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Fidel Castro Comes to power in Cuba
Fidel Castro he ran for election to the Cuban House of Representatives in 1952, but Batista took power that March.
In July 1953, Castro led an attack that failed and resulted in capture and a 15 years prison sentence. He was released early in an attempt from Batista to improve his public image. In 1953 Castro attempted to infiltrate Cuba again but they were unsuccessful. -
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Part 2: Fidel Castro Comes to Power in Cuba
Early 1957 saw them winning small battles against Rural Guard patrols. In 1958, Batista tried to snuff out the uprising but failed - Castro took power in January 1959. This event freaked out Americans majorly. Castro was a self proclaimed communist, and to have him in power in the western hemisphere meant we were failing in our goals of containment. Source: Enter [https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/fidel-castro] -
Berlin Wall goes up
The “official” purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep Westerners from entering East Germany and undermining communists, but the wall really just stopped the mass immigration from East to West that embarrassed the soviets. Premier Khrushchev gave the East Germany permission to stop the immigrants by closing the border. It became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through checkpoints: at Helmstedt, Dreilinden and Friedrichstrasse. -
Part 2: Berlin Wall goes up
President Kennedy, rather unhappily, conceded that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”
The Berlin wall was a clear show of the hostilities between the USSR and the USA escalated - people were separated from their families and locked into their homes. The USSR was so eager to spread communism and contain democracy that they completely fenced in their people.
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-wall -
The six day war
After years of not getting along, Israel crippled the air forces of Egypt. A series of border disputes were the major spark for the Six-Day War. The USSR was backing Egypt, and the USA was backing Israel. This turned the six day war into a proxy battle. The intention from both sides was to cause the other side to loose as much money and moral as they could. We started a proxy war with the USSR in Israel. Our intention was to drain the USSR's money and moral, and for the most part we succeeded. -
Part 2: US puts a man on the moon
The space race provided yet another place where the USSR and the USA could compete. Both sides used this as a way to undermine the other and down morality in the country. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/armstrong-walks-on-moon -
US puts a man on the moon
When the USA put Neil Armstrong on the moon, we started beating the USSR in the space race. The space race had some origins with the arms race. However, the race really started when the Soviet Union had just launched the world's first satellite, Sputnik. Fearful of Soviet military control of space, the Americans quickly readied a rocket. The space race also later became something that helped tie the USSR and the USA together. -
USSR invades Afghanistan
The Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in order to help the communist government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) against a growing insurgency. The Soviet Union feared the loss of its communist base in Afghanistan. This again heated the cold war because it made Americans afraid. We were failing in our containment, and eventually we started sending the rebel groups supplies, which made it a proxy war. http://iswresearch.blogspot.com/russia-and-afghanistan
