Do you know why the world spent half a century braced for its own destruction?

Two words — Cold War.

For nearly fifty years, the Cold War was international affairs. Nuclear testing, proxy wars on almost every continent, and a race for supremacy were only a few pieces of a vast global puzzle. Few conflicts in history have shaped the world so completely — and unlike the great wars before it, this one reached almost everywhere, as advances in technology and communications carried the struggle between Washington and Moscow into most countries on earth. This is the story of the great clash between the communist Soviet Union and the capitalist USA — the whole war, from 1945 to 1991, in one combined edition divided into three clear parts.

Think World War II began in 1939? Think again.

Between 1936 and 1939, Spain was torn apart by a brutal civil war that reshaped the country and became a deadly dress rehearsal for the global conflict that followed. Tens of thousands were killed in large-scale battles, aerial bombardments, and waves of repression. Political extremism surged, communities fractured, and violence reached into almost every corner of Spanish society.

Yet this was far more than a Spanish conflict. The Spanish Civil War became an international battleground where democracy confronted dictatorship, Fascism clashed with Communism, and Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union tested weapons, tactics, and ideas that would later be used in World War II. Volunteers from around the world joined the fight, while Britain and France struggled to respond to a crisis that threatened the stability of Europe.