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FULL MOVIES ENGLISH SUB (2026) - FULL | Reelshort
#drama #cdrama #romantic #love #movie #shortdrama #showhots #2026
FULL MOVIES ENGLISH SUB (2026) - FULL | Reelshort
#drama #cdrama #romantic #love #movie #shortdrama #showhots #2026
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Short filmTranscript
00:00The United States and the Soviet Union.
00:04Once allies by necessity,
00:08their paths diverged as each country strove to pick up the pieces of a shattered Europe
00:14and reshape it to suit their ideologies.
00:19It is perfectly clear that a definite threat to our own security exists in the world today.
00:28It is clear that the clouds of war are starting to gather.
00:33As their alliance came asunder,
00:35a series of crises would build mutual suspicion into a great rivalry.
00:42This struggle for supremacy would define the late 20th century,
00:47shape the lives of countless millions,
00:50and come to threaten civilization itself.
00:57World War II was a conflict of immeasurable scale.
01:01A total war, laying waste to entire nations,
01:06and changing the world forever.
01:09From this devastation, new powers would emerge,
01:13allies would become enemies,
01:16and an iron curtain would fall across Europe.
01:20A fragile peace would be threatened by a new kind of conflict.
01:25As two major superpowers vied for supremacy.
01:30Once again, the world stood on the brick.
01:34How did this come to pass?
01:37How did the Cold War emerge?
01:40From the endgame of World War II.
01:521945.
01:54World War II was over.
01:57Europe lay in ruins.
02:01Millions were displaced,
02:02and the governments of Europe were fighting to maintain stability.
02:10The next great battle would be to rebuild.
02:13But what shape would a future Europe take?
02:17I think there were still aspirations among the Eastern European countries
02:22that they would be able to resume their independence,
02:25and resume really their place in Europe after World War II.
02:30And so it had not yet become clear that the USSR was establishing satellite states
02:36that would not be able to break loose.
02:39It's a number of steps that are taken by both sides
02:42that lead to the kind of confrontation that we've come to call the Cold War.
02:48The seeds of the Cold War had well and truly taken root.
02:53The US and Soviet Union, once allied nations fighting a common enemy,
02:58were now striving to achieve their own endgame for Europe.
03:02fighting for power and influence in a post-war world.
03:06The Soviet Union had certain needs.
03:09One of these was security.
03:13Stalin wanted to make sure that the Soviet Union
03:16would not again be invaded in Europe or in Asia.
03:20He wanted the Americans to recognize
03:22what he felt was his legitimate sphere of influence.
03:26Now the problem is that the Americans were not necessarily keen
03:30on recognizing that sphere as legitimate.
03:33So already you see the seeds for future conflict.
03:38To achieve his strategic goals, Stalin would do whatever was necessary.
03:43He was prepared to push his rivals as far as possible,
03:47while still maintaining the fragile peace.
03:51And that approach to Stalin's mindset probably explains better
03:57some of the twists and turns,
03:59because he doesn't always expand everywhere.
04:02For example, both Poland and Iran are examples of Stalin making pragmatic decisions,
04:09which are not necessarily decisions of a grand strategic sort,
04:15but opportunistic ones.
04:19during the Tehran Conference of 1943,
04:23Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin signed the Declaration of the Three Powers regarding Iran.
04:29The agreement granted economic assistance for Iran.
04:33In exchange, British, Soviet and US troops would occupy Iran to protect the nation's oil from the Germans.
04:41The Soviets were in Iran by the terms of an agreement with the British.
04:45They got there during the Second World War, occupied a part of northern Iran.
04:50And already at that time, they were thinking about using Iranian oil.
04:57The Allies had agreed all foreign troops would leave Iran within six months of the war ending.
05:04In January 1946, the British and US withdrew.
05:09The Soviets, however, did not, citing disagreements over oil concessions.
05:16The March 2nd deadline for withdrawal passed, and still, the Soviets remained.
05:22A part of northern Iran at that time was ethnically similar to Soviet Azerbaijan, right?
05:26So, Taseries, on both sides of the border.
