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The United Nations formed to become an intergovernmental organization aiming to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. -
10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee refused to answer questions regarding their possible communist affiliations, and, after spending time in prison for contempt of Congress, were mostly blacklisted by the Hollywood studios. The 10 were Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo. -
President Harry S. Truman asked for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Greece and Turkey and established a policy, as Britain decided it would no longer provide military and economic assistance to the Greek Government in its civil war against the Greek Communist Party. Its stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. -
A U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive in the aftermath of World War II. This would prevent an economic collapse that would aid the spread of Communism. The United States gave 13 billion dollars to Europe in the Marshall Plan. These funds were given in grant funds that did not need to be repaid -
Formed by the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
The main causes of the Korean War were the spread of communism during the Cold War, American containment, and Japanese occupation of Korea during World War II. North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and rebellions in South Korea. The war ended with the Korean Armistice Agreement creating the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. -
The U.S. entered the Vietnam War in an attempt to prevent the spread of communism, but foreign policy, economic interests, national fears, and geopolitical strategies also played major roles. China had become communist in 1949 and communists were in control of North Vietnam. The USA was afraid that communism would spread to South Vietnam and then the rest of Asia. It decided to send money, supplies and military advisers to help the South Vietnamese Government. -
The Bay of Pigs was a failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016) from power. It was an attempt to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro. -
The Soviet Union-controlled East Berlin built the wall to isolate the postwar allied western sectors of the former German capital from Soviet occupied East Berlin. The goal was to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin, which was controlled by the major Western Allies. -
The Soviet Union launched the earth's first artificial satellite,
Sputnik-1. The successful launch came as a shock to experts and citizens in the United States, who had hoped that the United States would accomplish this scientific advancement first. It remained in orbit for a year, sparking an event known as the Space Race. The Sputnik launch marked the start of the space age and the US-USSR space race, and led to the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). -
The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was primarily motivated by geopolitical interests in the region. The invasion was under the pretext of upholding the Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty -
As the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in relations with the west. Starting at midnight that day citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. This happened five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest. It became a pivotal event in world history which marked the falling of the Iron Curtain and the start of the fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe.