The Cold War

* Part 1
* Part 2

Belligerents| Warsaw Pact **Soviet Union*** East Germany
* Poland
* Czechoslovakia
* Hungary
* Romania
* Bulgaria
* China
* Albania
* North Korea
* North Vietnam
* Canada
* Denmark
* France
* Iceland
* Italy
* Luxembourg
* The Netherlands
* Norway
* Portugal
* United Kingdom
* Greece
* Turkey
* West Germany
* Spain

**The Cold War** is a two-part series created by OverSimplified that covers the events that caused and happened during the Cold War.

## Summary

### Part 1

The year is 1917, and fighting rages on the Eastern Front of World War I. Russia was on the brink of collapse, and Germany sent Vladimir Lenin to Russia to distract them from the war. In doing so, Lenin started a revolution and created a new communist regime, which meant establishing a dictatorship, igniting civil war, crushing all opposition, and destroying the economy in the process. As a result, stress and anxiety accumulated in Lenin, leading to his death in 1924. Lenin didn't want Joseph Stalin to become the new leader of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, he was too powerful to be removed. As a leader, Stalin ruled as a tyrant dictator, crushing all opposition through his purges and a cultural revolution. He started the Five-Year Plan, turning Russia into an industrial country. Collectivized farms contributed to one of the deadliest famines in history, which led to millions of deaths.

In 1941, during World War II, German dictator Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, joining the Allies to defeat Nazi Germany. By 1945, in the wake of Nazi defeat, Stalin, Churchill, and Truman met to determine the world's future. Soon, Japan surrendered, ending the global conflict.

The Allies divided Germany into four occupation zones, each led by four Allies (the "Big Three" plus France). They also created the United Nations to establish world peace, with the Allied countries deciding its future. However, disagreements between capitalism/democracy and communism fueled tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The USSR, which already controlled Eastern Europe, began setting up puppet governments and aided communist revolutions in Turkey and Greece. In response, the British aided anti-communist parties. They also withdrew from Iran, and with the support of the UN, they put massive pressure on the Soviet Union to withdraw.

By 1948, large debts and economic turmoil put the UK into bankruptcy, prompting America to take over the role as the global police. They continued the UK's policies, established NATO, and announced the Truman Doctrine, pledging to defeat and contain the spread of communism at all costs. To pursue this, they launched the Marshall Plan, aimed at rebuilding Western Europe's economy. Eastern Europe looked on with envy and wanted to receive aid, but the Soviet Union blocked them. Instead, the USSR formed Comecon and Cominform to provide funds for and control Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union later formed the Warsaw Pact to counter NATO.

As time passed, differences between capitalism and communism emerged, and people became more aware of this. One example is in Berlin, as more people became attracted to the economic prosperity of capitalism. The Soviets responded by blockading West Berlin's supply routes, but America circumvented that via the Berlin Airlift. Finally, the Soviets ended their blockade out of fear of war. Then, they developed their first nuclear bomb in 1949, beginning the arms race, and fears of a deadlier world war rose. Stalin tried to calm down the people by informing the rest that a Third World War was inevitable.

In 1949, after decades of civil war, China became a Communist country and allied with the Soviets. In 1950, a conflict between Soviet- and Chinese-supported North Korea and UN-supported South Korea in the Korean Peninsula ended in a stalemate.

In 1952, the United States elected Dwight D. Eisenhower, and in 1953, Joseph Stalin died; Nikita Khrushchev replaced him. Khrushchev began a policy of de-Stalinization, i.e., denouncing Stalin and his policies, getting rid of his influence on the people, and easing control over people's lives. However, he suppressed several uprisings in Eastern Europe and banned Western pop culture in the Soviet Union. As a result, relations between the two sides relaxed, but world events tore them apart.

Throughout the Cold War, spies from both sides spread plenty of information to the other side. The USSR established the KGB, which sent spies to every aspect of Western events. Along with some American officials and diplomats, the Soviet Union was successful in acquiring the bomb. At the same time, the US established the CIA, which used advanced technology to obtain information, such as using bases from foreign countries and using U2 spy planes. In 1960, the famous U2 incident had further escalated the Cold War.

