The ENTIRE History of the Cold War Explained

The Cold War is the only war in history where the two main armies never once faced each other on a battlefield — and it still came closer to ending the world than any war that did. This is the entire history of the Cold War, explained in one video, from the collapse of the wartime alliance in 1945 to the red flag coming down over the Kremlin in 1991. We go through the whole thing in order: how the alliance that beat Hitler fell apart within months, why Stalin cut off West Berlin and how a city of two million was fed entirely by air, how Korea became the template for every proxy war that followed, and how thirteen days in October 1962 came down to one Soviet officer in a submarine refusing to agree. You will see why the Wall went up, why it came down by mistake, and what actually kept the missiles in their silos for forty six years. IN THIS VIDEO • How the wartime alliance broke apart between 1945 and 1947, and what an "iron curtain" really meant • The Berlin Blockade and the airlift that kept a city alive for eleven months • Korea, and the birth of the proxy war that both sides could fight without fighting • The U-2 shot down over Sverdlovsk, the Wall going up, and the photograph taken on October 14th • Thirteen days, Black Saturday, and the deal that almost nobody was told about • The autumn of 1983, and the night a wall opened because of a badly answered question Which moment do you think came closest to nuclear war — Black Saturday in 1962, or the autumn of 1983? Tell me in the comments, I read all of them. #ColdWar #History #AnimatedHistory #CubanMissileCrisis #BerlinWall CHAPTERS 0:00 Never Once Face To Face 1:04 An Iron Curtain 2:12 Berlin Gets Cut Off 3:21 The Board Gets Set 4:33 Seven Hundred Hiroshimas 5:42 Shot Down Over Sverdlovsk 6:52 The Photograph, October Fourteenth 7:53 What Kennedy Didn't Know 8:53 Black Saturday 9:59 The Hotline Myth 11:04 Two Unwinnable Wars 12:21 A Wall Falls By Mistake 12:53 The Flag Comes Down SOURCES & FURTHER READING • U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian — Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations (1945–1991) • U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability — treaty texts and implementation records (Hotline MOU 1963, LTBT 1963, INF 1987) • National Security Archive, George Washington University — Cuban Missile Crisis collections, Havana conference proceedings, 1983 war scare / PFIAB report (declassified 2015), Petrov and B-59 documents • John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum — ExComm tapes, 22 October 1962 address, crisis chronology • Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum — Truman Doctrine and Berlin Airlift collections • CIA, Center for the Study of Intelligence / National Photographic Interpretation Center — declassified U-2 and OXCART history, October 1962 imagery • U.S. Air Force Historical Support Division and Air Mobility Command History Office — Operation Vittles records • National Museum of the United States Air Force — U-2 incident and Maj. Rudolf Anderson Jr. records This video is for educational and entertainment purposes. History is told here in a simplified, illustrated form: some details are condensed, and where historians disagree the narration says so. Sources are listed above — use them as a starting point to explore further.