What was the cold war? How did it shape history? How are we still seeing its echoes today?
Below are 13 years of Learning Network lesson plans and other materials to help students answer these questions by going beyond the textbook and working with original Times reporting, photojournalism and essays, any of which can be used to address one or more of the following essential questions:
1. Who was responsible for starting the cold war? 2. Why didn’t the cold war ever turn “hot”? 3. How did the cold war challenge American values, at home and abroad? 4. How did the cold war contribute to the current unrest in the Middle East and Afghanistan? 5. Is the cold war still going on? How?
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On Oct. 3, 1990, West Germany and East Germany officially became one nation after 45 years of postwar division. The Oct. 3 New York Times reported, “Forty-five years after it was carved up in defeat and disgrace, Germany was reunited today in a midnight celebration of pealing bells, national hymns and the jubilant blare of good old German oom-pah-pah.”
Germany had been split into four zones in 1945 following the surrender of the Nazi regime to the Allied Powers. Initially, the United States, Britain, France and Soviet Union each governed one of these zones. The Allies intended to run Germany like a single country, but as the Soviet Union and the West grew apart due to ideological differences, the country was split into West Germany and East Germany.
Overview | How can we best understand how and why historical events happened, as well as how and why they are significant? In this lesson, students consider how ordinary citizens contributed to and experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall. They then develop scrapbooks depicting how people experienced the wall and use the books as symbolic bricks in building a classroom Berlin Wall. Read more…
New York Times reporter Robert McFadden called it “the foremost symbol of East-West confrontation” and “a monument to political control, a scene of gunfire and drama and tragedy, the stuff of spy novels and a physical and psychic barrier that divided Berlin, Germany and Europe.”
It is the Berlin Wall, and it came down 20 years ago today.
Answer the questions below, each of which is based on past or recent Times reporting. After you answer a question, click on the related resource to see the original or a related article.