The importance of Cold War history?

[Kthebean 10]

Somehow, I managed to get all the way through secondary school and A level history without learning a single sausage about the Cold War. It is only through my own reading and research that I have acquired knowledge of it since. A straw poll of my friends garnered answers ranging from 'dunno' to 'was it something to do with the berlin wall and the nazis?'

 

Is this normal? Did anyone else learn about the Cold War in school? Do most people my age know what it was? (Obviously some will have finished school long before the cold war ) Can any teachers tell me is it on the curriculum nowadays? or are you at school studying politics or history?

 

To try and comprehend current problems in Afghanistan, South America, Africa - in fact, most places - without an understanding of the basics of cold war history seems impossible to me - it shaped the world we now have to live in, did it not? Didn't many of the 'hot wars' provide a really fertile breeding ground for the islamic terrorism problems we now face - or is that too simple an analysis?

 

Seems more relevant to me than the Tudor period or the Ancient Eygptians, to name but two of the strange choices of history modules we had at school!

[jfish1936 10]

Somehow, I managed to get all the way through secondary school and A level history without learning a single sausage about the Cold War. Do most people my age know what it was? Can any teachers tell me is it on the curriculum nowadays?

Didn't many of the 'hot wars' provide a really fertile breeding ground for the islamic terrorism problems we now face - or is that too simple an analysis?

[ END QUOTE]

 

First of all, approximately what age are you? I can't answer the "my age" question without a clue!

I think it wasn't taught because it was contemporary politics; we know what should be thought about the Tudors, so there's an agreed body of things that can be taught in school; meanwhile, for a teacher today to approve or disapprove of the war in Iraq, or of declaring war on Iran, would be (in the "Yes Minister" phrase) "A courageous act" i.e. possibly fatal to one's career.

I think there is no doubt that british, french and American thinking has often been to solve the urgent immediate problem, thereby storing up trouble for later: e.g. encouraging Saddam Hussein to be the "strong man" of Iraq, against the influence of the ayatollahs in Iran. There was a similar fellow in S. Vietnam. Then support is withdrawn, the "tyrant" either falls to his own people or is crushed by his former allies, and local people can only deduce "Don't trust the Americans; they'll let you down"

It would be nice if ....

"Western " governments have a "mission statement" about peace, justice, equality and all that rot; they don't really practice it! Wouldn't it be nice to form a club of decent nations who DID practice real democracy, and refused to trade with anyone who didn't have a democracy. Of course, today's Australia would need to reform; when we have the beam out of our eye, maybe we'll check Britain, USA, Italy, France .......

[JoeP 11]

There's a famous story about a Foreign Minister from either China or Russia being asked by a French reporter what they thought the historical significance of the french Revolution was. After a few seconds thought, the Communist dignitary said 'It's too soon to say.'

 

I guess that part of the problem of teaching about the Cold War is that many of the historical effects are probably not going to be truly visible for years to come. Francis Fukuyama came unstuck with his 'end of history' crap in teh early 1990s, for example, and it's possible that in 200 years time the enlightenment (18th, 19th and 20th Centuries) might be viewed as a break in the usual cycle of religious / ideological warfare that started the Crusades, went on through the Protestant / Catholic wars in the middles ages, then got back to Islamic nations vs Israel and Islam vs the West in the mid to late 20th Century. That MIGHT be how a future historian views that period, and if so the Cold War would just be the last spasm of the political / ideological conflicts thate were particularly prevalent in teh 20th Century.

 

There is an argument that WW1 never finished; that the 1920s and 1930s were basically a time when the combatants tooled up again. The 1930s with Wars like the Spanish Civil War and other encounters between Communism and emergent Fascism might be nlogous to the proxy wars between East and West after 1945. Then the war became hot again between 1939 and 45, but with an ideological slant rather than a geopolitical slant of WW1.

 

After 1945, it could even be argued that the Cold War was 'warm' for at least a decade. Apart from Korea, there were frequent firefights in the 1940s between Western and Soviet aircraft in the skies around the Eastern Bloc.

 

I'd argue that the West played a long game with the Soviet Union. The last two leaders who appeared to take the Cold War rhetoric seriously were Kennedy and Kruschev. Neither of whom stayed in office long enough to do real damage, despite their best efforts. After these two leaders, the Viet Nam war carried on but that was more a Colonial War than an East / West proxy war. The Arab-Israeli Wars caused problems, but ultimately Western technology and capitalism would make it possible for the Soviet Union to be bled dry; I believe that by the early 1980s there was serious concern as to whether the Warsaw Pact would actually have the wherewithall in terms of diesel, aviation spirit and petrol to mount a full scale conventional attack on the West, had they even felt like it.

 

Anyway....I think the most recent history I was taught at school was the Second World War - this was in the 1970s, mind you!

 

Anything else, I added to my own knowledge courtesy of the library!

 

Joe

[psyn 10]

I am in my early twenties and I studied this period for GCSE history. It was the most relevant and interesting historical study I had done. We went up to the Berlin Wall coming down and to know that this happened in my lifetime was really powerful and gave me a sense of the importance of historical study in a way which the second world war never could.

