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Course: World History Project - 1750 to the Present > Unit 8
Lesson 2: The Cold War | 8.1- READ: Devastation of Old Markets
- READ: The Cold War — An Overview
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War
- WATCH: USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War
- READ: The Cold War Around the World
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Decolonization and Cold War Through a Caribbean Lens
- WATCH: Decolonization and the Cold War - Through a Caribbean Lens
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Decolonization and the Cold War Through an Asian Lens
- WATCH: Decolonization and the Cold War through an Asian Lens
- READ: Connecting Decolonization and the Cold War
- READ: Collapse of Communism
- The Cold War
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WATCH: USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War
In which John Green teaches you about the Cold War, which was occasionally hot, but on average, it was just cool. In the sense of its temperature. It was by no means cool, man. After World War II, there were basically two big geopolitical powers left to divide up the world. And divide they did. The United States and the Soviet Union divvied up Europe in the aftermath of the war, and then proceeded to spend the next 45 years fighting over the rest of the world. It was the great ideological struggle, with the US on the side of capitalism and profit, and the USSR pushing Communism, so-called. While both sides presented themselves as the good guy in this situation, the reality is that there are no good guys. Both parties to the Cold War engaged in forcible regime changes, built up vast nuclear arsenals, and basically got up to dirty tricks. If you had to pick a bad guy though, I would point out that the USSR had no intention of bringing Laika the Cosmonaut Dog home alive. That poor dog never had a shot.
Sorry to disappoint, but the economist t-shirts are not a real product.
Thanks to Raoul Meyer for the YUGOGAL photo.
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Want to join the conversation?
- Wait how did The cold war even start I dont think they answerd that(7 votes)
- In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People's Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option.(1 vote)
- Sometimes its better not to ask why john green has "This machine kills fascists" on his laptop...(6 votes)
- Off topic, but if russia has the most nuclear power, then where do they test the bombs?(4 votes)
- Siberia, or underground. That's where they used to. Whether or not they still test nuclear weapons by blowing them up is unknown.(4 votes)
- 6:24Didn't China supply the Viet Cong?(2 votes)
- Yes, indeed it did. China, also being communist, wanted to keep the North Vietnamese in power. Plus, they had developed a relationship and many Chinese people saw what the North Vietnamese were trying to do as akin to their own revolution that switched them to a communist structure under Mao Zedong. China supplied arms and ammunition to the Viet Cong until well into the 1970's, where they backed off because they wanted a better relationship with the US, because of Mao's cultural revolution upending the whole place, and other reasons. The video doesn't mention all that perhaps because it's looking at Vietnam from the perspective of US vs. USSR.(6 votes)
- WAIT A MINUTE! at7:39America is not the bad guys-- only RUSSIA!(2 votes)
- Thank you sir. I detest the fact that America's wrongdoing is overplayed and Russia's is downplayed.(5 votes)
- So let me get this straight, the Cuban Missile Crisis was going on during the Cold War? (please dont flag this)(2 votes)
- Yes. It was. My mother was very worried, and I was in 6th grade then.(2 votes)
- do parts of the berlin wall still stand(2 votes)
- For the most part, it was torn down. A few sections may still remain though as historical artifacts.(1 vote)
- incredibly biased.(2 votes)
- bro is whereing adidas shoes(1 vote)
- Wait how did The cold war even start(1 vote)
Video transcript
Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course
World History and today we’re gonna talk about the Cold War, which actually lasted
into my lifetime, which means that I can bore you with stories from my past like your grandpa
does. When I was a kid, they made us practice hiding under our desks in the event of a nuclear
attack, because, you know, school desks are super good at repelling radiation. Mr. Green, Mr. Green! Right, remember in elementary
school there was this special guest who’d defected from the Soviet Union, and he had-- Like this crazy Russian accent and he kept
going on and on about how Reagan should spit in Gorbachev’s face instead of signing treaties
with him. And I was like, whoa dude calm down. You’re
in a room full of third graders. And then for like months afterward on the
playground, we’d play Reagan-Gorbachev and spit in each other’s faces. Those were the days.
Sometimes I forget that you’re me, Me from the Past. Yeah, it’s just really nice to talk to you
and feel like you’re lis -- You’re boring. Cue the intro. [theme music] So the Cold War was a rivalry between the
USSR and the USA that played out globally. We’ve tried to shy away from calling conflicts
ideological or civilizational here on Crash Course, but in this case, the “clash of
civilizations” model really does apply. Socialism, at least as Marx constructed it,
wanted to take over the world, and many Soviets saw themselves in a conflict with bourgeois
capitalism itself. And the Soviets saw American rebuilding efforts in Europe and Japan as
the U.S. trying to expand its markets, which, by the way, is exactly what we were doing. So the U.S. feared that the USSR wanted to
destroy democratic and capitalist institutions. And the Soviets feared that the US wanted
to use its money and power to dominate Europe and eventually destroy the Soviet system.
