Yooks butter their bread on the topside whereas the Zooks buttered their bread on the bottom.

The two nations are separated by a wall. The two main characters are young-looking (even though their features are largely undistinguishable since they are unlike any Earthian species) at the beginning of the story, but become progressively older as the story goes on. This shows the extremely long period of time over which the symbolized war took place; over 50 years.

The story is told from the point of view of the main field soldier of the Yooks. At the beginning, he begins a quarrel with a Zook over a pointless matter. Each side's hate for the other stems only from their trivial buttering differences.

Now, after each small quarrel, the main Yook goes to his commander, who after each small battle promotes the soldier and gives him a bigger, stronger weapon. After a certain point, both sides start making the exact same weapon, until the very last one, which I will refer to later on.

Dr. Seuss made the Americans and Soviets in the Cold War the Yooks and the Zooks in the Butter War, respectively. The narrator's archrival is a Zook by the name of Von Itch, an eastern European name. The narrator always confronts Von Itch with his new weapons, and each time goes back to his headquarters for a better one. Such was the story with the Americans and Soviets; during the Cold War, the two sides clashed in everything from space exploration to the weapons race.

After each satellite the Soviets launched and each missile the Soviets produced, American physicists worked day and night to build a better satellite, a more powerful bomb.

The point came in the midst of the Cold War where each side had built enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other country multiple times, thus creating two decades of insecurity and instability. The name "Von Itch" indicates eastern European origin, clearly representing the Soviet Union. Also, the lead weapons-maker for the narrator's affiliation looks remarkably like Dr. Oppenheimer, the head of the United State's Manhattan Project in the 1940's and 1950's.

To Americans, WWIII was imminent. The rest of the world was positive one side would launch a nuclear bomb, but no one was sure which side it would be.

The Butter Battle Book ends in a similar fashion. The narrator (who by now is old and hunched over) is given a final weapon by his superior. The weapon is "The Bitsy Big Boy Boomeroo, which can blow the Zooks clear to Salamagoo!". It is filled with the mysterious "moo-kla-moo", which is the story-world equivalent to the plutonium in nuclear bombs. Before the narrator drops it, his superior orders all the Yooks into "Yookeries", much like our own Fallout Shelters of the time.

The story was published in 1984, when the Cold War was not yet over. Dr. Seuss did not know how to properly finsih the story since it was unclear exactly who would win the war. The narrator is finally seen on top of the dividing wall, holding the glowing egg (the glow indicates its radiactivity) over the other side, facing Von Itch who is holding his own Bitsy Big Boy Boomeroo over the Yook side.

The old and tired-looking narrator tells his grandson to watch as he makes history, and Seuss ends the story with this cliffhanger:

"Be careful Grandpa,
Be careful! Oh gee!
Who will drop it, will you or will he?"
"I don't know," Grandpa replied,
"We'll see.
We shall see."

Dr.Seuss artfully taught a generation of youngsters the story of the Cold War through The Butter Battle Book. It was one of the last famous stories he wrote, composed only 7 years before his death in 1991.