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Cold War Begins
The "Big Three" met there to decide the fate of post-war Europe. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin. -
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Cold War
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World War II ends
The war ended with the unconditional surrender by Germany and then the German surrender to the Soviets. Germany was defeated by the British and Americans in the south and west and by the Russians in the east. Japan also unconditionally surrendered to the U.S. after two atomic bombs were dropped by the U.S.A. on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan -
Iron Curtain Speech
Churchill said that behind the Iron Curtain were all the capitals of central and Eastern Europe, and that they were under the control of Moscow.
The countries West of the Iron Curtain were democracies.
The countries East of the Iron Curtain were Communist controlled by USSR. -
Marshall Plan
President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe. -
Berlin Blockade begins
Germany was divided into four occupation zones administered by four nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.
Creating a wall of USSR troops, frequently referred as the “Red Noose” the citizens of Berlin were cut off supplies of food, coal, and medicine. -
Soviets explode first atomic bomb
It came as a great shock to the United States because they were not expecting the Soviet Union to possess nuclear weapon knowledge so soon.
The impact that the possession of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union had upon the United States was that it caused Americans to question their own safety. -
Mao Zedong takes control of China
The country was in terrible shape. Roads, railways, farms and factories where in a shocking state of disrepair and treasury was bankrupt after its entire gold reserves were taken away to Taiwan by the Nationalists. -
Korean War Begins
The Korean war began in June, 1950 when North Korea, led by Kim Il Sung, invaded South Korea along the 38th parallel. Kim Il Sung wanted to unite Korea together but under a communist rule. Because of this, the USSR supported the invasion but were wary of becoming physically involved due to the fact that World War II had only just ended. In response, the US tried to intervene due to their fear of communism spreading throughout Asia. -
Federal Civil Defense Administration is established
The FCDA was created in response to the nuclear explosion test of the Soviet Union. The FCDA was especially important during the Cuban Missile Crisis and helped create enough nuclear bunkers that could possible protect 60 million americans. -
Korean War Ends
A ceasefire stopped the fighting.There was an armistice signed by North Korea, China and the UN but not South Korea. Before the armistice, talks had gone on for nearly 2 years. Eisenhower had promised that if he was elected in the election of 1952, he would go to Korea and end the war. There was no simple way to end the conflict. -
Warsaw Pact formed
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states.
Named like that because it was signed in Warsaw -
Cuba taken over by Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro took over Cuba by a force and remained its dictatorial leader for nearly 5 decades. Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel's movement against the regime of Cuban dictator.
This government later formed along communist lines.
Castro alienated the United States and established strong ties with the Soviet Union. Castro transformed Cuba into a communist country. -
Construction of Berlin Wall begins
Everybody in the east wanted to go to the west, because the east was communism, the west was more modern and commercial.
So the soviet union built the wall to keep them separated -
Fidel Castro describes himself as a Marxist-Leninist.
Castro made clear what most U.S. officials already believed. In a televised address on December 2, Castro declared, "I am a Marxist-Leninist and shall be one until the end of my life." He went on to state that, "Marxism or scientific socialism has become the revolutionary movement of the working class." He also noted that communism would be the dominant force in Cuban politics. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuba was abandoned by countries that supported it in the revolution, so it turned to Communist Russia for aid. Russia agreed to give Cuba oil. In return, Cuba would agree to let Russia use the island to 'spy' on the US, and plant a military base there. So far so good, until the Russians planted on Cuba nuclear missiles; capable of reaching 3/4 of the continental US. -
Gulf of Tonkin incident
It refers to two separate confrontations, one actual and one false, involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.
The second Tonkin Gulf incident was originally claimed by the U.S. National Security Agency to have occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead may have involved "Tonkin Ghosts" and not actual NVN torpedo boat attacks. -
Apollo 11 lands on the moon
During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union endeavored to demonstrate their power. The space race served as an opportunity for the two nations to showcase their scientific and technological capabilities. Amidst propoganda, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. competed for superiority in space as they constantly tried to top each other. -
SALT I signed
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, extended from November 1969 to 1972. During that period the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated the first agreements to place limits and restraints on some of their central and most important armaments. In a Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, they moved to end an emerging competition in defensive systems that threatened to spur offensive competition to still greater heights. -
Yom Kippur War
The 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. -
SALT II is signed
The second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty increased limits on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers. Other limits were placed on multiple re-entry vehicles and bombers with intermediate-range missiles. SALT II was to remain in effect through 1985, but it was never ratified, and was then supplanted by the START negotiations. -
Strategic Defense Initiative
It was proposed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983.
The idea was to use ground-based and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction -
Mikhail Gorbachev ascends to power in Soviet Union
On 15 March, Gorbachev himself was elected as the only President of the Soviet Union by the Congress of People's Deputies and chose a Presidential Council of 15 politicians.
This would be again a source of criticism from reformers. Despite the apparent increase in Gorbachev's power, he was unable to stop the process of nationalistic assertion. -
Berlin Wall Falls
The Berlin Wall fell because communism failed as a government. It fell around in the 1980s but people say that communism started to crumble in the late 1970s, and russia just couldn't keep up its power in other countries like it use to. -
Germany reunited
Germany was reunited in October 1990 after a democratic movement overturned East Germany's Communist Government. There were lots more the affected the turnout of this event. We cannot forget about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the destruction of the Iron Curtain. -
Warsaw Pact ends
It was formally dissolved July 1st, 1991. Most of the countries that were in it were abandoing communism and no longer wished to participate in the structure. -
Cold War Ends
The Cold war came to an end when the communist countries, especially Russia suddenly realized that the social and economic system they had chosen around 75 years ago to get them out of their backwardness, was the wrong one.
Secretary General of the communist party in Russia Mikhail Gorbachev denounced the ineffectiveness of the Communist system until it totally collapse. -
End of Soviet Union
The fall of the Soviet Union began to happen when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. It happened shortly before midnight on March 11, 1985.
From this point on the USSR did make reforms, and signed treaties to disarm both of the superpowers. Mikhail Gorbachev withdrew Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The Cold War finally came to an end with a coup, and Boris Yeltsin was elected to power. Since this time in 1991, Russia and the United States have grown closer, and the world safer.
