28 questions · 24 almanac · 0 findings

Cold War History

The geopolitical conflict between the US and Soviet bloc.

Almanac Two Old Enemies, Sharing a Cause
  • What civic work did Ferdinand Buisson do to build pacifist opinion in France?
  • Why did Ludwig Quidde's pamphlet about Caligula get him into trouble?
  • Why did a French and a German peace activist share the same prize?
Almanac Four Minutes Was Enough to Climb
  • How much warning time did Chain Home typically give Fighter Command before an incoming raid?
  • What did German planners misjudge about the value of the Chain Home masts they knew existed?
Almanac Five Megawatts, and a Grid Lights Up
  • What propaganda contrast did Soviet engineers draw between Obninsk's civilian power and the American Castle Bravo test in the same year?
Almanac A Beep the Whole World Heard
  • Why did Sputnik 1's launch cause such alarm in Washington despite US intelligence tracking Soviet rocketry?
Almanac Kneeling in Warsaw When Words Failed
  • What was Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, and what treaties did it produce with Poland and the Soviet Union?
  • Why was West Germany's prior refusal to recognise East Germany considered both morally and strategically flawed by Brandt?
Almanac Photocopies Passed in Secret
  • Why did Czesław Miłosz defect from the Polish diplomatic service in 1951, and what did it cost him?
Almanac The Tanks That Never Came
  • Why is it considered ironic that Gorbachev won the Peace Prize for restraint that hastened the dissolution he hoped to prevent?
Almanac Finding the Infinite in an Onion
  • How did Szymborska navigate writing poetry in a Polish literary culture that expected poets to either serve the state or suffer for refusing to?