And both parties were right to be worried. It’s not paranoia if they really are out
to get you. Now of course we’ve seen a lot of geopolitical
struggles between major world powers here on Crash Course, but this time there was the
special added bonus that war could lead to the destruction of the human species. That
was new for world history, and it’s worth remembering: It’s still new. Here’s the
period of time we’ve discussed on Crash Course. And this is how long we’ve had the
technological capability to exterminate ourselves. So that’s worrisome. Immediately after World War II, the Soviets
created a sphere of influence in eastern Europe, dominating the countries where the Red Army
had pushed back the Nazis, which is why Winston Churchill famously said in 1946 that an “Iron
Curtain” had descended across Europe. While the dates of the Cold War are usually
given between 1945 and 1990, a number of historians will tell you that it actually started during
World War II. Stalin’s distrust of the U.S. and Britain kept growing as they refused to
invade Europe and open up a second front against the Nazis. And some even say that the decision
to drop the first Atomic Bombs on Japan was motivated in part by a desire to intimidate
the Soviets. That sort of worked, but only insofar as it motivated the Soviets to develop
atomic bombs of their own — they successfully tested their first one in 1949. From the beginning, the U.S had the advantage
because it had more money and power and could provide Europe protection (what with its army
and one of a kind nuclear arsenal) while Europe rebuilt. The USSR had to rebuild itself, and
also they had the significant disadvantage of being controlled by noted asshat Joseph
Stalin. I will remind you, it’s not cursing if he’s wearing an ass for a hat. Oh, I
guess it’s time for the open letter. An Open Letter to Joseph Stalin. But first, let’s see what’s in the secret
compartment today. Oh, it’s silly putty. Silly putty: the thing
that won the Cold War. This is exactly the kind of useless consumer good that would never
have been produced in the Soviet Union. And it is because we had so much more consumer
spending, on stuff like silly putty, that we won the Cold War. Go team! Dear Joseph Stalin, You really sucked. There
was a great moment in your life, at your first wife’s funeral, when you said, “I don’t
think I shall ever love again.” And then later, you had that wife’s whole family
killed. Putting aside the fact that you’re responsible for tens of millions of deaths,
I don’t like you because of the way that you treated your son, Yakov. I mean, you were
really mean to him and then he shot himself and he didn’t die and you said, “He can’t
even shoot straight.” And then later, when he was captured during World War II, you had
a chance to exchange prisoners for him, but you declined. And then he died in a prison
camp. You were a terrible leader, a terrible person, and a terrible father. Best wishes,
John Green All right, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
Europe was the first battleground of the Cold War, especially Germany, which was divided
into 2 parts with the former capital, Berlin, also divided into 2 parts. And yes, I know
the western part was divided into smaller occupation zones, but I’m simplifying. In
1948, the Soviets tried to cut off West Berlin, by closing the main road that led into the
city, but the Berlin airlift stopped them. And then in 1961, the Soviets tried again
and this time they were much more successful building a wall around West Berlin, although
it’s worth noting that the thing was up for less than 30 years. I mean, Meatloaf’s
career has lasted longer than the Berlin Wall did. The U.S. response to the Soviets was a policy
called containment; it basically involved stopping the spread of communism by standing
up to the Soviets wherever they seemed to want to expand. In Europe this meant spending
a lot of money. First the Marshall Plan spent $13 billion on re-building western Europe with
grants and credits that Europeans would spend on American consumer goods and on construction.
Capitalism’s cheap food and plentiful stuff, it was hoped, would stop the spread of communism. The US also tried to slow the spread of communism
by founding NATO and with CIA interventions in elections where communists had a chance,
as in Italy. But despite all the great spy novels and shaken not stirred martinis, the
Cold War never did heat up in Europe. Probably the most important part of the Cold
War that people just don’t remember these days is the nuclear arms race. Both sides
developed nuclear arsenals, the Soviets initially with the help of spies who stole American
secrets. Eventually the nuclear arsenals were so big that the U.S. and USSR agreed on a
strategy appropriately called MAD, which stood for “mutually assured destruction.” Thanks
Thought Bubble. And yes, nuclear weapons were, and are, capable
of destroying humanity many times over. But only once or twice did we get close to nuclear
war: during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and then again in 1983, when we forgot to
give the Russians the heads up that we were doing some war games, which made it look like
we had launched a first strike. OUR BAD! But even though mutually assured destruction
prevented direct conflict, there was plenty of hot war in the Cold War. The Korean War
saw lots of fighting between communists and capitalists, as did the Vietnam War. I mean,
these days we remember “the domino effect” as silly paranoia, but after Korea and especially
China became communist, Vietnam’s movement toward communism seemed very much a threat
to Japan, which the U.S. had helped re-make into a vibrant capitalist ally. So the US
got bogged down in one of its longest wars while the Soviets assisted the North Vietnamese
army in the Viet Cong. But then we paid them back by supporting the
anti-communist mujaheddin after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Of course, as
we now know, nobody conquers Afghanistan …unless you are the mongols.