05:30And Stalin, as former minister or commissar of nationalities, was very keen about exploiting various national issues, national problems.
05:43He sponsors an uprising of people who want to join Soviet Azerbaijan.
05:50And then he abandons them when he realises that the pushback from Britain and the United States would be too
05:57big,
05:58that it wouldn't be worth that, and so he pulls out.
06:03On March 24, the Soviets finally announced that they would withdraw, resolving the standoff.
06:11But it would not be long before another crisis emerged.
06:15At the end of World War II, Greece was torn apart by a communist uprising that led to a brutal
06:23civil war,
06:26creating an opportunity for the world's emerging superpowers to step in.
06:32Now, the interesting thing here is what was Stalin's reaction to this communist insurgency in Greece?
06:38And the answer is, actually, it was complicated.
06:42He agreed at first to effectively allow the British to run the show there.
06:47When the Greek communists first turned to Stalin saying,
06:50can you help us with our revolutionary pursuits?
06:55Stalin turned a deaf ear to them.
06:58As the civil war in Greece progressed, Stalin's position began to evolve.
07:05By 1947, not only is he willing to help the Greek communists, but he's actually going through Greek requests.
07:13They're sending him requests for weapons.
07:15He's going through and saying, OK, we can give this, we can give this, we can give this.
07:20We're talking about major military supplies.
07:23As the slide into the Cold War becomes more intense,
07:26as it becomes clear that relations are being steered away from great power cooperations towards more open conflict,
07:33Stalin is willing to fight it out, in particular theatres where previously he was willing to cooperate.
07:40Stalin's expansionist agenda was becoming increasingly apparent to the US.
07:46It became clear that the Americans could not simply retreat back into their pre-war isolationism.
07:53American policy gradually veered toward confrontational course with the Soviet Union.
08:01There were several steps along the way.
08:04There was never a master plan that led to the outbreak of the Cold War.
08:12The Truman administration goes through a consensus building operation in 1947 and 1948,
08:18where it knows that the wartime alliance is over, and the question is what way it will go.
08:27And really, in 1947 and 1948, it adopts the containment position.
08:32And the containment position is not war against the Soviet Union, but to keep it from expanding.
08:38On March 12, 1947, US President Harry Truman addressed a joint session of Congress.
08:45The United States has received from the Greek government an urgent appeal for financial and economic assistance.
08:55The Greek state had previously depended on British aid.
08:59But a cash-strapped Great Britain could no longer afford to support it.
09:04Unless the US stepped in, Greece could very well fall to the communists.
09:10The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men led
09:19by communists.
09:22Truman announced that he would support these anti-communist forces against communist or leftist insurgents by supplying military aid.
09:36Truman's speech marked a turning point in US foreign policy.
09:40And along with that came a more general statement that announced that the United States was prepared to help countries,
09:48states against communist or leftist insurgencies in Europe.
09:53This would become known as the Truman Doctrine.
09:56The policy committed the US to preserving the political integrity of democratic countries.
10:03So it means the United States will intervene around the world where it believes it can stop Soviet expansion.
10:10That it will be much more proactive in supporting pro-American regimes with money and military resources.
10:18And the Soviets see that as a hostile gesture, a hostile act, so that further ingrains the kind of aggressive
10:27stance in Europe.
10:29The Truman Doctrine would underpin US foreign policy throughout the Cold War.
10:35This new interventionist mentality would lead to years of US-Soviet tensions.
10:43Over the coming years, proxy wars fought between Soviet and US-backed forces would play out in nations on almost
10:51all continents.
10:52It would be an ongoing political battle where both the US and Soviet Union vied for supremacy without engaging in
11:01direct conflict.
11:04As 1946 came to an end, the foreign ministers of the Allied nations met in Moscow.
11:10Among them were representatives of the US, Britain, the Soviet Union and France.
11:17They were gathered to discuss the fate of post-war Germany.
11:21But over six long weeks of negotiations, they could reach little agreement.
11:28Some issues simply became too difficult to resolve.
11:32The German question remained unresolved for all the efforts to keep Germany united.
11:38The US and Soviet Union had fundamentally different plans for their one-time enemy.
