4: Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 | History File

1: Berlin 1945-48 | History File

Compilation of secondary schools programme about the Cold War, featuring Berlin Crisis, Hungarian Uprising, rise of Soviet leader Nikita Khr...

1: Deja Vu (1858-1961) | The Vietnam War

Revolutionaries led by Ho Chi Minh end French colonial occupation. Vietnam is divided in two at Geneva.

Cold War

Both the United States and the Soviet Union drifted apart after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War and the Paris Peace Conference. Diplomatic and...

14: Red Spring: 1960s | Cold War

Likewise the Soviet Union started the decade with growing openness and optimism. There was also an emerging cohort of youth with no memory o...

2: Iron Curtain: 1945-1947 | Cold War

The wartime allies demobilise - the United States enjoys its economic strength and resurgence while Britain and the rest of Europe is e...

4: Berlin: 1948-1949 | Cold War

By 1947, the United States placed as a high priority the revival of the German economy, an approach opposed by the Soviet Union. After the in...

16: Détente: 1969-1975

Nixon builds closer relations with China and the USSR, hoping to leverage an honourable US exit from Indochina. The Soviet Union is fearful of a US-C...

3: Marshall Plan: 1947-1952 | Cold War

For both altruistic and self-serving purposes, the United States provides massive grants of aid to the countries of Europe in the form...

23: The Wall Comes Down: 1989 | Cold War

Gorbachev makes clear Eastern European countries were free to determine their own destinies. In Poland Solidarity enters into negoti...

4: 1951 Korea | Peter and Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields

Peter and Dan Snow, at the border between North and South Korea, tell of two key moments in the years of fighti...

9: The Wall: 1958-1963 | Cold War

West Germany, and West Berlin, become more affluent, prompting a surge of East Germans to cross the borders in Berlin, kept open under the ...

The Looking Glass War | Strange Days: Cold War Britain

Dominic Sandbrook examines the Cold War years, looking at the frontline of the conflict as consumerism was pitched aga...

10: Cuba: 1959-1962 | Cold War

Fidel Castro comes to power following the Cuban Revolution. Cuba aligns itself with the Soviet Union and the government starts nationalising A...

11: The Cold War Confrontation | Twentieth Century History

The Berlin blockade of 1948-49 and the Korean War 1950-53.

3: U2 and the Arms Race 1956-60 | History File

Compilation of secondary schools programme about the Cold War, featuring Berlin Crisis, Hungarian Uprising, rise of Soviet lea...

5: Korea: 1949-1953 | Cold War

Korea after the Second World War was occupied by both the Soviets and the Americans, who respectively installed Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee a...

Red Dawn | Strange Days: Cold War Britain

Historian Dominic Sandbrook examines the Cold War. He looks at the first chilling years of the conflict, when the opposing ideologi...

12: Mr Kennedy and Mr Khruschev | Twentieth Century History

The contest between the United States and the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1963 leading to the Cuban Missile Cri...

15: 1951: Asia Rising | People's Century

Through thrift, hard work and discipline, Japan and later South Korea enjoy economic miracles that bring growth, prosperity and conf...

22: Star Wars: 1981-1988 | Cold War

Reagan's 1983 ''Evil Empire'' speech sets the tone for a more aggressive US posture against the Soviet Union, and the costly arms race is...