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Russian Revolution
By 1949 the lines were sharply drawn and the Cold War was largely in place in Europe. Events preceding the Second World War, and even the Russian Revolution of 1917, underlay older tensions between the Soviet Union, European countries, and the United States. -
Potsdam conference
This conference consisted of three world powers the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britian. This conference was about post WWII and there was a lot of debate between powers. -
Atomic Bomb
After Japan's constant refusal to surrender to the United States, the United States created a modernized weapon of destruction in order to finally bring this to an end. The Aromic Bomb was dropped on Japan in August of 1945. -
Iron Curtain
Winston Churchill in 1946 used this term to describe the line of demarcation between Western Europe and the Soviet zone of influence. Also having separated the former Soviet bloc and the West prior to the decline of communism that followed the political events in eastern Europe in 1989. -
Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Sovie Union. -
Hollywood 10
Hollywood Ten, in U.S. history, 10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947, refused to answer questions regarding their possible communist affiliations, and after spending time in prison for contempt of Congress, they were mostly blacklisted by the Hollywood studios. -
The Marshal Plan
The Marshal Plan was an economic care fund for Western Europe given by the United States. Thirteen Billion dollars were given to help western Europes Economy after WWII. -
Berlin Airlift
After World War II and Germany had been divided. They were occupied by the allied powers who defeated Germany (the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States) and by France. The Berlin Airlift was the United States delivering supplies to Berlin, including: food, water, fuel, medical supplies, etc. -
Berlin Blockade
Joseph Stalin set up a Berlin Blockade in which was built to starve and kill off the eastern Germany side, which was under Soviet Control. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947, and further developed on July 12, 1948, when he pledged to contain threats to Greece and Turkey. -
Alger Hiss Case
Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Called before HUAC, Hiss categorically denied the charge. -
NATO
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a military alliance of European and North American democracies founded after World War II to strengthen international ties between member states, especially the United States and Europe. To serve as a counter-balance to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. -
Soviet Bomb Test
Soviet Atomic Bomb Test. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. It came as a great shock to the United States because they were not expecting the Soviet Union to possess nuclear weapon knowledge so soon. -
Korean War
Korean War definition. A war, also called the Korean conflict, fought in the early 1950s between the United Nations, supported by the United States, and the communist Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. The war began in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea. -
Rosenburg Trial
The Rosenburg trial was court case involving Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, an American couple who were executed in 1953 as spies for the Soviet Union. Some have argued that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of McCarthy -era hysteria against communists or of anti-Semitism (they were Jewish). -
Army-McCarthy hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations (April–June 1954) to investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the decisive engagement in the First Indochina War. It consisted of a struggle between French and Viet Minh forces for control of a small mountain outpost on the Vietnamese border near Laos. -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference was a conference among several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland from April 26 – July 20, 1954. It was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a military alliance of communist nations in eastern Europe. Organized in 1955 in answer to NATO, the Warsaw Pact included Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 was a nationwide revolt against the Marxist-Leninist government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. -
U2 Incident
The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
Bay of Pigs invasion started on April 17, 1961. It was an abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, or Girón Beach to Cubans, on the southwestern coast by some 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro. The invasion was financed and directed by the U.S. government. -
Berlin Wall
The berlin wall was a guarded concrete wall, 28 miles, with minefields and controlled checkpoints, erected across Berlin by East Germany in 1961 and dismantled in 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban missile crisis definition. A confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over the presence of missile sites in Cuba; one of the “hottest” periods of the cold war. -
Assassination of Diem
The arrest and assassination of Ngo Dình Diem, the president of South Vietnam, marked the culmination of a successful CIA-backed coup detat led by General Dương Van Minh in November 1963. -
Assassination of JFK
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the U.S. 2nd Air Division, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968, during the Vietnam War. -
Tet Offensive
he Tet Offensive, or officially called The General Offensive and Uprising of Tet Mau Than 1968 by North Vietnam and the NLF, was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Assassination of RFK
On June 5, 1968, 42-year-old presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight PDT at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just won the California presidential primaries in the 1968 election. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact nations the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland on the night of 20 to the 21 August 1968. -
Riots of Democratic convention
On this day in 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, tens of thousands of Vietnam War protesters battle police in the streets, while the Democratic Party falls apart over an internal disagreement concerning its stance on Vietnam. -
Election of Nixon
The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, defeated the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey. -
Kent State
The Kent State shootings were the shootings on May 4, 1970, of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. -
Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China was an important strategic and diplomatic overture that marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and China. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
Vietnam War. On January 15, 1973, President Richard Nixon of the USA ordered a ceasefire of the aerial bombings in North Vietnam. The decision came after Dr. Henry Kissinger, the National Security Affairs advisor to the president, returned to Washington from Paris, France with a draft peace proposal. -
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975. -
Reagan elected
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to the presidency, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader before serving as the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. -
SDI announced
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons. -
Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
The Geneva Summit of 1985 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on November 19 and 20, 1985, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders met for the first time to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race. -
‘Tear down this wall’ speech
"Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier. -
Fall of Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders.
