Senior: 11 & 12: Unit 4: Cold War

1. Context Statement

You have been investigating international experiences that have emerged in the Modern World through our studies on the Cold War 1945-1991. We examined how the Cold War divided the world and subsequent relations between countries, in addition to exploring the hottest parts of the Cold War.

2. Task

Investigate the significance of the Cold War period being a war without an end; including how the influence of propaganda and threat of violence to create fear and terror, was shaped by the period itself.

• Your investigation must reflect the application of key issues raised in our depth study.

• Your historical essay must be based on research, and requires sustained analysis, evaluation and synthesis of evidence from historical sources to fully support the hypothesis.

   Oliver Library Catalogue

   Look here for books, eBooks, 

   DVDs and websites.  

The ENTIRE collection of resources provided by the BBC Library can now be searched on ONE single, powerful search platform, which retrieves print books, eBooks, database articles and websites. Click HERE for assistance.

Wilson Center Digital Archive :  excellent range of primary documents - use the search box to find your topic

The Avalon Project, Yale Law School : primary documents from the Cold War

CIA :  Assessing the Soviet threat

Library of Congress : Revelations from the Russian Archives_Cold War.  Documents translated into English and accessed via the Library of Congress

Office of The Historian, United State Government : Cold War years

British National Archives : The Cold War

John F Kennedy Museum : Cold War documents

History.Com -  videos of speeches from the Cold War 

Museum of Australian Democracy : The Petrov Affair

Korean War : Australian Government

Berlin Wall

Occupation and the Emergence of Two States (1945-1961) : German History in Documents and Images

Czech Crisis

CIA intelligence report - documented on 28 Oct 1986 'POLITICS IN THE SOVIET POLITBURO AND THE CZECH CRISIS'

Prague Spring Archive - Texas University

Speech by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev November 1968, as justification to Prague Spring  - Fordham University

Note:  In 1981, Yale Law reviewed the Brezhnev Doctrine - Law and Use of Force by States

Cold War studies (Transcript of Conversation between Brezhnev and Dubcek, 13 August 1968) - Harvard University

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia - Michigan University

Crisis in Czechoslovakia - (includes translated documents, images, video & audio) Michigan State University

Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia - Wilson Centre Digital Archive

Czechoslovakia 1968 - includes CIA reports documenting the build-up to and Soviet Invasion

 Moscow Rules: Secret police, spies, sleepers and assassins by Douglas Boyd

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin installed secret police services in all the satellite countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Trained by his NKVD, a predecessor of the KGB officers of the Polish UB, the Czech StB, the Hungarian AVO, Romania's Securitate, Bulgaria's KDS, Albania's Sigurimi and the Stasi of the German Democratic Republic spied on and ruthlessly repressed their fellow citizens on the Soviet model. When the resultant hatred exploded in uprisings they were put down by brutality, bloodshed and Soviet tanks. What was at first not so obvious was that these state terror organisations were also designed for military and commercial espionage in the West, to conceal the real case officers in Moscow. Specially trained operatives undertook 'wet jobs', including assassination of anti-Soviet figures. Perhaps the most menacing were the sleepers who settled in the West, married and had children while waiting to strike against their host countries.