On this day in 1961, construction began on the Berlin Wall. The barrier separated East and West Berlin for nearly three decades, preventing East Germans from fleeing to the West and earning the nickname 'the Iron Curtain.'

At the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, President Ronald Reagan famously challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," casting the Berlin Wall as a symbol of the Communist era and Germany's Cold War division.

What was life like in walled-off West Berlin?

As Germany fractured along ideological lines, ruled by the Soviet Union in the East and Allied powers in the West, the capital city of Berlin, fully immersed in Soviet territory, became an island of refuge for people trying to flee Communist...

See the celebration at the Berlin Wall as it fell in 1989

In November 1989, East German guards stood down as crowds surged across the nearly 100-mile barrier encircling West Berlin. Thousands celebrated the wall’s sudden irrelevance and collapse. This ABC News report captures the moment’s upheaval and joy.

Reagan’s 'tear down this wall' speech challenged Soviet control of Berlin

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall and urged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” The speech became one of the most iconic moments of the Cold War and a symbol of growing pressure on the Eastern Bloc.

A West Berlin student dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall—29 East Germans escaped

This podcast recounts how a young West Berlin student excavated a secret 135‑meter tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall in 1962. A total of 29 East Germans escaped to freedom, even as a Stasi mole threatened exposure.

A small mistake in a press conference triggered the fall of the Berlin Wall

This video explains how a confused East German spokesman—misreading new travel rules at an otherwise routine 1989 press conference—accidentally announced immediate border openings, prompting crowds to surge to the Berlin Wall and igniting Germany’s rapid reunification.

Hear from people who experienced Germany's unification in 1990

What was it like to see Germany's fractured halves reunite in 1990? Explore eyewitness accounts of the reunification of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in this collection of artist and resident interviews. The Berlin Wall sundered the city...

Churchill’s 1946 ‘Iron Curtain’ speech warned of growing Soviet domination

In a 1946 speech, Winston Churchill declared that an “Iron Curtain” had descended across Europe—dividing East from West. The address marked one of the first public acknowledgments of the emerging Cold War and coined the term that would define the conflict.

The Berlin Airlift was the largest in history and a major Cold War victory for the US

In 1948, the USSR blockaded West Berlin to pressure America and its allies. In response, the US and its partners launched the largest airlift in history—delivering supplies daily for nearly a year until Stalin backed down.

Communist governments across Eastern Europe fell in 1989

In 1989, a series of mostly peaceful uprisings led to the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Protests and political shifts in countries like Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia marked the end of Soviet dominance in the region.

Soviet control spread across Eastern Europe after WWII

In the late 1940s, the USSR solidified control over Eastern Europe by installing pro-communist regimes in countries like Poland, Hungary and Romania—often through rigged elections and political repression.

The Cold War (1947-1991) prompted the birth of NATO and the Soviet Warsaw Pact

The geopolitical rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union was considered “cold" because the two countries never directly engaged in military combat during the time period. This page from the Kennedy Presidential Library outlines the causes and major events of the early Cold War.

Explore 100 years of communism across the globe, from the 1917 October Revolution to North Korea's modern nuclear defiance.

The Marshall Plan aimed to rebuild Europe and limit Soviet influence

Launched in 1948, the Marshall Plan provided over $12B (roughly $150B today) in US aid to help rebuild Western Europe. While framed as economic recovery, it also served as a Cold War tool—tying countries to the US and excluding the Soviet bloc.

During the Cold War, the rules-based order was largely limited to the West

The Soviet Union and its allies operated outside the Bretton Woods institutions, meaning the postwar liberal order functioned as a regional rather than a truly global system. This changed with the USSR's collapse in 1991.

Cold War summary on a map

The Cold War spanned much of the world, going far beyond the main territories of the principal players: the US and the Soviet Union. This video map shows where the action took place, from the wars in Southeast Asia to the Suez Canal in Egypt.

Stalingrad was the turning point of WWII in Eastern Europe

The six-month siege (July 1942–February 1943) ended when the Soviet Union’s counteroffensive, Operation Uranus, encircled and destroyed Germany’s 6th Army. This decisive victory shifted momentum permanently to the Soviets on the Eastern Front, marking a major strategic reversal in Europe and undermining Nazi Germany’s war capacity.

