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The Russian Revolution occurred during WWI when the people of Russia grew tired of starving and being sent off to war, they rebelled against their czar and began a new era of communism in Russia.
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The Potsdam Conference was a meeting between the three big ally leaders, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, in Potsdam Germany to decide the fate of Europe and Germany.
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At the end of the war in the Pacific Japan would not surrender, so rather than risk the loss of thousands of american lives, american leaders dropped two new highly destructive bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They caused destruction like the world had never seen before and became the weapon that defined the rest of the 20th century.
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The Iron Curtain was an imaginary barrier between the democratic capitalist west Europe and the Soviet Union to the east. Prime minister Winston Churchill coined the term when he said that "and iron curtain has descended across the continent"
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The Truman Doctrine was a foreign policy created by President Truman to counter the expansion of the Soviet Union.
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The Hollywood Ten are ten people who worked in the film industry who publicly excoriated the House of un-american activities committee. There names were: Alvah Bessie, Herbert J. Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Robert Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo.
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The marshal plan gave over 13 billion dollars to the European countries still struggling to rebuild after WW2, The east European soviet satellites did not accept the marshal plan.
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In the beginning of the Cold War the Soviet Union blockaded west Berlin and rather than leave them to starve, the U.S. flew food and supplies into Berlin regularly.
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Alger Hiss was convicted of espionage by the house of un-american activities board and was one of first in a long series of trials during the Red Scare.
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NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization it was formed as an alliance between the western powers to oppose communism.
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The molotov plan was the soviet plan to rebuild the countries under their power that were devastated by WW2.
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The first detonation of a soviet owned nuclear bomb, code name first lightning. This occurred far sooner than the U.S. expected.
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The Korean war was a war between North and South Korea and was one of the many proxy wars the U.S, capitalist side and the Soviet Union Communist side.
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The couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were accused and put on trial for selling nuclear bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. THey were convicted and sentenced to death.
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McCarthy, a U.S. senator, made his name famous by viciously attacking suspected communists and calling his rivals 'communist sympathizers' he went a step too far, however when he started targeting members of the U.S. army. They put him on trial and he lost his reputation in the process
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The Geneva conference was a meeting at Geneva Switzerland to discuss recent conflicts in Korea and southeast Asia.
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The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was fought between the French and Viet Minh, the communist freedom fighters battling for a free Vietnam.
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The Warsaw pact was an attempt to strengthen its hold over its satellites by increasing soviet military involvement in the participating states.
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Thousands of protesters rioted in favor of a democratic government in Hungary, but the demonstration was brutally broken by soviet forces.
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When the Soviet Union struck down a U.S. spy plane the world yet again teetered on the brink of war, as the U.S. had promised to stop sending spy planes over Russia.
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After Cuba fell to communism, the U.S., in an effort to take back the island nation, trained hundreds of Cuban refugees and told them to take back their home. The end result was a failure, a catastrophe and an embarrassment to the United states as a whole.
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The Berlin Wall was built by the soviets to stop the flow of east Germans from fleeing the communist dictatorship into capitalist west Berlin.
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The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the closest calls of the Cold War, the U.S. blockaded Cuba so the Soviet Union couldn't put nuclear bombs on the island which is an act of war, but in the end we narrowly avoided a disaster at the last moment.
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Ngo Dinh Diem was a supremely un liked leader in South Vietnam, he was so un liked that his people began lightig themselves on fire to protest his actions. In a CIA backed military coo, he was finally assassinated.
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While traveling through Dallas with his wife, President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in his convertible by Lee Harvey Oswald.
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Though they had already sent consultants to South Vietnam, a fight between the North Vietnamese government and two U.S destroyers persuaded the U.S. to become more involved in the Vietnam war. Congress wrote the president a 'Blank Check' to do whatever he needed to to win the war.
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Operation rolling thunder was a bombing campaign by the U.S against North Vietnam.
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The Tet Offensive was a cluster of attacks in South Vietnam by North Vietnam forces. Though the attacks were largely unsuccessful, they did succeed in turning public opinion of the war
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On this day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray. There are many theories about his assassination, many believe there was more to the story.
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while tensions were still high from the MLK assassination, riots broke out at the democratic convention over disagreement on their stance on the Vietnam war.
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Bobby Kennedy, brother of John Kennedy, was talking about uniting this country when he was shot at the Ambassador hotel Los Angeles.
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When Czechoslovakia began taking steps away from communism, the soviet union, fearing loosing one of their satellites, invaded.
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Richard Nixon was a the republican presidential candidate who won the elections in 1964.
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During an anti-war protest at Kent state university, a group of Ohio state national guard members shot at an unarmed crowd of collage students, killing 4 students.
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Nixon visited China to, slowly but surely, start to build connections and relations between them and the U.S.
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In the process of 'vietnamizeing' the war, Nixon organized a cease fire with the North Vietnamese, it was a big step in leaving the war permanently.
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The End of the Vietnam war finally came when North Vietnamese troops took Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, the Americans can be seen fleeing by helicopter from rooftops.
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In one of the most important elections in American history, the final president of the Cold War is elected.
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SDI or 'Star Wars' was a futuristic, almost implausible technology Reagan claimed to be developing where he would send satellites into the atmosphere to shoot down intercontinental missiles.
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Tensions in the Cold war finally seem to be lessening as president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Micheal Gorbachev meet for the first time in Geneva Switzerland.
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In a historic moment, the president of the united states makes a speech in Berlin and challenges the leader of the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin wall.
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The fall of the Berlin wall Signified an end to the Cold War and a victory for freedom and democracy.