11:45The US and UK wanted to avoid a centralized government in Germany, fearing it would lead to another authoritarian regime.
11:54The Soviet Union was in favour of it.
11:58It was very clear that the two sides simply could not come to terms.
12:04Germany's economic future and their ability to rebuild was also a point of contention.
12:09The Soviets were trying to draw reparations from the Western-controlled parts of Germany, from Western Germany.
12:17That undermined the Western-German economy.
12:20The Americans were trying to protect their part of Germany.
12:25The US favoured limited-war reparations to give Germany a better chance of rebuilding their country and economy.
12:33They saw this as essential to Germany's stability.
12:39The conference brought to light fundamental differences in the objectives the Soviet Union and the United States had for post
12:47-war Europe.
12:49There was a clear sense in the Soviet Union that there was a growing anti-communism in the Western alliance
12:57and that there was a growing mistrust and also infringement on the Soviet buffer states.
13:06In summarising the events of the conference, US Secretary of State, George Marshall, made clear his own frustrations at the
13:14slow progress.
13:15Saying,
13:15Disintegrating forces are becoming evident. The patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate.
13:23In the wake of the war, Czechoslovakia was facing a complicated political landscape.
13:31The country was led through the war years by a government in exile, led by President Edvard Benesh.
13:38He and his government returned to the country in 1945, following the withdrawal of Soviet forces.
13:46While Czechoslovakia wasn't officially under Soviet control, the US was watching them closely.
13:54Czechoslovakia, after the Second World War, should be considered a democratic country.
13:59It had a parliament, it had an elected president, freely elected president.
14:04In 1946, free elections were held, which introduced greater numbers of left-leaning and communist parties.
14:13And those elections were held in the absence of both the Red Army and the US Army.
14:20The Communist Party was genuinely popular and that's why the Prime Minister was already communist.
14:24A lot of the policies were already quite communist. They were already beginning collectivisation, nationalisation of banks.
14:30All those things had happened while it was still a democratic state.
14:35Benesh had to ally himself with these newly elected groups to form a coalition government.
14:42But tensions between the parties set them on a collision course.
14:48So the non-communist party members more and more felt that the Communist Party was using kind of dirty tricks.
14:54That they were arresting people or that they were using surveillance.
14:59There had been some parcel bombs that had been received by some of the ministers.
15:02So there was a sense that the communists were no longer playing by the rules, by the democratic rules.
15:09Politicians, army officers or private citizens who opposed the communists now came under threat.
15:17Many fled the country or ended up in prison.
15:24Under pressure and with little choice remaining, Benesh handed over control of the government to the Communist Party on February
15:3125th, 1948.
15:34The cabinet was now in a communist majority and the Communist Party at that point took power and became in
15:40effect a one-party state.
15:44The Communist Party pushed the economy immediately towards nationalisation.
15:51All agricultural land was now state owned or collectively run.
15:57They made quick use of their new found power and influence, forging a new national constitution.
16:04One that declared Czechoslovakia a people's democracy.
16:09A communist state by another name.
16:13President Benesh refused to sign this constitution, resigning from his position as president.
16:22At first, people were divided over what this new direction meant for the country.
16:29By the time the communist so-called coup finally took place and the communist regime took power in Czechoslovakia,
16:35roughly half the people were celebrating and roughly half the people were absolutely not and desperate to get out.
16:42On May 30th 1948, elections were held that handed control of government to the communists.
16:51Elections that were regarded as rigged.
16:56Within a year of the change in government, the Soviets began to exert their influence, purging the Czech army of
17:04anti-communists.
17:11This is a relatively advanced stage in what's going on in Eastern Europe.
17:16People from all around looked at this and said, oh my goodness, you can't trust the communists.
17:25It now became clear that you could not trust them, you know, to participate in a parliamentary government.
17:33The tragic death of the Republic of Czechoslovakia has sent a shock throughout the civilized world.
17:40By the time the US and other Western nations fully understood what was happening, it was too late.
17:47They united in condemnation of the communist takeover, but no one was willing to risk another war.
17:54The US fears for the fate of Eastern Europe were being realized.
