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Khmer Rouge

Pol Pot Although Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge didn’t come to power until the mid‑1970s, the roots of their takeover can be traced to the 1960s, when a communist insurgency first became active in Cambodia, which was then ruled by a monarch. Throughout the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge operated as the armed wing of […]

Berlin Airlift

The Berlin Airlift: The Partitioning of Berlin As World War II came to an end in 1945, the Allied powers held peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to determine how they would divide up Germany’s territories. The agreements split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: They gave the eastern part of the country […]

Collapse of the Soviet Union

The Origins and Evolution of the Soviet State In the Russian Revolution of 1917, revolutionary Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czar and four socialist republics were established. In 1922, Russia proper joined its far‑flung republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The first leader of this Soviet state was the Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. […]

The 1950s

The Postwar Booms Historians use the word “boom” to describe a lot of things about the 1950s: the booming economy, the booming suburbs and most of all the so‑called “baby boom.” This boom began in 1946, when a record number of babies–3.4 million–were born in the United States. About 4 million babies were born each […]

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Here’s Why the Suez Crisis Almost Led to Nuclear War

Discover the history of the Suez Canal and how Egypt’s President Nasser, with the support of the Soviet Union, seized the canal from the British in 1956, causing an international crisis. See how President Eisenhower intervened to help restore order.

Formation of NATO

Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union resulted in the formation of key alliances that would endure throughout the Cold War.

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Army‑McCarthy Hearings

Joseph McCarthy and his role in stoking fears of communism and its sympathizers during the 1950s.

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Hollywood Ten

Historian Yohuru Williams discusses key facts about the Hollywood 10, a group of film directors, screenwriters, and producers blacklisted for Communist affiliations in 1947.

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