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The United States and the Soviet Union attend the Yalta Conference after World War II to discuss what to do with Germany. The country is divided and East Germany is controlled by the Soviet Union and made a communist nation.
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Before the Communist Party Congress, Stalin suggests that communism and capitalism were incompatible.
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George Kennan's Long Telegram, one of the most famous documents of the Cold War, contending that Russian behavior was determined by a "traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity," and that "we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi."
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Former British prime minister Winston Churchill, at Fulton, Missouri, declares that an "Iron Curtain" has descended on Europe.
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President Truman announces the Truman Doctrine, informing Congress, "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
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Secretary of State George Marshall, in a commencement address at Harvard University, announces a package of economic assistance to aid in European recovery. Though not "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos," the Marshall Plan further divides Europe into two spheres of influence.
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Congress passes the National Security Act, which creates a civilian Secretary of Defense (the first was James Forrestal), a National Security Council, a Central Intelligence Agency--but does not call for universal military training.
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Communists overthrow the government of Eduard Beneš in Czechoslovakia, the last democratic nation in the Soviet bloc.
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Further increasing tensions over Europe's future, the Soviets begin a blockade of the Western zones in occupied Berlin; the Allied powers would respond with an 11-month airlift to supply the beleaguered city.
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The NATO treaty is signed.
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Many celebrities in the U.S. are accused of being a communist for no reason. Senator Joseph McCarthy is the man behind the accusations and is responsible for hurting the careers of many innocent people who could not get jobs after being accused.
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The USSR explodes its first atomic bomb
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Truman announces that the United States will build the hydrogen bomb.
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North Korea invades South Korea; the UN invokes its collective security provisions to aid the South; and the United States send troops. The war will end in stalemate nearly three years later.
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North Korea invades South Korea; the UN invokes its collective security provisions to aid the South; and the United States send troops. The war will end in stalemate nearly three years later.
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With the implementation of NSC 68, U.S. military spending skyrockets
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Republican Dwight Eisenhower inaugurated President.
