Cold War

Though ideological enemies, the Soviet Union and the United States are allies against Hitler during World War II. At the end of the War, Europe is divided and the one-time allies now confront each other. The United States has the atomic bomb.

The Soviet Union dominates Eastern Europe. Churchill warns about the consequences. Stalin insists that the governments of the Soviet Union's client states be pro-Communist. Impoverished after the war, Great Britain opts out as a world power.

The United States adopts the Truman Doctrine--it will defend freedom, worldwide. Secretary of State George Marshall plans to bolster economic recovery in Europe. Stalin sees this as a threat, and forbids his satellites to participate. The world divides.

Berlin is a Western enclave in Eastern Europe. The Soviets blockade the city, but the allies airlift in supplies. NATO is formed. In August 1949, Soviet scientists explode an atom bomb, establishing nuclear parity between the two world superpowers.

Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China--the country is now lost to the West. In June 1950, North Korea invades the South, with Stalin's blessing. The United States, backed by the United Nations, defends South Korea and confronts China.

The world is polarized across an ideological divide. Following Stalin's domination of Eastern Europe, and the loss of China, American democracy succumbs to a bout of anti-communist hysteria, but survives it. Eisenhower is elected President.

Thaw is conceivable with Stalin dead and Eisenhower in the White House. Stalin's chief of secret police is arrested and shot. Krushchev outmaneuvers Malenkov, for power and visits the West.

In the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union seems to be forging ahead. In October 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik orbits the earth-to the dismay of the United States, which is frustrated with its own unsuccessful space program.

Stalin's death has brought about détente, but the fate of Germany is unresolved. West Germany is admitted to NATO. Thousands of East Germans escape to the West through Berlin. At the Vienna Summit in 1961, Khrushchev bullies the inexperienced Kennedy.

Contemplating U.S. missile power installed around the Soviet periphery, Krushchev decides to install short and medium range missiles in Cuba, America's backyard. The sites are detected and the U.S. blockades the island.

Since the end of the French colonial rule, Vietnam has been divided. The north is run by Communists, the south by anti-Communists.

The USA and the USSR confront each other, each armed with nuclear weapons. Each side must deter the other. Bombing the enemy could mean provoking retaliation and self-destruction.

Western Economies grow and prosper, fueled partly by armaments production. Rejecting their parents' affluence and the Cold War, the young protest and rebel. There is racial violence in U.S. inner cities.

In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, denial of freedom and incentive stifles ambition and achievement. The young lust for totems of America's youth culture--blue jeans and rock-and-roll.

Chinese Communists are victorious in the longest civil war in 20th century history. Mao Zedong's reforms are popular, but in 1958, he embarks on a series of catastrophic changes. A famine that kills 30 million people follows.

The North Vietnamese overwhelm U.S.-backed forces in the South and the United States steps up its bombing campaign. Nixon goes to the Kremlin to meet Brezhnev and signs the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).

Across the world, the two superpowers back surrogates engaging in ideological and, sometimes, physical conflict. In the Middle East, the United States arms Israel; the Soviet Union arms Syria and Egypt. In 1967 and 1973, the two weapons systems clash.

The United States has always regarded Latin America as its own back yard. In 1954, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz is overthrown by U.S.-backed forces. Arbenz is leftist, not Communist.

As the United States absorbs the hike in OPEC oil prices and concerns for human rights in the East grows, the spirit of détente ebbs away.

Afghanistan is a brutal war that costs the lives of almost 15,000 Soviet conscripts and an estimated one million Afghans. "It was the Soviet Union's Vietnam syndrome," says Soviet aide Anatoly Chernyaev.

Even before the end of World War II, spies prepare for post-war world order. Beginning in 1944, KGB spies infiltrate Los Alamos, stealing information about the atomic bomb.

Ronald Reagan pledges to defeat the "evil empire," but abhors the idea of nuclear war. He is prepared to increase arms expenditure significantly to protect the United States.

The dominoes fall: incredibly quickly, the Soviet bloc is breaking up, virtually without bloodshed.

The United States proves the stronger and the Soviet Union implodes. The balance of terror that has kept the peace in Europe for more than 40 years vanishes, but no new world order readily emerges.