17:58As far as they were concerned, the communists could not be trusted.
18:02The methods vary, but the pattern is all too clear.
18:08There was a pattern emerging across Central and Eastern Europe that one country after another was becoming dominated by the
18:15communists.
18:16And that those communist parties were backed by the Soviet Union.
18:20For the US, maintaining influence over a stable democratic Europe was more important than ever.
18:30The nations remaining free now must watch for the beginnings of the same communist danger in their own lands.
18:44To resist communist encroachment throughout a vulnerable and impoverished Europe, the United States had embarked on a bold new strategy.
18:53On June 5, 1947, US Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a plan for the rapid reconstruction of Europe.
19:04Whether we like it or not, we find ourselves in a world position of vast responsibility.
19:11We can act for our own good by acting for the world's good.
19:22As part of this plan, the US would provide massive economic support to European nations.
19:30Which essentially is an attempt to rebuild Europe, but also to make Europe safe from communism as the major competitor
19:40and to avoid what had happened in interwar years.
19:45This would become known as the Marshall Plan.
19:49Marshall himself stated that our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and
20:00chaos.
20:03On July 12, 16 representatives of European nations had met to discuss economic solutions.
20:12Culminating in a four year plan for rebuilding and recovery.
20:17The Marshall Plan was open to all European countries, provided they move to a US style free market economy and
20:26away from the Soviet economic model.
20:29And that's also seen as a hostile act in an attempt to buy people off.
20:36It's offered to the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union, with the hope that the Eastern European countries will
20:43accept it and the Soviet Union will turn it down.
20:48And the Soviet Union turned it down and made the Eastern European countries turn it down as well.
20:54Despite Soviet frustrations, on April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act into law.
21:05And this was a massive aid program for countries in Europe to rebuild their economies, to rebuild their infrastructure.
21:16The plan allocated over 13 billion in aid over a four year period.
21:23Funding was directed to restoring industry and agricultural production, creating a more stable economy and boosting international trade.
21:34The Marshall Plan was also designed not only to foster democracy, but to draw Europe into the US's economic orbit.
21:44The US essentially wanted a kind of liberal and democratic order around the world.
21:51It wanted a kind of internationalism, where people would be open to travel and to trade.
21:59I mean, free trade was an important part of this.
22:03As Europe rebuilt, the demand for materials expanded rapidly, opening up new markets for US goods.
22:15As a Marshall Plan bound Western Europe to the US, Stalin could see that he had been outplayed.
22:22To Stalin, it becomes more and more clear that the Grand Alliance is not going to continue.
22:29It also becomes clear that he's not going to win elections in Eastern Europe.
22:34So he needs to figure something else out.
22:37And that something else then is confrontation.
22:39The Marshall Plan was held in suspicion, obviously, by the Soviet Union and by Stalin as being really a cover
22:47for trying to gain influence and win influence over the region.
22:51Tensions between the US and Soviet Union would peak once again, this time in Berlin.
22:58The question of Germany's post-war fate hung heavy over the formerly allied nations who would decide the country's future.
23:07Stalin continued to think that he would be able to wrestle away from the West some semblance of a neutral
23:15Germany.
23:15And this thinking continued, I think, fairly late into the late 1940s.
23:22I would argue that Germany becomes the ultimate cause of the Cold War.
23:27The latest possible date you could say the Cold War begins is the Berlin crisis of 1948.
23:35And this had a lot to do with their very, very different ideas of what kind of economic system should
23:43prevail.
23:46When Germany fell to the Allies near the end of World War II, control of the country was divided between
23:53the Soviet Union, the US, UK and France, each managing their own zone.
24:00They divide Germany up into spheres thinking they might still keep the country together.
24:06Stalin ends up being quite frustrated in one way.
24:09The West get the good spheres when it comes to the economies.
24:13They get the Ruhr, the Rhineland, Germany's high-technology area, the most successful German factories.
24:19Most of that is in the Western zones.
24:23And they don't want the Soviet Union to have any of that.
24:26Stalin believes, because Germany's together, they should have rights to resources in Western Germany.