The Soviet Union explained

From 1922 to 1991, the Soviet Union spanned one-sixth of Earth’s landmass and housed nearly 300 million people. As the most significant test of Marxist governance, it sat at the center of the century’s defining struggle between capitalism and communism.

Watch archival footage of Jesse Owens in the 1936 Berlin Olympics

The 1936 Berlin Games were the first Olympics to be shown live on television (though not broadcast). The Germans used a closed circuit television network to bring the Games to 25 viewing halls in black and white. View footage of American Olympic hero Jesse Owens winning his four gold medals, and his historic interaction with German long jumper Luz Long in Nazi Germany.

The treaty that ended the First World War laid the groundwork for the Second.

A guide to the Bauhaus' 3 German locations

The influential design school began in Weimar, then moved to Dessau and later to Berlin. This narrated timeline from Graphic Design History explains how Gropius' countercultural educational and artistic philosophies forced the school to move and, ultimately, leave Gropius behind.

'Cold War Conversations' podcast shares voices from the conflict's frontlines

This award-winning podcast features gripping interviews with the people who lived through the Cold War—spies, soldiers, defectors, and civilians. Covering everything from the Berlin Wall to nuclear standoffs, it offers unfiltered, emotional accounts of Cold War life and conflict.

Wartime conferences exposed cracks in the US–Soviet alliance

At the Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, Allied leaders coordinated WWII strategy—but deep disagreements over postwar Europe foreshadowed the Cold War. The USSR’s push for influence in Eastern Europe clashed with US and British calls for self-determination.

The Nazis and Soviets agreed to a non‑aggression pact in 1939

On August 23, 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact—a public commitment to not attack each other combined with a secret agreement dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. This pact enabled Germany to invade Poland unopposed from the east and delayed conflict with the USSR until June 1941.

The 1955 Warsaw Pact was the Soviet Union’s answer to NATO

The pact included Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the USSR. The pact established collective security and a joint military command between the member countries.

Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 launched World War II

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany launched a surprise invasion of Poland using blitzkrieg—coordinated air bombardments and armored assaults—to overwhelm Polish defenses within weeks. This lightning-strike strategy shocked the world and signaled both the start of World War II and a revolutionary shift in modern military tactics.

The impressive walls of Constantinople

This video explores the land walls of Constantinople, built on the orders of Theodosius II in the mid-fifth century. They consisted of a triple line of defenses, studded with hundreds of towers and supplemented with a moat. The walls were besieged dozens of times, but were only broken in 1453 by the power of Ottoman cannons. As repaired by the Ottomans, the walls are still largely intact today.

How World War I ended in 2010

Germany made its final reparations-related payment for the Great War on Oct. 3, nearly 92 years after the country’s defeat by the Allies. What took Germany so long to pay for the war?

The wild, early history of the tunnel across the English Channel

Britain and France today are connected by the Chunnel—a tunnel bored roughly 120 feet under the seabed of the notoriously choppy English Channel, which opened in 1994. The dream of integrating Britain with the rest of the continent this way began much earlier, with daring, physically impossible plans proposed as early as the 19th century. Check out the earliest plans here.

How the Great Depression and end of WWI paved the way for Hitler's rise to power

The end of WWI was triggered by an armistice that blamed the conflict on Germany and required the financially struggling country to pay reparations. This outraged nationalists and ignited conspiracies that Hitler was able to capitalize on, according to this six-minute video. It was during this financial strain that the Great Depression hit.

A history of the White House fence

Since it was occupied in 1800 by Thomas Jefferson, the White House has had a fence. From the original wooden post-and-rail fence to today's 13-foot high steel barrier, check out this brief timeline of the White House fence from the the building's...

A 1980 Oktoberfest bombing killed 13 people

The event was the country's deadliest domestic terror attack since World War II, killing 13 people and injuring more than 200. The perpetrator was 21-year-old Gundolf Koehler, who hoped to use the attack to usher in a conservative chancellor.

See a timeline of the tumultuous relationship between Cuba and the US since 1959

Only 90 miles separate Cuba from the US, yet Cold War hostility froze relations for decades. This timeline traces six decades of tension, from revolution and missile crisis to renewed hardline US policies reintroduced in 2025

US–Soviet hostility began long before the Cold War

US–Soviet tensions began decades before WWII. After the 1917 revolution, the US refused to recognize the Bolshevik regime and even sent troops to fight against it.