Cold War Armageddon

For four decades two global superpowers face off, poised for swift and terrible action. It is an arms race, a propaganda battle and a deadly game. It is the Cold...

As the arms race rages on the 1950s become a decade of paranoia. The threat of mutually assured destruction maintains the stalemate between democracy and communism.

The rivalry between capitalism and communism rages from Berlin to Havana, to outer space. Russia goes behind an Iron Curtain, spawning revolutions across Eastern Europe.

It's the 1960s and the USSR places nuclear warheads in Cuba. The first US troops arrive in Vietnam and there's a high-stakes game of nuclear poker.

By the 1970s Stalin is long gone, but Russia's determination strengthens. Advances in nuclear technology have poured fuel on the fire in the international arms race.

By the end of the 1970s new hostilities emerge in the arena of international sports, and real conflict takes hold in both Afghanistan and Angola.

In the 1980s the battleground between democracy and communism shifts to the United States' own backyard - in the Caribbean island of Grenada.

In 1989 a new era emerges as the Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan and the Berlin Wall is torn down, but the legacy remains in countries such as Romania.