The Cold War Begins

Following World War II, the two remaining superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—entered the Cold War, an ideological contest in which each side competed for supremacy through the use of economic aid, military assistance, technology, and propaganda. U.S. foreign policy was focused on containment, preventing the influence of the Soviet Union and the ideology of communism from spreading beyond Eastern Europe. A major test of each nation’s resolve to defeat the other came with the Soviet Union’s blockade of West Berlin in 1948–1949. The United States emerged victorious and with its Western Bloc allies formed the mutual defense organization known as NATO. The Soviet Union responded by forming the Warsaw Pact with the Eastern Bloc countries of Eastern Europe.            

All images referenced in this podcast can be found at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-2/pages/14-1-the-cold-war-begins            

Welcome to A Journey into Human History.    

This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story.       

The content contained in this podcast was produced by OpenStax and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.     

Access for free at https://openstax.org/books/world-history-volume-2/pages/1-introduction    

Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a Creative Common Sense production.

Om Podcasten

Welcome to a journey into human history. This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story. You may be asking yourself what is history? Is it simply a record of things people have done? Is it what writer Maya Angelou suggested—a way to meet the pain of the past and overcome it? Or is it, as Winston Churchill said, a chronicle by the victors, an interpretation by those who write it? History is all this and more. Above all else, it is a path to knowing why we are the way we are—all our greatness, all our faults—and therefore a means for us to understand ourselves and change for the better. But history serves this function only if it is a true reflection of the past. It cannot be a way to mask the darker parts of human nature, nor a way to justify acts of previous generations. It is the historian’s task to paint as clear a picture as sources will allow. Will history ever be a perfect telling of the human tale? No. There are voices we may never hear. Yet each new history book written and each new source uncovered reveal an ever more precise record of events around the world. You are about to take a journey into human history. The content contained in this podcast was produced by OpenStax and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. For more information please review the links and resources in the description. Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a creative common sense production.