24:31But that's one of the first issues they start falling off on is the British and the Americans start saying,
24:36no, you can't have anything from our zones.
24:39Berlin was similarly divided into sections, each controlled by an Allied nation.
24:48Berlin was actually situated entirely within the Soviet occupation zone.
24:55That's where people can go across the border, that's where spies can infiltrate, that's where black marketeers can go across
25:02and so on, so it's a problem.
25:04With Berlin located in the Soviet controlled zone, they had ultimate power over the movement of goods and people in
25:13and out of the city.
25:14Now, in order to get to Berlin, you had to go through these access zones and certain trains you had
25:22to take and certain actually zones for flying as well.
25:26It was an arrangement that the Soviet Union could leverage to their advantage.
25:35In early 1948, the fragile peace built by the Allies in Germany was broken.
25:42The UK, the UK, US and France planned to unify the zones they each controlled into one single economy that
25:51would become West Germany.
25:53But there was still a problem of shortage of products.
25:59Farmers and small manufacturers were holding back goods because of the fear of inflation.
26:07The solution to this was to create a new post-war currency.
26:13This new unified zone would have a shared currency, the Deutsche Mark, a move that would strengthen the West Germany
26:21economy, but shut out the Soviet zone.
26:25In response, the Soviet Union withdrew from the Allied Control Council, ending any collaboration over occupied Germany and its future.
26:36And this created a huge economic problem, because if you create a new currency in the West and not in
26:45the Eastern Zone, then the Eastern Zone all of a sudden gets flooded with enormous amounts of old currency and
26:53therefore it would ruin the Soviet zone's economic viability.
26:58In June 1948, the Western Allies introduced the Deutsche Mark as a new currency of West Germany.
27:07The Soviet Union quickly retaliated.
27:11Stalin began kind of tightening the screws on Berlin, on Western access to Berlin.
27:24On June 24th, Stalin's forces established a blockade, preventing any transport by rail, road or water between West Germany and
27:35West Berlin.
27:39He didn't want to spark a war, but he just thought if he blockaded the city, the Allies might voluntarily
27:47relinquish their hold of the city.
27:50And Berlin would simply become dominated by the Soviet Union.
27:54So he's putting pressure on the West about leaving and getting out of the Western zones of Berlin.
28:03As far as the Soviets were concerned, the Western Allies no longer had any say in Berlin's fate.
28:11So what does Stalin want to achieve with the Berlin blockade?
28:15Part of that is to just probe how the Western Allies will react, how tough they are.
28:22What he says he wants is that they don't introduce the German mark, so that the option of a unified
28:29Germany remains on the table.
28:32That's what he says.
28:34The other option, of course, was then to take over Berlin and kick the Western Allies out because they can't
28:42supply the populations they're in charge of or their troops.
28:45Around 2.5 million citizens in the Western zones of Berlin were now cut off from vital supplies of food,
28:56electricity and medicine.
28:58And the Soviets are saying, you sign up with us. Just sign up with us and we'll give you coal
29:05and something to eat.
29:07But the people of Berlin were not willing to concede to the Soviet Union's tactics.
29:13And the Berliners organised a campaign saying, no, don't do this, because if you do it, you're going to show
29:20the West that you're not on their side, that you're going to show the Soviets that you are on theirs.
29:28Britain and the US had to step in, but only one link to Berlin remained.
29:35Three air corridors from West Germany into West Berlin, each around 30 kilometres wide.
29:44The West comes up with this very innovative and intricate plan of supplying Berlin by air, the so-called Berlin
29:54airlift.
29:56To supply Berlin from the air would be a monumental challenge.
30:03But the Western allies had no choice.
30:10The Soviets' condition for lifting the blockade was the removal of the newly established Deutsche Mark currency from West Berlin.
30:18The Western allies refused.
30:23While they continued to seek a peaceful resolution to the blockade, the US also prepared for the worst case scenario.
30:30It was decided, let's get prepared.
30:36So we did mobilise troops to England.
30:42The idea was also to move in, you know, nuclear warheads.
30:47We began seriously preparing for war.
30:57The US and UK ran supplies by air into West Berlin for over a year.