[Mongoltage] So after 10 disastrous years, the Soviets
finally abandoned Afghanistan. Some of those mujahideen later became members
of the Taliban, though, so it’s difficult to say that anyone won that war. But it wasn’t just Asia: In Nicaragua, the
US supported rebels to overthrow the leftist government; in El Salvador, the US bolstered
authoritarian regimes that were threatened by left-wing guerrillas. The United States
ended up supporting a lot of awful governments, like the one in Guatemala, which held onto
power through the use of death squads. Frankly, all our attempts to stabilize governments
in Latin America led to some very unstable Latin American governments, and quite a lot
of violence. And then there were the luke-warm conflicts,
like The Suez Crisis where British and French paratroopers were sent in to try to stop Egypt
from nationalizing the Suez canal. Or all the American covert operations to keep various
countries from “falling” to communism. These included the famous CIA-engineered coup
to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after his
government attempted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. And the CIA helping Chile’s
General Augusto Pinochet overthrow democratically elected Marxist president Salvador Allende
in 1973. And lest we think the Americans were the only
bad guys in this, the Soviets used force to crush popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956
and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. So, you may have noticed that our discussion
of the Cold War has branched out from Europe to include Asia, and the Middle East, and
Latin America. And in fact, almost every part of the globe was involved in some way with
the planet being divided into three “worlds.” The first world was the U.S., Western Europe
and any place that embraced capitalism and a more or less democratic form of government.
The Second World was the Soviet Union and its satellites, mostly the Warsaw Pact nations,
China and Cuba. The Third World was everyone else and we don’t use this term anymore because it
lumps together a hugely diverse range of countries. We’ll talk more about the specific economic
and development challenges faced by the so-called “Third World countries,” but the big one
in terms of the Cold War, was that neither the U.S. nor the Soviets wanted any of these
countries to remain neutral. Every nation was supposed to pick sides, either capitalist
or communist, and while it seems like an easy choice now, in the 50s and 60s, it wasn’t
nearly so clear. I mean, for a little while, it seemed like the Soviets might come out
ahead, at least in the Third World. For a while, capitalism, and especially the United
States, seemed to lose some of its luster. The US propped up dictatorships, had a poor
civil rights record, we sucked at women’s gymnastics. Plus, the Soviets were the first
to put a satellite, a man, and a dog into space. Plus, Marxists just seemed cooler,
which is why you never see Milton Friedman t-shirts… until now available at DFTBA.com.
I like that, Stan, but I’m more of a centrist. Can I get a Keynes shirt? Yes. That, now that’s
hot. But Soviet socialism did not finally prove
to be a viable alternative to industrial capitalism. Over time, state-run economies just generally
don’t fare as well as private enterprise, and people like living in a world where they
can have more stuff. More importantly, Soviet policies were just bad: collectivized agriculture
stymied production and led to famine; suppression of dissent and traditional cultures made people angry; and
no one likes suffering the humiliation of driving a Yugo. But why the Cold War ended when it did is
one of the most interesting questions of the 20th century. It probably wasn’t Ronald
Reagan bankrupting the Soviets, despite what some politicians believe. The USSR had more
satellite states that it needed to spend more to prop up than the U.S. had to invest in
its Allies. And the Soviet system could never keep up with economic growth in the West.
But, probably the individual most responsible for the end of the Cold War was Mikhail Baryshnikov.
No? Mikhail Gorbachev? Well, that’s boring. I always thought the Soviets danced their
way to freedom. No? It was Glasnost and Perestroika? Alright. But Gorbachev’s Perestroika and Glasnost
opened up the Soviet political and economic systems with contested local elections, less
restricted civil society groups, less censorship, more autonomy for the Soviet Republics, more
non-state-run businesses and more autonomy for state-run farms. Glasnost or “openness”
led to more information from the west and less censorship led to a flood of criticism as people realized
how much poorer the second world was than the first. And one by one, often quite suddenly, former
communist states collapsed. In Germany, the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and East and
West Germany were reunited in 1990. In Poland, the Gdansk dockworker’s union Solidarity
turned into a mass political movement and won 99 of the 100 seats it was allowed to
contest in the 1989 election. Hungary held multiparty elections in 1990. The same year,
mass demonstrations led to elections in Czechoslovakia. In 1993, that country split up into Slovakia
and the Czech Republic, the happiest and most mutually beneficial divorce since Cher left
Sonny. Of course sometimes the transition away from
communism was violent and painful. In Romania, for instance, the communist dictator Ceaușescu
held onto power until he was tried and put before a firing squad at the end of 1989.
And it took until 1996 for a non-communist government to take power there. And in Yugoslavia,
well, not so great. And in Russia, it’s a little bit Putin-ey. Ah! Putin. But just twenty years later, it’s hard to
believe that the world was once dominated by two super powers held in check mutually
assured destruction. What’s really amazing to me, though, is that until the late 1980s,
it felt like the Cold War was gonna go on forever. Time seems to slow as it approaches
us, & living in the post-Cold War nuclear age, we should remember that the past feels
distant even when it’s near, and that the future seems assured — even though it isn’t.
Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. Our associate producer is Danica Johnson.
The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself. And our graphics
team is Thought Bubble. Last week’s phrase of the week was "Justin Bieber" Thanks for
that suggestion. If you’d like to suggest future phrases of the week, you can do so
in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered
by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown,
Don't Forget To Be Awesome.