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Berlin blockade and airlift
Children watching a U.S. cargo plane landing at Tempelhof Airfield in Berlin, 1948.
Cold War
international politics
Quick Facts
Top Questions
What was the Cold War?
What was the Cold War?
How did the Cold War end?
How did the Cold War end?
Why was the Cuban missile crisis such an important event in the Cold War?
Why was the Cuban missile crisis such an important event in the Cold War?
News •
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Oleg Gordievsky, Britain's most valuable Cold War spy inside the KGB, dies at 86
• Mar. 22, 2025, 3:55 PM ET (AP)
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• Mar. 19, 2025, 7:25 PM ET (AP)
Cold War, the open yet restricted rivalry that developed after World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945 to refer to what he predicted would be a nuclear stalemate between “two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” It was first used in ...(100 of 1074 words)