November 1995. A cold bright morning in Fulton, Missouri. A distant dog barks, an occasional car glides by. Perched by the sidewalk a British film crew is photographing buildings that have changed little in 50 years.

In March 1946, U.S. President Harry S. Truman accompanied British wartime leader Winston Churchill down these streets. In the town's tiny Westminster College, Churchill declared that an "iron curtain" divided Stalin's Soviet Union from its wartime allies, Britain and the United States. The speech changed history and placed Fulton on the map.

By locating scraps of old black and white film in archives around the world, COLD WAR film researchers Alison McAllan and Steve Bergson were able to reconstruct much of Churchill's text. But by itself, would the speech be strong enough to convey the fear of those years? Determination and skill are not always enough to transform history into exciting television - a bit of luck helps, too.

That winter in Missouri, the COLD WAR team had one of many strokes of good fortune. Tucked away in the Fulton museum that honors Churchill was a can of 8mm film that had never been publicly screened. With considerable care, the film was safely transferred to modern tape stock. Now, in color, millions can join the crowd at Fulton and see Churchill adopt his cigar-smoking pose and mount the rostrum wearing a vivid red cloak.

Only in the 20th century has it been possible to record so much of human history. Thanks to the latest technology, it is becoming possible to talk about the freedom of information rather than just the freedom of the press.

Seated on the platform alongside Churchill and Truman at Fulton was a young U.S. Navy officer named Clark Clifford (who, during the Vietnam War, became President Lyndon Johnson's secretary of defense). When COLD WAR began interviewing Clifford, in Washington, D.C., he seemed old and tired. But within minutes of the camera reels turning, his eloquence returned. Eyes sparkling, he took us back to 1946, and then forward to the tumultuous years of LBJ's presidency.

COLD WAR has exclusive interviews with three surviving U.S. presidents, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev answered unscripted questions, as did top-ranking communists like General (and later President) Wojciech Jaruzelski. In 1981, Jaruzelski imposed martial law on Poland, and among those he arrested was the trade union leader (later President) Lech Walesa. Walesa tells COLD WAR of his battles to overthrow communist rule.

Where the Cold War became hot, in Korea, Vietnam, Angola and Afghanistan, the COLD WAR team has ensured that opposing sides tell their own stories. Generals who battled each other, like Giap and Westmoreland in Vietnam, recall the decisions made and the chances seized and missed.

But it is the "ordinary people" interviewed who ensure that COLD WAR never loses its connection with the millions who survived it: soldiers in Afghanistan; factory workers in Germany; peasants in Greece; anti-war protesters in the United States; Gulag prisoners in Siberia; a priest in Italy; a nurse in Korea; a farmer in Cuba. In all, more than 500 people were interviewed for the series.

A mammoth film undertaking like COLD WAR can become a logistical nightmare. Our teams dodged shells and bombs in Afghanistan, battled against freezing conditions in Russia, had their equipment stolen in Miami and exhausted the bureaucracy in Havana. Incredibly, production manager Janina Stamps and production coordinator Milica Budimir kept COLD WAR film crews on schedule and in good spirits. Director of Photography Jim Howlett and sound recordist Peter Eason were the mainstay of a filming schedule that lasted almost three years and visited 31 countries.

Month after month, hours of film arrived in London for cataloging. Every working day, film stories from archives around the globe arrived on the desk of archivist Aileen McAllister, in all they totaled more than 8,000 items. Once full information about each clip was entered into a database, the film was at last ready for the editing rooms.

"It ended up on the cutting room floor" is one of the oldest movie business clichés, but making history films soon brings that cliché to life. At times it seems a terrible waste. Into the COLD WAR archives came more than 1,100 hours of archive stories and 900 hours of original filming. Yet every interview was conducted for specific reasons, and each archive clip had information that might help weave the drama of COLD WAR together.

After a film is completed, it often looks as if the storyline and images must have been abundantly clear from the outset. If only! Before any COLD WAR filming commenced, producers and researchers received a briefing document setting out the principal events each film would cover, but at this early stage of production, there was no script.

How each episode told its story would depend on the archive film and eyewitnesses available. COLD WAR's research team, headed by Isobel Hinshelwood, had the task of locating and conducting preliminary interviews with the thousands of potential participants in languages as diverse as Hungarian and Korean. This information, together with the early indications about possible archive film, became the basis of a treatment prepared by each producer.

The treatments were reviewed by our consultant historians -- appropriately an American, John Lewis Gaddis; a Russian, Vladislav Zubok; and an Englishman, Lawrence Freedman. In all factual matters, their words were law. Their involvement, which began before COLD WAR went into production, was sought throughout the filming and editing process. Their comments on each rough cut and all final scripts have ensured that each episode is factually correct.

COLD WAR's editing rooms bear little resemblance to the film cutting rooms of old. Today, the microchip rules -- superbly. With the latest technology, the ability to assess and edit audiovisual material at speed has been transformed.

The process of selecting shots and sequences from the thousands of film stories available has become more rigorous than just a few years ago. Today, documentary filmmakers must source their material and give others the possibility to access their evidence just like other scholars. It's not only academics who are interested, for most archives charge for their services and copyright their holdings. Securing the licenses to use the film and music featured in COLD WAR was a major undertaking. Producers and researchers increasingly need legal knowledge to back up their aesthetic and craft skills.

After reaching the final editorial decisions with executive producers Pat Mitchell and Sir Jeremy Isaacs, our historians in London, Washington, Connecticut and Moscow were consulted and the final spurt of production began.

Composer Carl Davis was called upon to write and then conduct a music score that adds further entertainment and coherence to each episode.

Next, the working images were replaced with the very best pictures and sound (a bit like working with photocopies before ending up with real photographs). Here the edit decision list (EDL) became a vital tool, detailing each of the hundreds of decisions made by the producer and editor. It enabled the picture and sound, via dubbing and skillful adjustment, to meet the highest technical standards demanded by viewers and broadcasters.

Then, after each word was poured over and debated, it was time to record the commentary. Sir Jeremy Isaacs has always placed immense importance on selecting the very best narrator. The commentary for "The World At War," as read by Sir Laurence Olivier, set standards of clarity and coherence seldom rivaled.

COLD WAR was fortunate that Kenneth Branagh, one of the world's leading Shakespearean actors, is also an avid viewer of historical documentaries. As a producer of some longevity, I have attended many recording sessions. No one has brought a better understanding of the text and its meaning than Kenneth Branagh has to COLD WAR. His superb diction and modulation doesn't just "fit like a glove," it adds an extra dimension of enjoyment and luxury.

With all the decisions made and films completed, the task of making international versions began. A textless copy, so that all nations caught up in the Cold War can insert their own translations and titles, was made. Different copies for the United States and Europe were needed because they have different transmission systems. The post-production machine got rolling, and so did the paperwork.

The COLD WAR project has become an archive itself. Now, work begins to ensure that the data is accessible to future generations. Even facts that didn't make it into the programs may help others carry on the task of understanding the years of the Cold War, a time when the human race prepared to destroy itself -- and didn't.