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Moments in the Cold War
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Yalta Confrence
Meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreeing to demand Germany’s unconditional surrender and began plans for a post-war world. -
Truman Doctrine
American foreign policy to stop Soviet imperialism during the Cold War. President Harry S. Truman pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. It asked Congress for $400 million in military and economic assistance for Turkey and Greece. -
Marshall Plan
An American initiative to aid Western Europe. The U.S. gave $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The Marshall Plan also institutionalized and legitimized the concept of U.S. foreign aid programs, which have become a integral part of U.S. foreign policy. -
NATO
A a formal alliance between the territories of North American and Europe. It's main purpose was to defend each other from the possibility of communist Soviet Union taking control of their nation. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
Start of Korean War
Korean War began when some soldiers from the North Korean Army went across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. -
Hydrogen Bomb
In this type of bomb, deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) are fused into helium, thereby releasing energy. There is no limit on the yield of this weapon. President Harry S. Truman shocked the world when he announced that the Soviet Union had conducted a successful test of an atomic weapon. Popularly known as the hydrogen bomb, this new weapon was approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices. -
Rosenberg execution
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to spying in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Eithel's own little brother turned them in to protect his wife.Evidence suggested that she forced her husband to reveal names and information to her. -
Senator McCarthy
He publicly charged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. Reelected in 1952, he became chair of the Senate's subcommittee on investigations, and for the next two years he investigated various government departments and questioned innumerable witnesses. -
Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. The Warsaw Pact came to be seen as quite a potential militaristic threat, as a sign of Communist dominance, and a definite opponent to American capitalism. The signing of the pact became a symbol of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. -
Eisenhower Doctrine
Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a country could request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state. Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation that was controlled by internation communism.
