Why Preserve the Cold War?

There comes a point in every historian's career where they have to defend the history they are trying to preserve. For me that point seems to come at least twice a day, everyday, since I have decided to become a Cold War historian. When people see my collection of Cold War items, I get a few different responses. Many people think it is a really neat collection and it really brings back memories for them. Others know nothing about the Cold War, and they are genuinely interested in hearing more about it.

All too often, though, people think that what I am doing is silly and they are not afraid to be vocal about it. They aren't afraid to tell me that my collection is "rubbish" and "silly". One woman called it garbage and another man said I should toss it all out! Their reasons vary but a lot of people believe that since nothing happened that people shouldn't bother to remember it. While it is true that the world wasn't destroyed in a thermonuclear war, I do not think this should be the reason to forget the entire thing ever happened.

I conducted an informal survey over the course of a few weeks last summer, and the results startled me. People over thirty-five had no problems telling me about the Cold War. People my age (late twenties and early thirties) knew that there was a Cold War but they really couldn't tell me what it was about. The twenty-five and under crowd gave me some really good answers. Some thought the Cold War was fought in the Arctic, some thought it was a TV battle and others thought it had something to do with WWI. Not one of the younger people I asked (and I made sure to choose people who were average as far as history knowledge) could tell me that the Cold War was fought between the USA and the Soviets. One person even thought that the Soviets were just characters from their favorite video game. (I am not going to lie and tell you that a little piece of me didn't die after they said that.)

While this was a little survey of maybe twenty people, it just reaffirmed my personal commitment to preserving the history of the Cold War. The Cold War ended in 1991 twenty-one years ago, and yet people who lived during the Cold War are having a hard time remembering it! Honestly, I barely remembered the duck and cover drill that I had in first grade. We are lucky if textbooks devote more than three paragraphs to the entire conflict, and even when I was in school we skipped over it in order to devote more time to WWII. If you really want to confuse someone younger than thirty, start talking about MAD, SALT, START or any of the acronyms from the Cold War.

The Cold War was an amazing time in the history of the world. We were literally on the brink of destruction, total destruction, and we came back. Two mortal enemies sat there with their fingers on a button that could wipe out the entire world. I cannot stress this point enough; WE WERE ALL GOING TO DIE! But we didn't. Cooler heads prevailed and the world evolved. We decided as a universal entity that mutually assured destruction should never happen. We brought ourselves back from the brink and were a better world because of it. I try to tell people that the fact nothing happened was actually a victory, and that this conflict should be studied and dissected in order to create a better future for all of us.

This is why we need to preserve this history and this is why we need a Cold War Museum. We need to study the history of the conflict and preserve it for future generations. We need a museum to consolidate all of the information and preserve it without discrimination. We need an entity that will present every side of the story, show us the very important but also the average. There is a great emphasis placed on military history, but there was also a civilian side that is rarely explored. Right now, we are just struggling to get a few more paragraphs in a middle school history book. Yet as a conflict the Cold War is as important, if not more important, than any other military conflict that the world has ever seen. We need a place where the story can be kept straight, the information conveyed without bias and the history can be preserved for many generations. We cannot let the Cold War slip away from our memories, and we need a museum to ensure that it survives for future generations.