USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War: Crash Course World History #39

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 a 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 COLD 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, we would point out that the USSR had no intention of bringing Laika the Cosmonaut Dog home alive. That poor dog never had a shot.

Thanks to Raoul Meyer for the YUGOGAL photo.

Chapters:
Introduction: The Cold War 00:00
The conflict between the USA and USSR 0:51
Soviet Sphere of Influence post-WWII 2:00
An Open Letter to Joseph Stalin 3:00
The Marshall Plan, the Berlin Wall, and NATO 4:04
The Nuclear Arms Race 5:16
The Hot Parts of the Cold War 6:00
The Lukewarm Parts of the Cold War 7:10
First-World, Second-World, and Third-World Divisions 7:46
The Failures of Soviet Socialism 9:06
The End of the Cold War 9:27
Credits 11:44

Want to learn more about the Cold War? Check out these other Crash Course videos:
George HW Bush and the End of the Cold War: Crash Course US History #44
The Cold War and Consumerism: Crash Course Computer Science #24
Post-War Rebuilding and the Cold War: Crash Course European History #41

Want to find Crash Course elsewhere on the internet?

[brandonmalley]

how i learn about history
1% school
49% Crash course
50% my dad talking during long car rides

[MultiNaruto]

"You're boring. Cue the intro." has never been so true of a statement regarding the interaction between the person in the present and the same person from the past.

[rohinimorey]

That ending line was lovely "The past seems distant even though it's near, and the future seems assured even though it isn't."

[trevinbeattie]

Today I learned what “1st world”, “2nd world”, and “3rd world” actually mean. I’d heard the 1st and 3rd terms before and kind of understood them from context, but didn’t have a clear definition until now. Thanks, John!

[MrBander]

"The past feels distant even when It's near
And the future seems assured even though It isn't "

John Green

[clovr]

Can't even shoot straight
What a savage

[kitarencibia-rue]

Meredith going from Intern to Script Supervisor is the kind of glow up in searching for in 2019

[AidanAce]

So this what my teacher making us watch since school got cancelled...

[lynndai]

I never thought that the guy teaching us history would also give us The Fault In Our Stars...

[salomonlevin]

I saw what u did there. "Our" bad. Haha keep it up comrade

[jackmcgranahan]

To all the people complaining about bias you have to realize that all history being told by a human (which is all history) is coming from their perceived point of view and biases. Instead, of complaining about them get your history from multiple sources and put together yourself what you believe to be the most accurate portrayal of history. As Captain Price once said, "History is written by the victor."

[amandamclellann]

me from the past: i won't just watch a bunch of crash course videos before my ap exam
me now: i won't comment about just watching crash course videos for the ap exam
me now now: i am such a disappointment

[frivasto]

No my friends in the comment section. I'm not here because I have an exam. Am I the only one watching these videos for pleasure?

[indeterminant]

In Soviet Russia, you don't write DBQs. DBQs write you.

[smthing]

"The past feels distant even when it's near, and the future seems assured - even though it isn't"

[Guccius_Maximus]

My history teacher this year used crash course videos to help us review for our test. I liked to thank him for introducing me to John Green, lol now I watch these videos for fun.

[bankruptPHARMACIST]

"School desks are super good at repelling radiations"

[xenia]

I’m Russian and live in the UK now but my parents lived in the USSR and told me how at school they were taught how to shoot guns and set off grenades

[Abigail.]

3:30
My brother: that's mean, what if he sees this video?
Me: I'm pretty sure he won't
My brother: Why not? Doesn't he have technology?
Me: No, he doesn't have a pulse.

[cpob]

Stalin wasnt a terrible leader. Brutal and cutthroat sure, but in 20 years he turned russia from a nation of peasant farmers defeated in ww1, to being able to go toe to toe with the full force of the nazi war machine for 4 years and win, something france and its global empire lasted 6 weeks against and put the mighty british in full retreat across the channel. Hell, stalin wanted to stay out of the war. A lot of the deaths attributed to stalin come from famine and war and while the famine resulted from his policies and his strategy of "not one step back" that requred meat grinder attrition tactics drove up the body count, you can hardly say the famine was murder and you cant fully blame the war casualties on the man who wanted no part in the war. That still leaves a couple million dissenters, actual and suspected, but its a fraction of what hes blamed for.

And yes, he was a psychopathic asshole, with a bit of sadism andsome megalomania on the side. My point is, the man got results. Split the atom and first in space all while rebuilding his country and eastern Europe simultaneously juggling the cold war flash points. This was one man. Impressive.