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Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945 , was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively, for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. -
Potsdam Conference (surrender or perish!)
Stalin, Churchill, and Truman—as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill while awaiting the outcome of the 1945 general election, and then replaced Churchill as Prime Minister after the Labour Party's victory over the Conservatives—gathered to decide how to administer punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on 8 May (V-E Day). -
Hiroshima
Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. It is best known as the first city in history to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon when the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped an atomic bomb on it at 8:15 A.M. on August 6, 1945, near the end of World War II. Its name 広島 means "Wide Island". -
United Nations Created
The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between countries, and to provide a platform for dialogue. It contains multiple subsidiary organizations to carry out its missions. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the large-scale American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to prevent the spread of Soviet communism. -
Berlin Airlift Begins
Although the ground routes had never been negotiated, the same was not true of the air. On 30 November 1945, it had been agreed in writing that there would be three twenty-mile-wide air corridors providing free access to Berlin. Additionally, unlike a force of tanks and trucks, the Soviets could not claim that cargo aircraft were some sort of military threat. In the face of unarmed aircraft refusing to turn around, the only way to enforce the blockade would have been to shoot them down. -
China Becomes Communist
The Communist Party of China (CPC), also known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although nominally it exists alongside the United Front, a coalition of governing political parties, in practice, the CPC is the only party in the PRC, maintaining a unitary government and centralizing the state, military, and media. -
NATO Formed
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO ( /ˈneɪtoʊ/ nay-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. -
Berlin Airlift Ends
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USSR Tests Atomic Bomb
The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb (Russian: Создание советской атомной бомбы) was a clandestine research and development program begun during and post-World War II, in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the United States' nuclear project. This scientific research was directed by Soviet nuclear physicist Igor Kurchatov, while the military logistics and intelligence efforts were undertaken and managed by NKVD director Lavrentiy Beria. -
Korean Conflict Begins
The division of Korea into North Korea and South Korea stems from the 1945 Allied victory in World War II, ending Japan's 35-year colonial rule of Korea. In a proposal opposed by nearly all Koreans, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy the country as a trusteeship with the zone of control demarcated along the 38th parallel. -
Korean Conflict Ends
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Joseph McCarthy Hearings
He also used charges of communism, communist sympathies, or disloyalty to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government. With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, McCarthy's support and popularity began to fade. -
Vietnam Begins
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and its allies. -
Sputnik Launched
Sputnik, a Russian word meaning "companion" or "satellite", is a name applied to certain spacecraft launched under the Soviet space program. -
Bay Of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. -
Berlin Wall Is Built
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis – known as the October Crisis in Cuba and the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Kарибский кризис) in the USSR – was a thirteen-day confrontation between the Soviet Union and Cuba on one side and the United States on the other; the crisis occurred in October 1962, during the Cold War. -
Détente
The term is often used in reference to the general easing of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1971, a thawing at a period roughly in the middle of the Cold War. In the Soviet Union, détente was known in Russian as разрядка ("razryadka", loosely meaning 'relaxation of tension'). -
President Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC, which at that time considered the U.S. one of its staunchest foes, and the voyage ended 25 years of separation between the two sides. -
SALT Treaty #1
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks refers to two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. There were two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II. -
Vietnam Ends
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USSR Invades Afganistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year proxy war during the Cold war involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen guerrilla movement and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers. -
SALT Treaty #2
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Glasnost
Glasnost was a policy which called for increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union. Introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s, Glasnost is often paired with Perestroika (literally: Restructuring), another reform instituted by Gorbachev at the same time. -
Berlin Wall Falls
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USSR Dissolves
Tensions grew between the union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and Communist Party hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged an abortive coup attempt. Following the failed coup, the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power "in the period of transition". -
Cold War Ends
