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

Sorry to disappoint, but the economist t-shirts are not a real product.

Thanks to Raoul Meyer for the YUGOGAL photo.

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• Category

  Education

[ColonelAftershock]

Less than 12 hours until the AP World Test! Who else isn't ready?!

[ApertureSubjectB15]

ummm.... don't you mean APWH test?

[holographic247]

No, there is nothing wrong with ideal communism.

[AlrightMiami]

Where can I get the Milton Friedman shirt?

[Ramón Rivera]

Nothing "bad guy" about helping overthrowing Allende, I would have been the one born in a Communist state had that not been the case!

[JulianaBraziliana]

Why hasn't John Green won a Nobel Prize for saving our generation????

[RobertSahlqvist]

North Korea are NOT communist. Hank even said that!

[Wxcsdb]

Because it stayed "cold" throughout, it never became a "hot" war like WW2

[james muego]

I have a question. Why is the war called cold? Why not Hot war?

[TheKeyser94]

It seem that the cold war didn't end jet, because Republican crazies still think that we are in the cold war.

[TheKeyser94]

More than the USA show the horrors of unregulated capitalism, you don't have to blame Russia for something that the United States did.

[mchras]

I love John Green! He makes studying less boring! :P