Cold War

The Cold War has provided many opportunities for viewing historic sites, and while not all of these sites are remembered for good reasons and they are very interesting to travellers.

An introduction to Cold War

The Cold War began in 1945 at the conclusion of World War 2 (World War II in Europe and the Pacific War) and continued until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was a key period in modern history, because it occurred primarily due to rivalries between capitalist and Communist societies. While there are still Communist countries as of 2022, generally it is considered that capitalism won the war.

However, in many ways and the Cold War is a very present thing. North Korea remains a Communist country, and China is politically quite similar. Who knows what places may become historic sites one day.

Topics

• World War II in Europe|World War II (in Europe) for information about the world war that came just before the Cold War, and for the war that preceded WWII, see our article for World War I.
• See also the article for World War II in the Pacific, which was of particular importance to the United States.

Multiple topics cover the Cold War era:

• Military tourism
• Cold War Europe
• Post-war United States

Key rivalries in this time period include:

• The Korean War|Korean War, which left a bitterly-divided North Korea and South Korea divided by a heavily-fortified DMZ (Korea) | demilitarized zone
• The ongoing nuclear tourism|nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union
• The Cuban revolution, Cuban missile crisis and Americans in Cuba|U.S. embargo of the island nation
• The Indochina Wars|Indochina Wars, which ended in a humiliating U.S. withdrawal and full communist control over Vietnam
• The race for space|space, which began with Sputnik in 1957 and ended with multiple US Moon landings in 1969-1972.
• The civil war in Nicaragua, beginning with the fall of (U.S.-backed) Somoza and ending with a bizarre combination of military victory and electoral defeat for the left wing FSLN

Destination articles

• Cape Canaveral and the location of Kennedy Space Center, was important in the space race
• Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, U.S. ICBM site in South Dakota
• Mödlareuth, Franconian border village divided by the East (German) border wall
• Berlin and Wikivoyage:Joke articles/East Berlin; the city was divided at the Brandenburg Gate