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Cold War Drawing Ideas

One wall, spacecraft, household scene or symbol of the Cold War per press, each with a checked date or fact.

Cold War Drawing Ideas

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  1. A world map with a third colorThe Non-Aligned Movement, set up in Belgrade in 1961, was for countries aligned with neither bloc.

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A divided world 16

  • A cargo plane dropping candy on tiny parachutes In the Berlin Airlift of 1948 to 1949, pilot Gail Halvorsen dropped candy to children by miniature parachute.
  • A checkpoint hut and its warning sign Checkpoint Charlie was the best-known place to cross from East Berlin to West Berlin.
  • A country map cut into four zones After the war Germany was divided into four occupation zones, each run by one of the Allies.
  • A homemade hot-air balloon over a border at night September 16, 1979: eight people from two families flew from East to West Germany in a homemade balloon.
  • A map of Europe in two colors for two alliances The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949; the Warsaw Pact followed on May 14, 1955.
  • A map of Europe with a line from the Baltic to the Adriatic March 5, 1946, Fulton, Missouri: Churchill said "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent".
  • A model kitchen at an exhibition, with two microphones The Kitchen Debate of July 24, 1959 took place at the American National Exhibition in Moscow.
  • A peninsula cut at a line of latitude Korea was divided at the 38th parallel. An armistice was signed on July 27, 1953.
  • A picnic at an open border gate August 19, 1989: at the Pan-European Picnic a border gate between Austria and Hungary was opened.
  • A radio tower sending waves over a border Radio Free Europe made its first broadcast, aimed at Czechoslovakia, on July 4, 1950.
  • A steel bridge with two small groups walking toward each other Glienicke Bridge: the first exchange of prisoners here took place on February 10, 1962.
  • A tunnel under a wall, seen in cross-section Tunnel 57: on October 3 and 4, 1964, 57 people escaped through a tunnel dug from a bakery basement.
  • A wall across a city street Building of the Berlin Wall began on August 13, 1961. It stood around West Berlin until 1989.
  • An apartment block with every window bricked up On Bernauer Strasse in Berlin, border guards bricked up the doors and windows of houses on the border.
  • Crates of supplies on a dock The Marshall Plan, begun on April 3, 1948, sent $13.3 billion in aid to 17 European countries.
  • Two halves of Germany closing into one Germany became a single state again on October 3, 1990.

The space race 16

  • A capsule on a short arc, up and down Freedom 7, May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard made the first U.S. human spaceflight, a 15-minute hop.
  • A capsule tracing three loops around a globe Friendship 7, February 20, 1962: John Glenn made the first American orbital flight, three orbits.
  • A capsule under parachutes over the sea The Apollo 11 crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969.
  • A chimpanzee strapped into a flight couch Ham flew a suborbital flight on January 31, 1961, returned safely and lived until 1983.
  • A desk of hand calculations and orbit sketches Katherine Johnson's calculations for NASA were critical to the first U.S. crewed spaceflights.
  • A figure floating on a tether beside a spacecraft March 18, 1965: Alexei Leonov left Voskhod 2 for a spacewalk of about 12 minutes.
  • A half-lit Earth above a gray lunar horizon Earthrise is a photograph made in lunar orbit on December 24, 1968, during Apollo 8.
  • A mission patch of your own design Gemini 5, in 1965, was NASA's first mission with an insignia patch.
  • A plaque on the ladder of a Moon lander Apollo 11, July 1969. The plaque ends: "We came in peace for all mankind".
  • A round capsule circling the Earth once Vostok 1, April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin, the first human in orbit. The flight took 108 minutes.
  • A slim satellite the shape of a pencil Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, was launched on January 31, 1958 and detected the Van Allen belt.
  • A woman cosmonaut's silhouette at a capsule hatch June 16, 1963: Vostok 6 took a woman into space, the first flight to do so.
  • The first satellite passing over rooftops at night Sputnik 1, October 4, 1957: the first artificial satellite, about the size of a beach ball.
  • Two dogs looking out of a capsule window Belka and Strelka were launched on August 19, 1960, spent a day in orbit and returned safely.
  • Two spacecraft docked nose to nose Apollo-Soyuz, July 17, 1975: an American and a Soviet crew docked and shook hands in orbit.
  • "We choose to go to the Moon" lettered across a stadium President Kennedy said it on September 12, 1962, at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas.

