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Introduction

A cartoon by Art Wood reflects the fear of a world-wide nuclear war that developed after the Russians successfully tested an atomic weapon in 1949.

Children cheer as a U.S. cargo plane with supplies for West Berlin flies overhead during the Soviet blockade of 1948–49.

A Cuban refugee in Miami, Florida, watches U.S. president John F. Kennedy address the nation about the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The world had never experienced anything like it. The Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States was a half century of military build-up, political maneuvering for international support, and behind-the-scenes military assistance for allies and satellite nations that began in the late 1940s and continued into the early 1990s. Both sides of the conflict wanted to avoid direct military action because of the threat of mutual nuclear destruction. But the period was punctuated by explosive situations that threatened to bring open war, including the Berlin Airlift (1948-1949), the Korean Conflict (1950-1953), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Vietnam War (1964-1975), and the Afghan Invasion (1979-1989). In December 1989, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George Bush officially ended the Cold War at a summit in Malta, but tensions between the two superpowers lingered for years.

Essential Facts

1. Winston Churchill issued warnings about the Soviet Union as early as 1946 when he claimed that an “Iron Curtain” had fallen across Eastern Europe to describe the Soviet Union’s grasp for power in the region. The term was used throughout the Cold War.
2. The first major event of the Cold War involved the amazing effort of British and American pilots to keep West Berlin supplied after the Soviet government closed all outside ground traffic. Between June 1948 and September 1949, pilots made 277,000 flights into West Berlin, carrying more than two million tons of products including coal for fuel.
3. The end of the Cold War also saw the fall of the Soviet Union, which had united the countries of eastern and central Europe and much of northern Asia under communist rule. The break-up of the union changed the face of Europe and kept mapmakers busy as over twenty new countries emerged or reemerged over the next several years.
4. In the late 1980s, the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union occurred with the defeat of the Communist party in Poland by the Solidarity Movement, a labor union led by Lech Walesa. Walesa risked his life and spent time in prison to found the Union.
5. The Cold War was incredibly expensive over its four decades, costing the U.S. eight trillion dollars in military expenditures and over 100,000 lives in Korea and Vietnam. Although the exact figures for the Soviet Union are unknown, they spent a larger percentage of their gross national product on the war, maybe as much as 60 percent.