Cold War

• The Cold War period

  1940s-1990s
• The Cold War


  A 50-year period of intense political rivalry and military tension that started in the aftermath of World War II
• The Cold War was not a standard war with military battles and fighting, but a political standoff between two ideologies and the two largest superpowers at the time, the United States and the USSR
• The Cold War began in the late 1940s when the Victorious Allied Powers, particularly the US and the Soviet Union, found themselves at odds over the future of Europe and Asia
• The US and the Soviet Union


  • The US championed democracy, capitalism, and individual freedoms
  • The Soviet Union promoted communism and the idea of a classless society
• The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan


  1. Pledging support for nations threatened by communism

  2. Providing economic aid to help war-torn European countries to rebuild
• These initiatives aimed to contain the spread of communism and foster stability in Europe
• At the end of World War II, Germany was split into two, with the US, UK, and France taking one part and the USSR taking the other part
• Berlin, Germany's capital, was also split between the powers, which led to further tension
• The Berlin Blockade in 1948

  1. The Soviet Union blocked all land and water access to West Berlin

  2. The US and its allies launched the Berlin airlift, which supplied the city with essential goods by air for nearly a year
• The Soviets knew that if they were to shoot down any planes, it would surely result in war, and eventually, in 1949, they stopped the blockade
• The arms race


  1. Both superpowers engaged in developing increasingly powerful nuclear weapons

  2. The fear of mutually assured destruction kept them from direct conflict, but the world lived under the constant threat of nuclear war
• The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962


  1. The US discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba, which could attack the whole of the continental United States

  2. The US also had missiles in Turkey made to target Moscow in the event of war

  3. This led to a tense standoff, but eventually, both sides agreed to remove their missiles, avoiding a catastrophic conflict
• The Cold War played out in proxy wars around the globe, such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War, where the US and the Soviet Union supported opposing sides
• These conflicts resulted in immense human suffering and political tension, and they still affect the world today, with a communist Vietnam and a divided Korean Peninsula
• The Cold War extended into space exploration, with the US and the Soviet Union competing to achieve milestones like the first human in space and the moon landing, leading to significant advancements in science and technology
• By the late 1980s, the Soviet Union faced economic and political challenges that weakened its grip on Eastern Europe, and the policies of the final Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, such as glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), contributed to the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, along with all other communist puppet states
• The Cold War, which lasted for nearly five decades, shaped the course of human history and left a huge mark on the world, which is still felt today
• The Cold War has what some might call a resurgence in the recent years with the invasion of Ukraine, but that is for a different video