War of Worlds 1963-1991 – The Abyss

War of Worlds 1963-1991 - The Abyss

War of Worlds 1963-1991 – The Abyss: November 22, 1963. The entire world is in shock. President Kennedy has just been assassinated during a trip to Dallas. Even Khrushchev himself seems touched by the tragic news. In a surprising coincidence, South Vietnamese president Diem was assassinated twenty days earlier, in a coup organized by his generals… The players are changing, but the Vietnam war drags on. America’s new President Johnson sinks his country further into the quagmire of war. Close to three million young Americans discover Hell – the jungle, the unbearable heat, and the Viet Cong, with its tunnels and traps. For the first time, television plays a special role in the war.


 

 



In 1968, the images of the terrible “Tet Offensive” revealed to the population the fiasco which took place in Vietnam: the massacres, the abuses of American soldiers and the obvious rout of their army. Soon the United States has no choice but to recall its troops; a victory for the communist world… But the USSR emerges from it ruined. Weakened by its various campaigns around the world, it will not experience the same success in Afghanistan. Soon, the “satellite” republics will resume their rights, overthrowing in turn the regimes imposed by Moscow. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire collapses… The red flag with the gold star dismounted from the roofs of the Kremlin. This is the end of the cold war. The war of the worlds ends.

 

War of Worlds 1963-1991 – The Abyss

 

The story of this fantastic period of history between 1945 and 1991, which was defined by the confrontation of two worlds and two systems. The capitalist West, dominated by the ever-powerful United States, is pitted against the Communist East, the Soviet Empire. Both sides possess the ultimate weapon, the Nuclear Bomb, which neither can use, at the risk of causing their own peril. This terrifying balance of fear paradoxically ensures a half-century of peace and prosperity in the West.

There are many heated moments during this “Cold War”, and Asia is the chosen place for these “localized” wars in which the Superpowers confront each other through other populations engaged in merciless battles. This brought us to make a series that will be as colorful as it is violent, and which will explore the key wars and interludes of peace and progress.

If there was a noun that encapsulated the “Cold War” best it’s probably “nuclear deterrence”. Both sides of the geopolitical tensions: the Eastern Bloc of the collectivist Soviet Union and the Western Bloc of the individualist United States (and their allies) now had at their disposal nuclear weapons. These weapons made these nations immeasurably powerful but conversely rendered both innocuous to one another. The heavy losses of the first and second World Wars still weighed heavily on the minds and hearts of these superpowers, but guaranteed mutual destruction was the strongest factor that prevented each from declaring all-out war.

What were the superpowers to do? They can’t stand each other yet they can’t fight each other, at least directly. Thus, there were the proxy wars: battles between the allies of nations that represented East vs West without technically being East vs West. The Cold War was a conflict of intimidation, symbolism, grand-standing and agitation: both parties dancing on the edge of war but neither willing to start one. It cost the world millions of lives, but had the nuclear option been used, it would have cost us all our lives. The apocalypse was but a few turning of keys and pushing of buttons away at any moment. No matter how peaceful we are at any given moment the danger of nuclear fallout will always loom over us all.

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