31:05Despite shortages of fuel and electricity, life was able to continue.
31:13Rather than intimidating the West Berliners, the blockade had only hardened their resolve.
31:19At this stage, the city had not been fenced in.
31:23The Berlin Wall had not been built.
31:25The Soviets operated checkpoints, but essentially the population for the two halves of the city could go backwards and forwards.
31:34And West Berlin then became a kind of central point of contention in the Cold War and the actions of
31:41the Berliners themselves and what they wanted became hugely important.
31:47As the blockade continued, Western allies retaliated, imposing a trade embargo on the Eastern Bloc.
31:56They also blocked communications out of East Germany.
32:03The airlift delivered roughly 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, machinery and other supplies into West Berlin.
32:13At its peak, the airlift was bringing in a plane every 45 seconds.
32:19With that very innovative solution then, Berlin survived.
32:24The people of Berlin rallied remarkably behind the Western allies.
32:34The mayor of Berlin held these huge rallies out front of the Reichstag saying, you know, world, look at us.
32:42Look at us, we're standing up for democracy.
32:52On May 12, 1949, the Soviet Union lifted their blockade of the city.
33:00So Stalin has to back off because he has no plan B.
33:04He was hoping to get the Western allies out of Berlin.
33:07He was hoping maybe even to stop the development of West Germany.
33:13But that became impossible.
33:16He realised it and he backed off.
33:19Not only was this a massive collective endeavour, it was an expensive one too, costing roughly $224 million.
33:30Despite the blockade lifting in May, the airlift would continue on until September 30th that year.
33:37And its political legacy would endure beyond this.
33:42The crisis had only strengthened the divide between East and West Germany.
33:47And by extension, the rest of Europe.
33:53The Berlin blockade is probably a good moment to say Cold War is at full blast now.
33:59There is no longer cooperation and there is fairly risky reaction from the Western allies.
34:07Because the soldiers could have shot down some of these planes, right?
34:10And then what?
34:17A new phase of the Cold War had begun.
34:22Among the Western allies then, it gave them a kind of sense of power, a sense of determination.
34:30And also, you know, a sense that there was not going to be a kind of compromise about the unification
34:37of Germany.
34:38The events of the past year had made it clear that the suspicions Western nations had about the Soviet Union
34:45were well founded.
34:47Unified by a fear of Soviet dominance and seeking strength in numbers, on the 4th of April 1949, the US,
34:56Canada and 10 European nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.
35:03The intention behind this military alliance was clear.
35:07It was formed to keep the United States in Europe, to keep the Russians out of Europe, and to keep
35:14the Germans down.
35:16The United States is not driving the creation of NATO.
35:21That's something that is actually led by smaller countries in Europe that don't want to be outside of an alliance
35:28system.
35:34The primary intent of the treaty was a security pact and a statement of solidarity.
35:41It included articles facilitating non-military cooperation between signatory states.
35:49But Article 5 of the treaty stated that an attack against any one signatory nation would be considered an attack
35:57on all of them.
35:59For the US, this was a huge commitment.
36:03For the first time in modern history, it was tying its security to the nations of Europe.
36:10NATO really was also the brainchild of Western Europeans who felt that only through deterrence and a show of strength
36:19could they contain the Soviet Union.
36:23The big mantra that Western Europeans and Americans hailed at the time was peace through strength.
36:31And NATO was the epitome of this idea of peace through strength.
36:37Britain is very much in favor of this. The Netherlands is in favor of this.
36:41This is what the historian Geer Lundestad has called the Empire by Invitation.
36:44Yes, there's something imperial in terms of the kind of US influence in Europe after the Second World War.
36:49But it's there partly because it's seen as necessary by these countries.
36:54But each one of these steps from the Soviet perspective is seen as further evidence that the capitalist world is
36:59ganging up against them.
37:01Which leads them to take steps to protect the revolution, if you like, which further sends a signal to the
37:07Western countries that the Soviet Union has aggressive designs, right?
37:11Look what it did in Eastern Europe. What would stop it from doing the same eventually in Italy or elsewhere
37:16if they were given the opportunity?
