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German Unification
The formal unification of unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state. -
The Holocaust
The systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. -
Battle of Britain
The air war ends in defeat for Nazi Germany. -
Yalta Conference
A meeting of Churchill, Stalin and FDR to discuss the Allied war effort against Germany and Japan and to try and settle some nagging diplomatic issues. -
Death of FDR
Franklin D. Roosevelt; the 32nd president of the US died of a Intracerebral Hemorrhage. -
Arms Race
The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the US, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies -
VJ Day
The Japanese surrendered bringing World War Two to an end. -
Truman Docterine
President Harry S. Truman established that the US would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under the threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
Berlin Blockade
The Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. -
Marshall Plan
An American initiative to aid Europe, in which the US gave $130 billion in economic support to help rebuild European economies. -
Berlin Airlift
The Russians; who wanted Berlin all for themselves- closed all highways, railroads and canals from western- occupied Germany into western- occupied Berlin. Instead of retreating from West Berlin the US and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift lasted for more than a year and carried more than 2.3 million tons of cargo into West Berlin. -
End of Berlin Blockade
Russia ended the blockade of Berlin -
Korean War
75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War -
Joseph Stalin dies
To the relief of many, he died of a massive heart attack. He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation Nazi domination- and as the mass murderer of the century. -
Nakita Khrushchev comes to power
His rise to power did initiate a period in which tensions between the US and the Soviet Union began slightly to ease, as he called for "peaceful coexistence" between the two superpowers. -
Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union's response to West Germany joining NATO. -
Vietnam War
This was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies against South Vietnam and its principal; ally, the US. -
Suez Crisis
Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after the Egyptian president nationalized the canal in July of that same year. -
Space Race
The US competition with the USSR fro technological dominance spurred the US on to the first-ever landing on the moon. -
U-2 Incident
The USSR shot down an American U-2 spy lane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The CIA launched what its leaders believed would be the definitive strike: a full-scale invasion of Cuba by 1,400 American-trained Cubans who had fled theirs homes when Castro took over. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
A direct and dangerous confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. -
JFK Assassination
He was assassinated while on a visit to Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder. -
First time landing on the moon
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin. -
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
The Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. -
INF Treaty
The treaty between the USA and the USSR on the elimination of their intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles, requires destruction of the parties' ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. -
Berlin Wall
The official purpose of this 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. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was torn down. -
Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power
The Congress of People's Deputies elects General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as the new president of the Soviet Union -
U.S.S.R Breakup
Representatives from 11 Soviet republics met and announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union and declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States. The once mighty Soviet Union had fallen, largely due to the great number of radical reforms that Gorbachev had implemented during his six years as the leader of the USSR.
