For information on how you can order a DVD copy of the documentary or the book, The Cold War, contact John Adelmann at Central Alternative High School by email. Just click here to launch and email responder. John will correspond with your directly and arrange payment and delivery.
 istory teacher John Adelmann and District media developer, Gary Olsen, are still writing material for this website. Meanwhile, the video documentary is finished and can be viewed by clicking on one of the streaming video options available to you below.
There are DVDs and copies of the book available of this historic and most fascinating project taken on by Central Alternative High School students. The book is a collectors' item whose value is beyond measure. It's a totally unique perspective provided by the students of Central Alternative High School. It's an extremely informative and thoroughly engaging look at a period of history that so shaped our world. Virtually all politics, diplomacy, domestic and foreign policies today are shaped by events, values and attitudes that have their basis in the Cold War.
The Cold War Era began on the heels of World War II when the two super powers that emerged from this conflagration, the United States and the Soviet Union, fomented so much fear in one another, their respective politics, education, economies and even cultures came to depend on that fear to prosper.
History's lessons of this era are repeated today in America's War on Terror. Our freedoms somehow always seems to hang in the balance with whatever threat our "powers that be" perceive and promote for political and economic gain. The Soviet Union has gone the way of capitalism and has now been replaced by a new threat... the jihad.
Below is a cover of the book prepared by Central Students. 
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"Duck and Cover" was the drill conducted by many schools throughout
America during the 1950s when America and the Soviet Union were engaged in a nuclear arms race that threatened life on earth. The irony here was, hiding under a school desk would have done little or no good toward surviving a nuclear holocaust. |
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| The "Chocolate Pilot," Gail Halvorsen, spoke at Central's Cold War Seminar in April, and described his flights over Berlin during the Berlin Airlift in which he dropped handkerchief parachutes containing chocolate to children in the devastated landscape that had become Berlin, Germany after World War II. Photos on this page are linked to printable enlargements. |
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The Berlin Airlift provided tons of supplies to war ravaged Berlin, and children, in particular, were beneficiaries of American generosity and humanity. More than candy was dropped from the planes flown by Gail Halvorsen. Flour, sugar, medical supplies, clothing and fuel were among the commodities flown into the city. Below are students who contributed to the project that involved a book. the seminar and a documentary film of their work. |
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| Students prepared chapters for their book on the Cold War, but also wrote speeches for local service organizations to help promote their work and impending seminar that was open to the public at Dubuque's Grand River Center. Above right is one of the teachers supervising the project, John Adelmann. John and his teaching partner, Dave Reel (pictured at right), encouraged students every step of the way, and through collaboration with students created a project that exceeded everyone's expectations. |
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| Gail Halvorsen was nicknamed the "Chocolate Pilot." A popular children's book about the Berlin Airlift and the impression it made on one particular little girl was published in English and German, Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot. |
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James Pocock was a commander of forces along one outpost on the West German/East German border, and his experiences lead to a novel, Across the Barbed Wire. "We always lived under the threat of war," says Maj. General Pocock, "and it was particularly tense during international events like the U-2 Incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis. " |
A compelling presentation was given by Francis Gary Powers, Jr., son of the famous U-2 pilot who was shot down over the Soviet Union on a high altitude reconnaissance mission in 1960. In memory of his father who died in a helicopter crash in 1977, he founded the National Cold War Museum in Fairfax, Virginia. Powers tours America speaking on the Cold War and his famous father. When Francis Gary Powers was shot down and captured, he was subjected by the Soviets to a show trial and sentenced to 10 years in prison. |
Within two years, however, he was traded for a Soviet Spy and he returned to America to resume what was never to be a normal life. |
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Several students who contributed their talent to the project are featured in a special documentary produced by Gary Olsen and John Adelmann and you can watch it right here on this website. See the left column's media box. You can also order a DVD copy of the hour long documentary. |
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