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One of the major international crises of the Cold War. It was caused by the Soviet Union to force the Western Allied powers to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin. The Berlin Blockade ended on May 12, 1949.
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A vociferous campaign against alleged communists in the US government and other institutions carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy. Ended in 1954.
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The Warsaw Pact was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 per the London and Paris Conferences of 1954, but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe. Dissolved on July 1, 1991.
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The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin on East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The destruction began on November 9, 1989.
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In October 1962, the Soviet provision of ballistic missiles to Cuba led to the most dangerous Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Over the course of two extremely tense weeks, US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev negotiated a peaceful outcome to the crisis. The crisis evoked fears of nuclear destruction revealed the dangers of brinksmanship. Ended on October 28, 1962.
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Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968. Nixon’s presidential campaign sought to appeal to what it deemed the “silent majority,” those middle-class white Americans who defended the status quo against radical social change. Nixon also embraced the “Southern strategy,” which sought to appeal to Southern racists resentful of civil rights gains and President Johnson’s federal antipoverty programs.