[Fareast 10]

It's not just knowledge about the Cold War that helps us to understand the modern world , but History in general . I honestly can't see how someone can form an intelligent opinion about today's problems without at least a basic grasp of what's gone on before .

It's rather like walking in on a loud , confusing family quarrel and trying to make sense of it if you don't know about anyone involved in the arguments and fights .

Another important "tool" that people need is some basic information about the population and size of countries they are talking about . If you said there were more cars in China than Portugal , and if you were a bit , let's say naive , you might think China was a richer country than Portugal .

The fact that History and Geography have been watered down in schools these past years is a bit of a tragedy in my opinion and leads to people jumping to all sorts of conclusions that one can only boggle over ; for some of them literally have no idea what they're talking about .

[slimsid2000 10]

I would have to agree that the Cold War was an important feature of the second half of the 20th century. Even more important was that it was the west that won. It may seem hard to imagian now but not that long ago there was a very real fear that Communism would take over the world.

[Cyclone 10]

I think i'm a few years older than you kathy, but not a huge amount.

The cold war wasn't something that was even mentioned in history whilst I was at school. What I know comes from films, books and reading around.

[artisan 10]

To be young during the fifties and sixties, and even the early seventies when the Cold war was at it hieght was a very bad time.

we were always being led to believe that nuclear war was just a few minutes away, and to use the american phrase ' reds under the bed'.

The stand offs between the USSR and NATO led to some pretty dramatic scenarios, one of the most tense being when Kennedy threatened war with the USSR over Cuba.

However when Gorbachev went to Iceland and met Reagan everthing changed.

Reagan went with all guns blazing and Gorbachev said, in so many words, 'Im to young to die we give in'.

We had been realising for many years that the Russians were not as bad as they had been painted by the propaganda machine, and now found that they were exactly the same as us, people who had no wish to exterminate their fellow man.

They ,as we were, were misled by leaders following the adgenda which has brougth us to the position we are in today.

Helpless in the face of a frankenstein Monster created by both sides

[Andy78 10]

I do find it interesting that it wasn't taught at school when I was there. Then again, on the grand scheme of things, it hadn't been finished for that long. I recently taught myself about it and found it to be fascinating. Had a day out on Wikipedia, following link after link about the various stages. As JoeP said a lot of information is still coming out about the cold war, so maybe teaching the incomplete picture at the moment would be unwise.

 

One story that I found particularly interesting is about Alexandrovich Arkhipov, a Russian submarine officer who possibly prevented what could have been a full nuclear assault; a story that was only revealed in 2002.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Alexandrovich_Arkhipov

[alchresearch 214]

I imagine that billions must have been spent on cold war defences from the 50's onwards - all the nuclear bunkers that keep popping up in the news and on Ebay and such, and such signs are around us every day. There were quite a few close calls to armageddon and these stories are equally, if not more, important than the life of the Tudors which the schools teach.

 

I find the whole subject fascinating and like many others on here, did not learn a jot of it in school, other than watching Threads and reading "Z For Zaccariah" in English.

[Fareast 10]

It certainly was a very interesting [ and dangerous ] period to have lived through . In fact , I reckon that a fairly big gulf exists in the U.K between those who did and did not experience the Cold War . Those who didn't experience it , tend , I think , to over-dramatise today's problems , whilst us Oldies tend to be a bit too blase about terrorism .......etc......

However.........the period was interesting on many levels . There was not only the vision of two mighty armed camps facing each other but also , of course , little hot wars and incidents that the superpowers were involved in by proxy . The Korean War is the prime example but there were also other places where the Communist and Capitalist world had squabbles ....e.g. Malaya , parts of Africa , the Chinese revolution , Turkey and the military bases .........etc........Also of course in lots of countries there was a continual , gigantic propoganda war being fought at national and local levels.For example in Italy in 1948 , about 38 % voted communist and in France the communist trade unions were very powerful .

However . perhaps [ apart from the fairly short Cuban Crisis ] , the most obvious danger point was Germany , particularly Berlin . We were always aware that an incident in Berlin could touch off a 3rd. World War . Before the Wall was built [ 1960--1961 ? ] , Russian and American tanks literally faced each other across the open street .

In 1948 [ ? ] Stalin was influential in " persuading " the East Germans to effectively close down the road and rail traffic between W. Berlin and W. Germany and the allies had to keep W. Berlin alive by the Airlift. The problem was the planes , flying almost non-stop , HAD to keep to a well-defined air -lane . What might have happened had an aircraft strayed and had been shot down by the East Germans ??

So , sometimes the tension mounted and sometimes it subsided -------but it was always there and since 1990 , the world does seem a different place to the ' Oldies '. Nowadays still a chance of being blown up by some maniac or other but much less chance of ,' The Big One ' which would certainly have made the world a different place ! .....perhaps for ever ?

[wolfman 10]

Well we may have to dust the cold war memoirs as its likely that the next cold war will be between the US and China.