37:21Growing divisions between the Soviets and the West had reached breaking point.
37:26With Germany in his crosshairs, Stalin fixated on promises made years earlier.
37:34The Putsdam Declaration said that Germany was to be unified as a single economic unit.
37:41But what was happening, meaning increasingly Soviet domination and communist domination in the East, the Americans began making plans for
37:51a new West German government.
37:54Their plans were formalized on May 23, 1949, when the West German Parliamentary Council declared the Federal Republic of Germany.
38:04Stalin was irate, first of all because, again, it violated the Putsdam Declaration, which he repeated over and over again.
38:13But mostly because he wanted a united Germany.
38:18Stalin reacted by establishing his own German puppet state.
38:25In the Soviet-controlled zone, they held an election for a People's Congress.
38:31In reality, it was a heavily orchestrated voting process.
38:36What emerged was a communist-led People's Congress for East Germany.
38:42And then that really provides an almost unstoppable momentum to German division.
38:47Because once you have a pro-Western government in the West and a pro-Soviet government in the East,
38:53it's going to be very hard to see how Germany is going to get together.
38:56In October 1949, the German Democratic Republic of East Germany was formed,
39:03ending hope for a possible reunification of the country.
39:10The creation of the two Germanys, what it signals is that the Soviet Union and its former allies are not
39:17going to be able to come to an agreement
39:19on what was essentially the most important question for them at the end of the war, which is what to
39:23do with Germany.
39:25The best thing they can hope for is sort of to agree to disagree, but in a way that has
39:30consequences for the lives of millions and millions of people.
39:35In the early years after the formal divide, conditions in East Germany led some citizens to migrate to West Germany
39:43in search of greater freedoms.
39:46This exodus would be brought to an end when the border was closed by the East German government.
39:53No one could anticipate that this occupation would turn into the creation of two separate states.
40:04And that these two separate states would then continue for 40 years of separation.
40:10These two halves of what was once Germany would become symbols of the Cold War divide.
40:17But ultimately, it is also a signal of distrust. By that point, not so much of Germany itself or of
40:23Germans, but rather of each other.
40:26Neither side really wants to see a united Germany that might shift to the West or to the East.
40:31East and West Germany were now in direct opposition. New nations on the front line of a global ideological struggle.
40:40Conflict between the two superpowers would spread to every corner of the world.
40:46As each side raced to rearm, the Soviets saw that atomic weapons would be the deciding factor in any future
40:54war.
40:55I don't think that was the case until the bomb exploded over first Hiroshima and then Nagasaki.
41:02And it's at that point that Stalin launched his scientists on a major initiative to acquire a nuclear weapon of
41:09their own.
41:10Part of what Stalin ordered immediately, of course, was to find out everything that Soviet intelligence could find out about
41:16what was going on.
41:18On August 29, 1949, aided by stolen nuclear secrets, the Soviet Union tested their first atomic bomb in northeast Kazakhstan.
41:31It was a 20 kiloton explosion, similar in size to the first U.S. detonation.
41:39The United States was shocked and perplexed at how quickly the Soviet Union had been able to test an atomic
41:46bomb.
41:47And, of course, immediately very suspicious that the Soviets had gotten some help.
41:53But the U.S. would not concede their nuclear advantage so easily.
42:00President Truman ordered the development of a new, even more powerful weapon.
42:08The U.S. tested its first hydrogen bomb in November 1952.
42:14The big race that was on at that point was who was going to acquire a more sophisticated weapon
42:21and then how they were going to build up those capabilities and capacities and weaponize them.
42:28The United States and the Soviet Union were now locked in a deadly arms race.
42:37On April 7, 1950, the U.S. Department of State completed a top-secret report.
42:45It focused on what it called the Soviet Union's hostile design.
42:50It warned that the Soviet threat would soon be significantly amplified by their growing arsenal, one that included nuclear weapons.
43:01Their proposed response was the massive growth of U.S. arsenal to meet this threat.
43:07This document actually included a passage that called for fostering within the Soviet Union the forces that would lead to
43:19its destruction.
