5707–5751 AM · 1947 CE — 1991 CE · world history
The Cold War
For forty years the world divides between two superpowers under the shadow of nuclear war.
For forty years the world will be divided between two superpowers. Wartime allies become adversaries. An iron curtain divides Europe, NATO and the Warsaw Pact form, and arms and space races begin. There is no direct clash, but wars burn in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, and the 1962 Cuban crisis brings the world closer to nuclear war than ever before or since.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the Fulton speech, the NATO and Warsaw Pact treaties, the Cuban missile crisis papers
Scholarship
- studies in Cold War history — the arms race and the proxy wars: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan
Basis: documents and evidence.