Cold War (2000)

I'm an educator and only recently came across this series while looking for films to use in a course on 20th century history. Its one of the very best documentaries I've ever seen on any subject, incorporating extensive interviews with first-hand players in all the issues of the Cold War from all over the world, great archival footage, and insight to the varied interpretations of the actors in key events. Yet the series is not in the least didactic. It captures the human drama of world-historic events as experienced by powerful leaders and by ordinary people. It's a must-see for anyone thirsting for intelligent and engrossing insight into recent history. I've since learned that a few prominent critics denounced it when it first appeared in the late 90s as somehow "anti-American." I can only imagine that such a baffling charge must have been rooted in the fact that the Cold War was only recently over when this production appeared in 1998, when many believed that we had just "won" it. I'm sure some didn't appreciate a treatment that went beyond the "USSR as evil empire" thesis, which this does. Beyond that, some still prominent people were shown to have made some disastrous decisions, some which still haunt us today. See for instance Episode 20, "Soldiers of God," on how Zbigniew Brezezinski persuaded President Carter to support anti-Communists Islamist guerrillas in Afghanistan by claiming that the Soviet Union might well invade the whole Persian Gulf and Middle East once it entered that country to prop-up its unstable pro-Soviet regime! Such wrong-headed Cold War thinking on both (or all) sides is on full display in this series, and many important people who were deeply invested in that thinking no doubt don't much care for being shown to be so ridiculous. The real success of this series, though, it that it is not propagandistic for any particular side or interpretation. That, however, may be why those who where, and are, ideologically skewed from whatever perspective they have -- Right-wing anti-Communist, isolationist, Tiers Mondalist or the extreme Left -- might not much like it. Anyone else interested in the topic will.