Life at home 16

  • A classroom unpacking new science equipment After Sputnik, the National Defense Education Act of September 2, 1958 sent money to U.S. schools.
  • A cloverleaf interchange seen from above June 29, 1956: President Eisenhower signed the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act.
  • A fallout shelter sign on a brick wall Buildings used as public shelters were marked with an orange-yellow and black sign, designed in 1961.
  • A living room lit by a broadcast from the Moon An estimated 600 million people watched the first moonwalk live in July 1969.
  • A nickel split open with a tiny film inside June 22, 1953: a Brooklyn newspaper boy dropped a nickel and it popped open. Inside was microfilm.
  • A radio amateur in headphones, hearing beeps Sputnik 1 sent a radio signal for three weeks. Amateur radio operators could pick it up easily.
  • A radio dial with two small triangles on it Radios made from 1953 to 1963 marked 640 and 1240 kHz, the CONELRAD emergency frequencies.
  • A road sign naming a sister city across the sea Official U.S. sister city ties date from 1956, when President Eisenhower proposed them.
  • A schoolgirl's letter in an airmail envelope In 1982 an American girl, Samantha Smith, wrote to the Soviet leader. He replied and invited her to visit.
  • A stack of typed carbon copies passed hand to hand Samizdat: censored writing that people in the Eastern Bloc copied by hand or typewriter and passed on.
  • A teleprinter on a desk, not a red telephone The Moscow-Washington hotline of 1963 was never a telephone line. It began with Teletype machines.
  • A volunteer's duffel bag beside a world map with pins The Peace Corps was started by an executive order on March 1, 1961.
  • Children tucked under school desks Duck and Cover, a civil defense film of 1952, was shown widely to U.S. schoolchildren. Its guide is a turtle.
  • Neighbors in a row with small telescopes at dusk Operation Moonwatch, begun in 1956, enlisted amateur astronomers to help spot the first satellites.
  • Rows of nearly identical new houses Levittown, New York was built between 1947 and 1951 as a planned community for returning veterans.
  • Two candidates at podiums in a television studio September 26, 1960: Kennedy and Nixon debated in a Chicago television studio.

Symbols, maps and timelines 16

  • A chain of people holding hands across three countries The Baltic Way, August 23, 1989: about two million people across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
  • A gate of columns behind a wall June 12, 1987: at the Brandenburg Gate, President Reagan gave the speech known as "Tear down this wall!"
  • A ping-pong table with a net like a border Ping-pong diplomacy: in April 1971 an American table tennis team visited China.
  • A ring of keys held up and shaken In the Velvet Revolution of November 1989 in Czechoslovakia, crowds jingled their keys.
  • A row of dominoes about to fall April 7, 1954: President Eisenhower described the "falling domino" idea at a news conference.
  • A scoreboard of space firsts First satellite 1957 and first human in orbit 1961: the Soviet Union. First Moon landing 1969: the United States.
  • A stretch of wall painted by many hands The East Side Gallery: in spring 1990, 118 artists from 21 countries painted a section of the Wall.
  • A thermometer that never reaches boiling April 16, 1947: Bernard Baruch said in a speech, "we are today in the midst of a cold war".
  • A timeline strip from 1947 to 1991 Marshall Plan 1948, NATO 1949, Sputnik 1957, the Wall 1961, Moon landing 1969, the Wall falls 1989.
  • A wall coming down under a hammer and chisel The Wall fell on November 9, 1989. People nicknamed wallpeckers chipped off pieces as souvenirs.
  • A world map with a third color The Non-Aligned Movement, set up in Belgrade in 1961, was for countries aligned with neither bloc.
  • One large country breaking into fifteen pieces The Soviet Union had 15 union republics. It was dissolved on December 26, 1991.
  • Thirteen days ringed on an October calendar The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a 13-day confrontation between the two powers.
  • Two chess players bent over a board In 1972 an American challenger and a Soviet champion played for the world title in Reykjavik, Iceland.
  • Two pens signing one treaty December 8, 1987: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty.
  • Two words on a banner: openness and restructuring Glasnost relates to openness; perestroika means restructuring. Both belong to the Gorbachev years.

How it works

These Cold War drawing ideas turn 1946 to 1991 into pictures: a wall across a city street, the first satellite over the rooftops, children under school desks, a row of dominoes.

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Berlin, the space race, life at home, symbols

A divided world is Berlin, Korea and the two alliances, with the airlift's candy parachutes and a balloon escape. The space race runs from Sputnik in 1957 to the handshake in orbit in 1975. Life at home is shelters, school drills, television and a hotline that was never a telephone. Symbols, maps and timelines gathers dominoes, chess and the Wall coming down.

A war of standoffs

The two superpowers never fought each other directly, so the pictures are of rivalry: who built, who launched, who signed. Walls, maps, calendars and spacecraft carry the story, and each space item is a dated event.

  • Put the year in the drawing: on a calendar leaf, a newspaper corner or a mission patch.
  • A map of Europe needs only two colors and one line to say Cold War.

Questions and answers

What can I draw for a Cold War project?

Start with one dated picture: a cargo plane dropping candy over Berlin in 1948, a plaque on a Moon lander's ladder for 1969, thirteen days ringed on an October 1962 calendar. For a poster, rule a timeline from 1947 to 1991.

What are the symbols of the Cold War?

The Berlin Wall, the iron curtain of Churchill's 1946 speech, falling dominoes, a chessboard, and the satellites and capsules of the space race. The hotline between Moscow and Washington is another, though it was never a red telephone.

When did the Cold War start and end?

It began once the Second World War was over, and the term was in use by 1947. It ended when the Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991.

What was the space race?

The Soviet Union and the United States racing to be first in space. The Soviets launched the first satellite in 1957 and the first person in 1961; the United States landed the first people on the Moon in July 1969.

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