Cold War

Although Britain and the United States had been allied to the Soviet Union during the Second World War, tensions between east and west quickly set in after the war ended. It was in Europe, across the border of a divided Germany, that the two sides confronted one another and so begun the 40-year ‘cold war’ between the east and the west. The western nations were grouped together into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) while the communist east belonged to the ‘Warsaw Pact’. Britain’s principal military role was to maintain a mechanised army in West Germany – the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). For The Gordon Highlanders, Germany became a frequent posting.