# The launch of the General History of Africa  
The middle of the twentieth century was the crest of a wave of independence of African countries. The legacy of World War II, which pitted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact military alliances against each other, was the key variable of international geopolitics. The Cold War, spreading its frozen wings over all international affairs, was at its peak. The raw ideological and geopolitical tensions manifested themselves on all continents. In Africa, Patrice Emery Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the newly independent State of Congo-Leopoldville, was deposed and assassinated on 17 January 1961. In Europe, the construction of the Berlin Wall, a palpable symbol of the Iron Curtain, started on 13 August 1961. In the Americas, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962, brought the world to the brink of a nuclear conflagration. And finally, in Asia, following the implementation of the 'containment' doctrine, the United States Air Force attacked North Vietnam in 1964, triggering a sustained escalation in a war that lasted up until 1975.