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NATO stands for The National Atlantic Treaty Organization. This was created by the United States, Canada, and several Western Europe nations to provide security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
Soviet forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to allied-controlled areas of Berlin. This led to the United States and United Kingdom airlifting food and fuel to Berlin from allied air bases in Western Germany. It finally ended when the Soviet Union lifted the blockade on land. -
The Korean War started with 75,000 North Korean soldiers pouring across the 38th parallel. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. The American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf by July. To American officials this war was against the forces of international communism itself. This war brought up the fear of World War III.
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This was a political and military alliance between the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and the German Democratic Republic.The alliance was counterbalance to NATO. -
The Vietnam War was a long and costly conflict that put the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and the United States. The conflict was influenced by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people were killed in the Vietnam War. Vietnamese civilians were more than half of the dead.
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Sputnik was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched by the Soviet Union as part of the Soviet space program. This started the “Space Age”. In January 1958 Sputnik’s orbit failed and the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere. -
East Germany began to build a barbed wire and concrete wall between East and West Berlin. The purpose of this wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state. -
Leaders of the U.S. and Soviet Union had a tense 13-day political and military standoff when they found out that the Soviet Union had started to secretly install missiles in Cuba to attack U.S. cities. In the end they had come to an agreement for the Soviet Union to remove the missiles from Cuba if the U.S. promised not to invade Cuba. The U.S. also removed their missiles in Turkey. -
American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first ever humans to land on the moon. Six hours after they landed Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. They were on Apollo 11 when they landed on the moon. -
The spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with the West when the war started to thaw. At midnight that day he said citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country’s borders. East and West Berliners crowded at the wall with beer and champagne chanting for them to open the gate that night. At midnight they flooded through the checkpoints. More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to celebrate.