Part III

The Divided World: 1945–89

In this part . . .

These were the years of unity; they were the years of division. Television, sport, and music helped bring the whole world together and build bridges between peoples and nations. But these were also the Cold War years, when people had to live knowing that the world could end at the press of a button.

Communist East and Capitalist West squared up to each other on every continent of the globe. War broke out for real in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan, and the world came within a whisker of nuclear war in 1962 over Cuba. The Cold War even extended into space.

The rest of the world knew no peace either. The European empires collapsed, all too often in bloodshed and carnage. The United Nations set up a Jewish homeland in the Middle East and the whole region exploded in bloody conflict that remains unresolved to this day. The Arab states found they could use their control of the world’s oil supplies as a very powerful weapon.

And then, suddenly, the Cold War ended. The Russians and Americans started talking and 1989 witnessed popular revolutions against communist regimes. With the Cold War over, the whole world wanted to buy Western goods and buy into Western culture. The nuclear weapons were dismantled. Surely now life had to get better?