The balance of power shifts as the Soviet Union dominates Eastern Europe and the United States accepts the leadership role for the impoverished West.
Tensions heighten as the superpowers engage in a high-stakes arms race and space race.
To stem the flood of East Germans fleeing communism, Nikita Khrushchev raises a Wall that divides Germany, and later the world. The standoff to determine who will control Berlin threatens 2 million people with starvation. But help arrives from on high. Korean civil war becomes a platform of engagement between the Soviet Union and United States. Mutual assured destruction becomes the United States' nuclear strategy, making the possibility of global annihilation all too real.