November 9, 2019 was the 30th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came crashing down, freeing East Germany from communism, and marking the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. But when did the Cold War start? Why does it matter 30 years later? Find out in this ten-part series, transport back in time, feel what it was like to live through the end of the Cold War, and understand why that struggle was a battle for civilization itself. Bill Whittle narrates this compelling series about two competing ideologies battling for global supremacy in the ashes of World War 2.

The Cold War: What We Saw

The Cold War: What We Saw | Official Trailer

Catch a sneak peek of the first five minutes of The Cold War: What We Saw, followed by a fascinating interview with host Bill Whittle and the man behind Ronald Reagan's famous "Tear Down This Wall" speech, Peter Robinson.

An Exclusive Interview With Peter Robinson

World War III — the Apocalypse that never was — started in the same place that World War II in Europe had ended: Berlin. “An Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent,” said Winston Churchill, and that curtain ran right through the heart of Berlin. One the Eastern side, the collectivist, state-centered world of Joseph Stalin's communist ideology, armed to the teeth with conventional forces. On the other side — the Western side — a war-weary alliance of capitalist countries, led by the beacon of individual rights, the United States.

In Part 1 of The Cold War: What We Saw, we will peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.

Part 1 | An Iron Curtain

After the defeat of Germany,  Joseph Stalin looked at the pieces laid out on the board in front of him with satisfaction that bordered on glee. His Red Army, consisting of millions of battle-hardened troops, thousands of tanks and an equal number of artillery pieces had come to a halt — temporarily, thought Stalin — where they had encountered the British and American forces attacking from the West. Those forces, he knew, were no match for the sheer mass his Soviet Union had mustered, and he was certain that the Western Democracies did not have the stomach for another long and bloody war. Soon all of Europe would be his, and his communist ideology fulfilled.

But all of that changed when the Americans had conjured two brilliant flashes of light over Japan and brought a sudden end to the Second World War. Would American atomic wizardry be enough of a deterrent to prevent the Third?

Part 2 | Two Bombs

So now the board is set and the pieces are in place. In the East, the battle-hardened, seemingly endless divisions of the Red Army, backed by the ruthless and pitiless Joseph Stalin and his state-driven terror. In the West, the idealistic to the point of naïveté allies and their game-changing pika-dons, the nuclear flash-booms that had turned Stalin’s relentless ambition into a pillar of salt. As he tapped his unlit pipe and smoothed his iconic mustache, Stalin was sure that while the West had the Bomb, they did not possess the will to use it; the Americans would not trade Boston for Berlin. Stalin wouldn’t invade because he wouldn’t have to; he’d move the Iron Curtain to keep the Allies out of Berlin. It was a blockade that the West could never get through... but one that they just might be able to get over.

Part 3 | The Thing Begins

Although the entire Cold War passed without shots being fired between the two superpowers, the Cold War was anything but bloodless. The Korean conflict marked the beginning of proxy wars, regional conflicts backed by the full military might of both the United States and the Soviet Union. A brilliant amphibious landing turns the tide on the Korean Peninsula; meanwhile, America raises the stakes with a bomb so powerful it takes an atomic bomb to simply light the fuse.

Part 4 | The Forgotten War

Joseph Stalin, the architect and instigator of the 42-year Cold War, has died five years into the conflict. Across the Atlantic, a new Republican President, who had worked closely with Uncle Joe during World War II, is a mere two months in office. As the knives come out for the succession fight inside the Kremlin, will a brief window of opportunity be enough to completely reset the conflict?

Part 5 | Death In The Kremlin

In the years after World War II, Dwight David Eisenhower was arguably the most popular man on the planet. Ike’s prestige was so immense that in 1948, President Harry S Truman offered him the top slot on the 1948 Democratic ticket, with the offer to revert to his former position as Vice President under Eisenhower. It wasn’t enough.

But by 1952, a Draft Eisenhower committee threw an enormous rally: thousands of screaming fans, movie stars, and Irving Berlin himself leading the crowd in a rendition of God Bless America… all of this for a man who wasn’t even there. Finally persuaded, General Eisenhower became President Eisenhower, facing a brace of unknown Soviet leaders named Malenkov and Khrushchev. But no one — not even those who had so strongly lobbied for him — were prepared for the anti-military, anti-war statements and policies from the man who had been assumed to be the fiercest of Cold Warriors.

Part 6 | We Like Ike

He had grown up a rich kid, believe it or not: the illegitimate son of a millionaire planter and a servant girl half his age. He was named "Truth," he was handsome and rugged, a 6'3" charismatic giant who had arrived back on his native shore with Che Guevara and a handful of men on a leaky tub named "Granma." He faced off against Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama and lived to see the election of Donald Trump.

His name was Fidel Castro, and he brought communism to the Western Hemisphere. He would turn his native Cuba into a launching pad for Soviet nuclear missiles, a mere 90 miles south of the Florida keys. He would impoverish his nation for six decades and die with $900,000,000 in his personal bank account. And his first and greatest test would be to repel an American-backed invasion at Playa Giron, a beach on the southern coast of Cuba at the mouth of an inlet called the Bay of Pigs.

Part 7 | Playa Giron

Following the Bay of Pigs disaster, and a second crisis in Europe resulting in the deadly grey reality of the Berlin Wall, an over-confident Nikita Khrushchev decides to further test what the Soviets see as a weak and vacillating Kennedy administration. As US reconnaissance overflights of Cuba resume after a hiatus following the events at Playa Giron, analysts are shocked to discover rings of Russian-made surface-to-air missile installations. While these themselves pose no threat to the United States, the installations follow the classic designs used by the Soviets to protect important ground installations.

Then they see them: Russian medium-range, nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the entire East Coast. More are on the way from Russia, lashed to the decks of Soviet transports. Announcing an outright blockade of Cuba would be recognized as an act of war, so President Kennedy employs the Soviet tactic of linguistic sophistry and announces a "quarantine zone." As US Navy warships move to intercept the incoming missiles, the fate of the world hangs in the balance -- and is ultimately in the hands of a single man, not in either the White House or the Kremlin, but deep beneath the waves at the edge of the quarantine zone.

Part 8 | To The Precipice

Episodes

Season 1

The Cold War may be over, but the tension between Russia and the West remains. Join Bill Whittle as he narrates this compelling series about two competing ideologies battling for global supremacy in the ashes of World War II.

Menu