Bringing the best history on the web. — From Crash Course, their World History Series, #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.
Crash Course takes the politically fashionable but historically wrong view that it was the great ideological struggle, with the US on the side of capitalism and profit but not freedom, and the USSR pushing Communism, so-called but not tyranny. Crash Course says that 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.
On emigration people behind the Iron Curtain wanted to leave while the U.S. faced people who wanted to come. Sadly these latest videos from Crash Course lurch too much into left-wing political correctness. Still worth watching for the good stuff there.
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