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The Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was a program to encourage and help nations resist communist expansion. This lead to the Marshall Plan which helped European Nations rebuild after the destruction of World War Two. The United Nations is made up of 193 nations and there goal is to talk about problems peacefully to try to fix them and keep from starting a war. All of these things benefitted the people of each nation very much. -
The Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt by Joeseph Stalin to cut off west Berlin from the rest of the world. The Berlin wall was made after the Berlin Blockade because the Blockade failed after the Berlin Airlift and the wall stopped East Germans from fleeing to West Germany. People were leaving because they wanted to get away from communism and poverty. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Orginization, or NATO is an orginization made up of alliances with friendly nations and committed to defending Western Europe against any Soviet threat. -
Senator Joseph McCarthy
Senator Joseph McCarthy made an announcement that he had a list of 205 State Department employees who were Communist party members. He could never prove his claims, but he got the entire nation's attention. Then he started to televise the hearings and instead of looking like a hero, he was just a bully and his popularity plunged. Ethel and Julius Rosenburg were caught passing atomic secrets to the Soviets and sentenced to death. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea. Korea was split in half, that line is called the 38th Parallel and is also the Demilitarized Zone where niether country can have military troops. Douglas MacArthur was a UN general chosen by Truman to lead a military force to Korea. He lead many daring attacks but was fired because he was defying orders. The Korean war changed nothing, the 38th Parallel was still in about the same place, and there is still tension in Korea. -
Korean War Continued
Peace talks to end the Korean War started in mid-1951. At first the peace talks were getting nowhere until in July 1953 the two sides signed an armistice to end the fighting. The war changed nothing, and the 38th Parallel was still around the same place it was. The troops are on either side behind the demilitarized zone and remain there today. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a military alliance similar to NATO formed by the Soviet Union. They dominated their neighbors, forcing them to follow its policies. -
Vietnam War Begins
Ho Chi Minh became the Communist leader of North Vietnam in 1954. Ngo Dinh Diem became the noncommunist leader of South Vietnam. Many of Diem's people stopped supporting him and joined the Vietcong which are guerillas who apposed Diem. Guerillas are fighters who make hit-and-run attacks on the enemy. -
Vietnam War Begins Continued
In August 1964 President Lyndon Johnson announcement that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked American ships patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. At the president's urging, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This allowed the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack or to prevent further agression. He used the resolution to order the bombing of North Vietnam and Vietcong-held areas in the south. -
Vietnam War Begins Continued Continued
America had joined the Vietnam war and to raise troops the United States expanded the draft which is a system or mandatory enilistment. the draft affected youth unequally. Many of the middle class young found ways to avoid the draft, like attending college, so many of the people drafted were poor. Also a large number of them were African american and Latino. Finally, on April 30th, 1975 the Vietnam War ended. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
In 1959, Fidel Castro led a revolution in Cuba that set up a Communist state. The Soviet Union started supplying Cuba with aid and in 1961 American President John F. Kennedy approved a plan for Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. The exiles landed on Cuba's south coast but the invasion was badly planned and Castro's forces quickly took control of the invaders and put them all in jail, this is now known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. -
Cuban Missile Crisis Continued
In October 1962, President Kennedy learned that the Soviet Union was secretly building missile bases in Cuba that could launch atomic missiles that would be able to reach America within minutes. Kennedy immediately set up warships that would stop any Soviet ship carrying missiles. At the last moment the Soviet ships turned back but that is the closest that the world has ever come to a full-scale nuclear war. -
Cuban Missile Crisis Continued Continued
Krushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, agreed to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba and in turn the United States promised not to invade the island. Later, The United States created NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The US and the Soviet Union were racing each other to get to space, but eventually on July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong took the first step on the moon. -
The Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a surprise attack on cities in South Vietnam by the Vietcong. They also stromed the American embassy in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. This attack is now known as The Tet Offensive beacause it took place during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year's holiday. In the end the Vietcong were pushed back, but this battle showed that even with half a million American troops, South Vietnam was not completely safe from the Vietcong. -
SALT Agreement
The SALT Agreement was when President Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union for the first time since the Cold War started. He went to reduce the tension between the two countries. While he was there they signed the SALT Agreement which was a treaty to limit the number of Nuclear warheads and missiles. SALT stands for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. -
Communism Collapses
Détente is an effort to reduce tensions between the superpowers. This is what President Nixon was trying to do during his trip to the Soviet Union in May 1972. Then in 1981, President Ronald Reagan became president and persuaded congress to increase military spending by one hundred billion dollars during his first five years as president. -
Communism Collapses
President Reagan introduced Star Wars which was a new wepons development that could destroy Soviet Missiles from Space. It was called this because of the popular geek movie that had just come out. Also, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR is Communist Russia, also known as the Soviet Union. Then, countries stopped being communist and stopped supporting the Soviet Union. When nations started leaving, the Soviet Union and Communism started to collapse. Now there is much less Communism. -
Glasnost
In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became a new Soviet leader. His idea was that the only way for the Soviet system to survive was to make major reforms. Gorbachev started to encourage glasnost, the Russian term for speaking out openly. He hoped this would get his to come up with ideas on how to fix problems and make things better. This was quite a change though because they had never been allowed to speak openly against the country before.
