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Chinese Communist Revolution
The Chinese Communist Revolution was a period of social and political revolution in China that began with the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, continued through the First United Front of the 1920s. After several wars, the Chinese Communist Party established themselves as the sole source of power in China, and thus creating the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) -
Postwar occupation and division of Germany
For purposes of occupation, the Americans, British, French, and Soviets divided Germany into four zones. The American, British, and French zones together made up the western two-thirds of Germany, while the Soviet zone comprised the eastern third. Berlin, the former capital, was placed under joint four-power authority but was partitioned into four sectors for administrative purposes. An Allied Control Council was to exercise overall joint authority over the country. -
Greek Civil War
The Greek civil war was mainly fought against the Kingdom of Greece, with the losing party being the communist party of Greece. It began as a conflict between the communist-dominated left-wing resistance organization EAM-ELAS and loosely allied anti-communist resistance forces, and later escalated into a major Civil War between the Greek state and the communists. Fighting resulted in the defeat of the DSE by the Hellenic Army. -
Enactment of Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion in economic recovery programs to Western European economies after the end of World War II. Today, that money would be worth over $120 billion. -
Berlin Blockade and Airlift
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. In response to the Soviet blockade of land routes into West Berlin, the United States begins a massive airlift of food, water, and medicine to the citizens of the besieged city for nearly year. -
Korean War
The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and rebellions in South Korea. Officially, neither side has won the war and it is technically still going on. South Korea did not sign the peace treaty, and North Korea repudiated the armistice. -
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro and his fellow revolutionaries of the 26th of July Movement and its allies against the military dictatorship of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. It began with the assault on the Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953 and ended on 1 January 1959, when Batista was driven from the country and the cities Santa Clara and Santiago de Cuba were seized by revolutionaries, led by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro's surrogates. -
Overthrow of the Mossadegh Government in Iran
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favor of strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It was orchestrated by the United States and the United Kingdom. The main goal of the US and the UK getting involved in Iranian territory was to control Iran's petroleum supply and as an added bonus prevent Russia from interfering with it. -
Overthrow of the Guatemalan Government
The Guatemalan Revolution began in 1944, after a popular uprising toppled the military dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, code-named Operation PBSuccess, was a covert operation carried out by the CIA that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution. -
Formation of the Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc is a collective term for the former Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. This generally encompasses the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. It wasn't a conflict, but more so of an organization. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The Vietnam War pitted communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and the United States. The war ended when U.S. forces withdrew in 1973 and Vietnam unified under Communist control two years later. -
Hungarian Uprising
The Hungarian uprising was a countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and the Hungarian domestic policies imposed by the USSR. Initially anarchic, the Hungarian people culminated in protests against domestic policies imposed by the USSR, and the people formed together in protest against the Soviet Union .Although initially willing to negotiate the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Hungary, the USSR repressed the Hungarian Revolution. -
Building the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989 as well as encircling and separating West Berlin from East German territory. Construction of the wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic on 13 August 1961. The Berlin Wall was built by the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin, which was controlled by the major Western Allies. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 35-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which escalated into an international crisis when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba. Despite the short time frame, the CMC remains a defining moment in US national security and nuclear war preparation. The confrontation is considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
Rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization
At its first summit meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organization representing the Palestinian people. The PLO is a Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization with the initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and statehood over the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, in opposition to the State of Israel. Its stated goals were to have Arab unity and to accomplish the liberation of Palestine. -
Overthrow of the Allende government in Chile
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a military coup in Chile that deposed the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende.After an extended period of social unrest and political tension, a group of military officers led by General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a coup, ending civilian rule.The military established a junta that suspended all political activity in Chile and repressed left-wing movements,especially communist and socialist parties and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). -
Tiananmen Square Massacre
The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. This escalated to the military forcing their way through the square. There were men armed with rifles, who were accompanied by tanks, that forced their way through the square, massacaring any protestors who stood in their way. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. Soon after citizens started crossing between the two areas, the wall was brought down by those same citizens. More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration -
Fall of the Soviet Union
On December 25, 1991, the hammer and sickle was replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the process of internal disintegration within the Soviet Union which resulted in the end of the country's existence as a sovereign state, thereby resulting in its constituent republics gaining full sovereignty. -
9/11 Attacks
The September 11 attacks, or 9/11 attacks, were a series of four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by the militant Islamic extremist network al-Qaeda against the United States. This was a direct conflict between al-Qaeda and the US, with the US then responding by drastically increasing it's defense spending budget. New programs were put in place to guard against terroristic threats, because before that, we had thought no one would ever think to commit terrorism against the US.