The USSR's advancement in space technology, the 1956 launch of *Sputnik 1*, and later a man to space, fueled the space race. Both countries upgraded their atomic bombs to hydrogen bombs. In 1960, the US elected John F. Kennedy. The Soviet Union appeared to be ahead in the arms race. However, its living conditions and satellite states' living conditions were still inadequate because they made no progress or advancements. Notably, in Berlin, people were aware of the differences between West and East Berlin. As a result, more and more people defected to the West, which took a toll on the Soviet industry. They responded to this by building the Berlin Wall, which permanently divided the city in half. The wall became a symbol of the Cold War for the West, and the 1961 Berlin incident took place on the border.

### Part 2

In 1959, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara led a coup against the Cuban government. They established a communist regime, thus aligning themselves with the Soviet Union. The US responded by sanctioning and plotting to invade Cuba. They failed and only made Cuba vulnerable to attack. The Soviets secretly placed missiles in Cuba to protect itself from America, much to their shock. The United States wanted the missiles removed as quickly as possible, so they came up with some solutions. The first one was a blockade: they cut the Soviets from shipping supplies to Cuba; this only escalated tensions even further. After communications between the two broke down, America began planning an invasion of Cuba. Fortunately, right before they could do it, they negotiated a compromise.

The US shipped their missiles out of Turkey and Italy; in return, the Soviets sent their missiles out of Cuba. Leonid Brezhnev and Lyndon B. Johnson replaced Kennedy and Khrushchev, respectively. Both countries signed treaties to prevent a nuclear war from happening. The United States lost several atomic bombs in Europe; no one knows how many the Soviet Union lost. A conflict in Vietnam occurred between Communist North Vietnam and Capitalist South Vietnam. The Soviets and Americans then fought in several proxy wars all around the world. Richard M. Nixon, who replaced Johnson, pulled his country out of the Vietnam War; thus, South Vietnam fell. The US and the Soviet Union then tried to repair their relationship. Nixon then resigned after the Watergate Scandal, so Gerald R. Ford became the president. Soon, Jimmy Carter, who is still alive today, replaced him. The Soviets and Americans continued to sign treaties; however, tensions grew again and led to a crisis in Europe. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Ronald Reagan replaced Carter in 1980, and the Soviets' relationship with China fell apart. However, Brezhnev got really old and died and was replaced by this guy who got really old and died and got replaced by this guy who got really old and died. Finally, he was replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985. He reformed the Soviet Union via two significant policies: *glasnost* (openness and transparency) and *perestroika* (restructuring). Most Eastern European countries overthrew their Communist dictators peacefully (including a violent revolution in Romania), and the Berlin Wall in East Germany fell. George H. W. Bush replaced Reagan in 1988.

Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian SFSR, the most powerful of the Soviet republics. Conservatives captured Gorbachev, but Yeltsin had a tank, so the conservatives released Gorbachev. He gave Yeltsin more freedom, so the latter went behind the former's back, making a deal with Ukraine and Belarus to dissolve the Soviet Union, much to Gorbachev's dismay. Thus, the Cold War came to an end, and the world lived happily ever after, right, guys?

## Trivia

* The first part of the Cold War series is the first video uploaded in 2019 by OverSimplified.
* Both parts of the Cold War series are the thirteen and fourteen videos to get uploaded to the OverSimplified channel.
* The series is the fifth series in the OverSimplified channel.
* When Joseph Stalin said, "Tsar Alaxander made it all the way to Paris," he was referencing Alexander I's Scorched Earth policy in the Napoleonic Wars.

**United States** • United Kingdom • France • Norway • Denmark • West Germany • The Netherlands • Belgium • Luxembourg • Spain • Portugal • Iceland • Greece • Turkey • Italy

**Warsaw Pact**
**Soviet Union** • Polish People's Republic • Czechoslovak Socialist Republic • Hungarian People's Republic • Socialist Republic of Romania • People's Republic of Bulgaria • East Germany

**Other Communist Nations**
Cuba • China