Cold war. Vol. 2. Episodes 5-8: Reds

Volume two of the six volume television series “Cold War” features episodes 5 to 8 covering the 1950s including the Korean War, through to the beginnings of the “Space Race”. In August 1945, the Japanese surrendered their thirty-five year occupation of Korea. Korea was divided along the 38th parallel with the Americans establishing the Republic of Korea in the south and the Russians controlling the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north. In 1950, Stalin gave approval for North Korea to invade South Korea, an act which the United States and the United Nations could not ignore. The battle for Korea raged for three years with a truce finally being declared in 1953 and Korea still remaining divided. And so the stage was set for the “Cold War” - communism versus democracy, Soviet Union versus United States. Propaganda became the name of the game, with anticommunism, fear and suspicion spreading across America and the Soviet Union closing its doors to the outside world. Following Stalin’s death on 5 March 1953, a new collective leadership was born and included Nikita Khrushchev. A wave of unrest took hold of Eastern Europe as workers looked for better conditions and a less repressive regime. East Berlin’s worker revolt was met with Soviet troops, Polish workers called for reform and calmed Soviet fears by remaining in the Warsaw Pact but in Budapest, Hungary, students were much more determined to overthrow the communists and Soviet rule. Espionage, spies and secrets, the CIA, the FBI, the nuclear arms race and the space race kept the Cold War bubbling along. But without the Cold War, the race between capitalism and communism, maybe Yuri Gagarin would not have made history for the Soviets by being the first human launched into space on 12 April 1961. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh. (For more information see www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war)