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Chinese civil war
In 1927 the rivalry became a war. Chiang Kai-shek of the Kuomintang decided to get rid of the CPC. The Kuomintang killed and arrested many of the CPC leaders in what is today called the Shanghai Massacre. Mao Zedong of the CPC led an uprising against the Kuomintang called the Autumn Harvest Uprising. The uprising failed, but the civil war had begun. -
Berlin Blockade
The first heightening of Cold War tensions occurred in 1948 when the Soviets imposed a partial blockade of Berlin in April, and then a full blockade in June. -
Berlin Airlift
The Allies were certainly not going to stand for this. Diplomacy failed, Ground invasions were planned, and World War 3 was on the brink of existence. US Military Commander Lucius Clay had developed a plan by which an armed convoy through Soviet Controlled Germany would break the blockade. This action would certainly create a war. -
Formation of NATO
The purpose of NATO was to provide stability and freedom to its members through collective security. In other words, all members would work together to assist and defend each other against all forms of aggression. NATO was designed to provide strong military forces to balance the threat from the Soviet Union. -
National Security Council Report NSC-68
A Top-Secret report completed by the U.S. Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff on April 7, 1950. The 58-page memorandum is among the most influential documents composed by the U.S. Government during the Cold War, and was not declassified until 1975. -
Korean War
The young Cold War suddenly turned hot, bloody and expensive. Within a few days, North Korea's invasion of South Korea brought about a United Nations' "police action" against the aggressors. That immediately produced heavy military and naval involvement by the United States. While there were no illusions that the task would be easy, nobody expected that this violent conflict would continue for more than three years. -
President Truman fires General MacArthur
President Truman and his advisors were preparing to engage North Korea and China in peace negotiations, in an attempt to resolve the ongoing conflict. General Douglas MacArthur, issued an unauthorized statement containing a veiled threat to expand the war into China if the Communist side refused to come to terms. -
Formation of the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union.