Lista de episódios

Despite their ideological differences, the United States and the Soviet Union become allies in the wars against Germany.

Stalin begins to spread communism across Europe after the war ends, and tension grows between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The United States offers assistance to countries that reject communism after Great Britain halts aid to Turkey and Greece.

Berlin is divided into two separate cities, and Europe itself splits as the countries align themselves with the opposing major powers.

A Chinese civil war between the factions of Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-Shek brings the armed forces of the United States onto the battlefield to oppose communism.

The world is polarized across an ideological divide. Following Stalin's domination of Eastern Europe, and the loss of China,American democracy succumbs to a bout of anti-communist hysteria, but survives it. Eisenhower is elected President.

Thaw is conceivable with Stalin dead and Eisenhower in the White House. Stalin's chief of secret police is arrested and shot.Krushchev outmaneuvers Malenkov, for power and visits the West.

In the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union seems to be forging ahead. In October 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik orbits the earth-to the dismay of the United States, which is frustrated with its own unsuccessful space program.

Stalin's death has brought about détente, but the fate of Germany is unresolved. West Germany is admitted to NATO. Thousands of East Germans escape to the West through Berlin. At the Vienna Summit in 1961, Khrushchev bullies the inexperienced Kennedy. The Soviets confirm the division of Germany. To keep their people in, the East Germans erect the wall.

Contemplating U.S. missile power installed around the Soviet periphery, Krushchev decides to install short and medium range missilesin Cuba, America's backyard. The sites are detected and the U.S. blockades the island.

Since the end of the French colonial rule, Vietnam has been divided. The north is run by Communists, the south by anti-Communists.

The USA and the USSR confront each other, each armed with nuclear weapons. Each side must deter the other. Bombing the enemy could mean provoking retaliation and self-destruction.

Western Economies grow and prosper, fueled partly by armaments production. Rejecting their parents' affluence and the Cold War, theyoung protest and rebel. There is racial violence in U.S. inner cities.

In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, denial of freedom and incentive stifles ambition and achievement. The young lust for totems of America's youth culture--blue jeans and rock-and-roll.

Chinese Communists are victorious in the longest civil war in 20th century history. Mao Zedong's reforms are popular, but in 1958, he embarks on a series of catastrophic changes. A famine that kills 30 million people follows.

A look at the era of detente that resulted in cooperation and exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.

An examination of how the major powers fought by proxy in different areas of the world throughout the era.

The United States has always regarded Latin America as its own back yard. In 1954, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz is overthrown by U.S.-backed forces. Arbenz is leftist, not Communist.

As the United States absorbs the hike in OPEC oil prices and concerns for human rights in the East grows, the spirit of detente ebbs away.

Afghanistan is a brutal war that costs the lives of almost 15,000 Soviet conscripts and an estimated one million Afghans. "It was the Soviet Union's Vietnam syndrome," says Soviet aide Anatoly Chernyaev.

Even before the end of World War II, spies prepare for post-war world order. Beginning in 1944, KGB spies infiltrate Los Alamos,stealing information about the atomic bomb.

Ronald Reagan pledges to defeat the "evil empire," but abhors the idea of nuclear war. He is prepared to increase arms expendituresignificantly to protect the United States.

The dominoes fall: incredibly quickly, the Soviet bloc is breaking up, virtually without bloodshed.

The United States proves the stronger and the Soviet Union implodes. The balance of terror that has kept the peace in Europe for more than 40 years vanishes, but no new world order readily emerges.