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The Allies agree in Potsdam to the fundamental conditions of the occupation of Germany. American nuclear bombs destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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The US offers assistance to countries threatened by communism -- especially Greece and Turkey. US Secretary of State George C. Marshall announces a massive aid program for the reconstruction of World War II-torn Europe that will become known as the Marshall Plan.
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Cut off from the outside world, provisions are delivered to the isolated city by the Americans in the Berlin Air Bridge action. This is the first major Berlin crisis during the Cold War.
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The NATO Treaty is signed in Washington.
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The Soviets detonate their first atomic bomb.
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After winning the country's civil war, the Communist Party under Mao Zedong establish the People's Republic of China.
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After North Korea attacks South Korea, UN troops led by the United States invade the country. China and the Soviet Union back North Korea. The cease-fire leaves the two countries with the pre-war status quo.
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After Egypt attempts to nationalize the Suez Canal, Israel, France and Great Britain occupy the canal zone and bomb Egyptian air fields. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev threatens London and Paris with nuclear war.
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The construction of the Berlin Wall begins on August 13.
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After the Soviets position nuclear war heads in Cuba, the United States threatens war. The world is on the verge of nuclear war for days.
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The US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union agree to suspend surface and underwater tests of nuclear weapons.
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The first US combat forces land in South Vietnam. More than 2 million people will perish during the Vietnam War -- mostly civilians. The US withdraws its troops in 1973. Two years later the communist north conquers the southern part of the country.
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Negotiations between the United Nations and the Soviet Union begin on the reduction of strategic nuclear weapons. The talks end with several treaties in 1979, but the arms race continues unabated.
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Kremlin chief Mikhail Gorbachev begins to reorient Soviet foreign policy.
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Gorbachev and Reagan agree to eliminate all land-based .
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The Berlin Wall falls on November 9.
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The Warsaw Pact is dissolved. Gorbachev resigns and the Soviet Union disappears from the map.