43:22So to not just contain the Soviet Union in its present sphere of influence, but infiltrating the Soviet orbit to
43:32bring about actively the destruction of the Soviet Union from within.
43:36And this was a pretty aggressive policy formulation.
43:39And it was a policy formulation that would guide the United States for the better part of the 1950s and
43:47into the 1960s.
43:51The NSC-68 report was presented to President Truman on April 14.
43:58It would set the course for U.S. strategy throughout the Cold War.
44:05The U.S. was now committed to overcoming the Soviet Union and its allies by any means necessary.
44:13And in the years since the Second World War, the Soviets had gained a powerful new friend.
44:20In China, the end of World War II led directly into a renewal of a civil war that had pitted
44:28communist and nationalist forces against each other since the 1920s.
44:34Then it became pretty clear that the Cold War was raging in Europe, but there were still opportunities for expansion
44:42in Asia.
44:43With the Japanese surrender in 1945, the U.S. had initially attempted to broker peace between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist
44:52Party and Mao Zedong's Communist Party.
44:55Stalin was not at first keen on supporting Mao Zedong all the way in the civil war in China.
45:03He wanted to preserve a semblance of cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek.
45:11What mattered for Stalin was whether the Soviet Union would be allowed to have a large sphere of influence in
45:18China.
45:20As the Chinese communists started winning on the ground, Stalin understood that he could put more of his eggs into
45:26Mao Zedong's basket, which he did.
45:30He knew that if he did that, it would create a massive security buffer for the Soviet Union in the
45:36Far East.
45:40On October 1st, 1949, years of war in China would come to an end.
45:46But the outcome would be a serious blow to U.S. national security interests.
45:53Mao Zedong, head of the Communist Party, proclaimed the country to be the People's Republic of China, placing himself as
46:02head of state.
46:04Then Mao Zedong travels to Moscow to conclude the treaty of alliance with the USSR.
46:11And that marks another turning point on the road to full-fledged Cold War.
46:18The U.S. now saw ahead of it a series of dominoes.
46:22Nations that would fall one after the other to communism, unless the Western allies resisted at every stage.
46:33To the Soviets, the revolution they believed in now faced an existential threat.
46:40The roles were set.
46:43The U.S. and Soviet Union each had their allies and their objectives.
46:50The Cold War was really about clash of the Soviet and American visions of what the post-war order was
47:01supposed to be about.
47:02If we look forward a little bit, of course, we see that while the two countries never fight each other
47:07directly,
47:08they are behind a lot of fighting that takes place in the 50s, 60s, 70s and all the way into
47:13the 80s in the post-colonial world.
47:17Political and military tensions between these two superpowers would draw the world inexorably into conflict.
47:25And these two visions, I think, were ultimately simply incompatible.
47:29You could not square them and conflicts were bound to Europe.
47:34First, it would be Korea, but other proxy wars would follow, from the Vietnam War to the Berlin War and
47:43the Cuban Missile Crisis.
47:45Cold War flashpoints would lead entire nations into brutal new wars.
47:52In those conflicts, millions and millions of people die, usually with the help of Soviet and American or British and
47:59French weapons.
48:01The tragedy of this Cold War would play out for decades to come, as the two superpowers became driven by
48:08ambition, by ideology and by fear.
48:11In the minds of Soviets and Russians, they already had lost faith and trust in the Western Allies before the
48:18end of the war.
48:20All of that was made so much worse by the emergence of this super-destructive weapon, the atomic bomb.
48:27The United States and the Soviet Union pushed each other and the entire world to the brink of Armageddon.
48:35An important mindset difference that we have to remember.
48:39The Soviets were on the path of achieving ultimate victory.
48:42With Soviet communism, based on the notion that it would be the system of the future, that it would bring
48:49political, economic, security, strength and health to the USSR.
48:56And that the notion of democratic system based on market forces, this was going to end up on the ash
49:04heap of history.
49:05This conflict, born from the end game of World War II, defined the late 20th century.
49:13It shaped the fate of nations, and it unleashed forces that still threaten humanity to this day.
49:22Changing the world forever.
49:56Lexington Stanford
49:57you
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