Teaching World History: Cold War Lesson Plan and Activities

After World War II, geopolitical tensions arose between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the United States adopting a policy of containment to prevent the spread of communism. At the same time, an “arms race” of sorts began between the two countries, with each developing and testing nuclear weapons.

The Cold War soon extended to space, with each country vying to outpace the other in launching humans beyond our home planet—the Soviet Union launched the artificial satellite Sputnik in 1957, but the U.S. landed a man on the moon in 1969. Lasting decades, this overall period of tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

As a Cold War lesson plan, have students look at this timeline (with a supplemental enrichment activity available for download as a PDF). Then, distribute the accompanying resources: a memo from President John F. Kennedy to Vice President Lyndon Johnson (primary source enrichment activity) and a writing enrichment activity honoring Cold War heroes.

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Give your students the chance to act like historians and develop their analytical skills with our social studies curriculum. Learn more.

Read more blogs about teaching world history on topics including:

• The Early Middle Ages
• Ancient Greece
• Hammurabi’s Code of Laws
• The Renaissance
• The Reformation
• Absolute Monarchs
• Enlightenment and the American Revolution
• Age of Imperialism

This blog, originally published in 2020, has been updated for 2025.