Key
At the selected date, the colour of each place shows who held it. To learn its story, click or tap a country or marker.
Drag to move · scroll to zoom · click a country or marker
To move the map on a touch screen, drag it. Pinch to zoom, or double-tap to zoom in.
In 1945, the armies left a changed map, and for the next forty-six years the great question was what would become of it. Two powers that had never planned to run the world found themselves holding halves of it. Within four years, both had weapons that made a war between them a form of suicide. Yet their rivalry did not stay confined to threats between the two powers. They used airlifts and walls, coups and embargoes, proxies and space shots; in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Angola, the struggle was also fought with other people’s lives.
These twelve chapters follow the standoff from Potsdam to the lowering of the red flag. As the colors advance, split and collapse, you can scrub the timeline and interrogate any country. When you think you can read the world as the situation rooms did, you can sit the Field Exam.
Keys: ←→ chapters · space play time · +− zoom · ⌘K search · ? all keys.
You can return to the library of twenty-one atlases at any time: select the balloon at the top left.