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cold war timeline
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Yalta Conference
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet to discuss the Allied war effort against Germany and Japan and to try and settle some diplomatic issues. While a number of important agreements were reached at the conference, tensions over European issues particularly the fate of Poland, hinted the end of the alliance between the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War to come. -
"Iron Curtain" Speech
Churchill delivers Iron Curtain speech. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union's policies in Europe and declares, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." Churchill's speech is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War. -
The Marshall Plan
January 1947, U. S. President Harry Truman appointed George Marshall, who helped with many victorys during WWII, Secretary of State. Marshall with help from George Kennan, William Clayton and others made the Marshall Plan, which Marshall shared with the world on June 5, 1947. Officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan was intended to rebuild the economies in europe. It included 16 nations including Germany. They got nearly $13 billion in funding that ended 1951 -
Berlin blockade
First serious crisis of the Cold War. The Soviets imposed a partial blockade of Berlin in April, and then a full blockade in June. Three events that led to the Soviet blockades of Berlin were the institution of the Marshall Plan, the London Conferences of winter and spring of 1948, and the resultant London Program which called for a separate West Germany and currency reform. Railways and highways were restricted, no surface traffic between the western zones and Berlin could happen. -
Formation of NATO
At the beginnings of the Cold War the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded between the United States, Canada, and a large number of European nations. NATO came into being when events following World War II revealed the aggressive, expansionist policies of Soviet Russia. -
USSR gets the A-bomb
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb.United States was not expecting the Soviet Union to possess nuclear weapon knowledge so soon and it threatened them.Soviet physicists who worked on the bomb were honored for the achievement based on the penalties they would have suffered had the test failed. -
Communist Revelution im China
On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The announcement ended the costly full-scale civil war between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Party Kuomintang (KMT), which broke out immediately following WWII . The "fall" of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the United States to suspend diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades. -
McCarthy Witch Hunts
McCarthy took advantage of the nation’s wave of terror against communism. On February 9, 1950, he claimed he had a list of 205 people in the State Department who were known members of the American Communist Party. Very few were proven comunist. -
Korean War
Conflict between Communist and non-Communist forces in Korea from June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953.On June 25, 1950, North forces invaded South.The United Nations called the invasion an act of aggression, demanded the withdrawal of North Korea from the South, and called upon its members to aid South Korea. On June 27, U.S. President Truman authorized the use of American forces in Korea. China aided the north. An armistice agreement was signed (July 27, 1953). -
Roenberg Executions
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of relaying U.S. military secrets to the Soviets. They were accused of persuading Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, to provide them with confidential U.S. military information gained from his involvement in the development of nuclear weapons. It was believed that Julius, who was an active member of the Communist party, gave the top-secret information on to Soviet intelligence. There exicutions became very controversial. -
Beginning of the Vietnam War
The communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its ally, the U.S. The north wanted to unit Vietnam as communist like china and the soviets, the south watned to be closer to the west. By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. The Soviet Union and China poured weapons, supplies, and advisers into the North. Controversial war. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization (the Warsaw Pact) was a political and military alliance between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries. The Soviet Union formed this alliance as a counterbalance to the National Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance between the United States, Canada and Western European nations in 1949. By October, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had withdrawn from Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact officially disbanded in March and July of 1991. -
Hungarian uprising
November 4, 1956, Soviet forces launched a major attack on Hungary aimed at crushing, once and for all, the spontaneous national uprising that had begun 12 days earlier. -
Sputnik Launched
October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite. In July 1955, the White House announced plans to launch an Earth-orbiting satellite. The Sputnik launch changed everything. As a technical achievement, Sputnik caught the world's attention and the American public off-guard. Then the Soviets struck again; on November 3, Sputnik II was launched. -
Khrushchev barred from visiting Disneyland
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was anger when he learned that he could not visit Disneyland. Khrushchev arrived in the United States on September 15 for an extended visit and a meeting with President Eisenhower. The Soviet leader indicated a desire to see Hollywood and a visit was arranged. Government authorities feared that the crowds at disenyland would be a safety hazard. Khrushchev left Los Angeles the next day. -
Bay of Pigs
1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista. The U.S. distrusted Castro and his relationship with Nikita Khrushchev. wanting to end his rein.1960 the CIA recruited 1,400 Cuban exilesin and began training them to overthrow Castro. The invasion was a disaster.Castro’s troops pinned the invaders on the beach, the exiles surrendered after less than a day of fighting, 114 were killed and over 1,100 were taken prisonor. No u.s. backup came to help. -
Berlin Wall
The Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
In October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. President Kennedy met with his advisors for several days,on October 22 he spoke to the nation about the crisis in a televised address. lasted 13 days, us had a blockade and kennedy and Khrushchev finally made agreements. -
Kennedy Assassination
Shortly after noon on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas where he was campaining with his wife to be re-ellected. He was shot in the neck and head and died. -
Gulf of Tonkin
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (August 7, 1964) gave broad congressional approval for expansion of the Vietnam War was cemented by an incident that appears to involve more fiction than fact. North Vietnamese torpedo boats supposedly attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, off Vietnam, in a pair of assaults on August 2 and 4 of 1964. -
China explodes its first atomic bomb
October 16, 1964, China successfully exploded its first atomic bomb.China was the fifth country in the world to explode an atomic bomb after the United States (1945), the Soviet Union (1949), Great Britain (1952), and France (1960). -
Iranian Hostage Crisis
November 1979 - January 1981. On November 4, 1979, an angry mob of young Islamic revolutionaries overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 Americans hostage.On January 21, 1981, now-former President Carter went to Germany to meet the freed hostages on behalf of the new president Ronald Reagan. -
Soviet/Afghanistan War
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979 by troops from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union intervened in support of the Afghan communist government in its conflict with anticommunist Muslim guerrillas during the Afghan War (1978–92) and remained in Afghanistan until mid-February 1989. -
Iran Contra Affair
The Iran Contra Affair began as an internal U.S. confrontation between Ronald Reagan and the Democratic Congress. In 1984, the Boland Amendment passed, which said that the CIA and Department of Defense could not give militaristic aid (specifically in Nicaragua). The conflict began in 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war with each other. Reagan had hopes that if he supplied Iran with United States military supplies and weapons, the relations with Iran and the middle east may be strengthened. -
Gorbachev introduced Glasnost and Perestroika policiec
Mikhail S. Gorbachev general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. March 1985, he launched his nation on a new course. His dual program of "perestroika" ("restructuring") and "glasnost" ("openness") introduced changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations.Within five years,his revolutionary program swept communist governments throughout Eastern Europe from power and brought an end to the Cold War (1941-91). -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. -
End of the Warsaw Pact
After 36 years in existence, the Warsaw Pact—the military alliance between the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellite came to an end. The action was yet another sign that the Soviet Union was losing control over its former allies and that the Cold War was falling apart.By October, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had withdrawn from all Warsaw Pact military exercises. The Warsaw Pact officially disbanded in March and July of 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. -
Boris Yeltsin is elected President of Russia
13 June 1991, millions of Russians went to the first open election to choose a president. The winner was 60-year-old Boris Yeltsin, a maverick with a reputation for alcohol abuse who had for some time advocated political and economic reforms.
