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The End of WWII
In August 1945, President Harry S. Truman gave the US military the approval to use the worlds first atomic weapons against Japan in an attempt to get the Japanese military to surrender quickly and end the war. On August 6, the first weaponized atomic bomb, named Little Boy, was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. On August 9, The second weaponized atomic bomb, named Fat Man, was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Shortly after, on September 2, Japan surrendered unconditionally.
//en.wikipedia.org/ -
The Gouzenko Affair
Shortly after the Japanese surrender, and end of World War II, a 26-year-old man named Igor Gouszenko, working as a clerk in the cipher section of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, discovered numerous documents that proved the existence of a Soviet spy ring in Canada. On September 5, Gouszenko decided to defect and headed west where he walked into an Ottawa Journal building and told his story. This would bring our perceptions of the Soviet Union from ally to enemy
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/q.. -
The Begining of the Cold War/The Iron Curtain Speech
On March 5, 1946 Winston Churchhill gave a speech condemning the Soviet Unions policies in Europe and states, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent." This speech can be considered the announcement of the beginning of the Cold War.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/churchill-delivers-iron-curtain-speech -
The Truman Doctrine
On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman announced the Truman Doctrine. This doctrine stated that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to any democratic nation under threat of communism. Truman had requested $400 million to aid Greece and Turkey. He argued that a communist victory in the Greek War would endanger the political stability of Turkey, which would then undermine stability of the Middle East.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952... -
The Marshall Plan
On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Marshall plan into effect. The Marshall plan was and initiative in which the United States gave over $12 million to aid Western Europe to help rebuild Western European economies after World War II. Again, this would be a strategy to help prevent the spread of communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marshall_Plan&oldid=738706685 -
NATO is Born
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. It included alliances between Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The members agreed that an attack against one of them would be considered an attack against all of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NATO&oldid=739472092 -
The Soviet Union Becomes the World's 2nd Nuclear Power
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested their first nuclear bomb. The testing was successful and the Soviet Union became the worlds second nuclear power. The test caught Western powers by surprise. America had estimated that the Soviets would not be able to produce any type of atomic weapon until at least 1953. Once the Soviet Union was confirmed to be in possession of the atomic bomb, this put pressure on America to develop the first hydrogen bomb.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti... -
NATO's Nemesis/The Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact what is a collective defense treaty among the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in central and eastern Europe during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was founded on May 14, 1955 as a response to the United States and other members of NATO making West Germany a member of NATO which the Soviets saw as a direct threat. The Warsaw pact included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members.
www.history.com -
The Space Race
On July 29, 1955, America had announced the intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year. The Space Race began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet union responded to the US announcement by declaring that they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The Soviet union ended up beating the United States to space with the launch and successful orbiting of Sputnik 1, and again by putting the first man in space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/ -
The Vietnam War
South Vietnam was an ally of the United States and North Vietnam were allies of the Soviet Union. The United States feared that if North Vietnam word to win the war that South Vietnam, other countries in South Asia would fall to communism. On November 1, 1955, the Vietnam War began.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1955_in_the_Vietnam_War&oldid=739181323 -
The U-2 Inccodent
President Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviet Union that the United States Central Intelligence Agency had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years after an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Soviet airspace. The United States had denied any knowledge of the plane's mission until the Soviets produced an intact aircraft and the surviving pilot.
www.history.com -
The Building of the Berlin Wall
Built in the middle of the night on August 13, 1961, the Berlin wall was a physical division between West Berlin and East Germany in order to keep East Germans from leaving to the West. The people of Berlin woke up that morning to find what once was a fluid border was now a wall of concrete posts and barbed wire. During the night of August 12, whichever side of the border a person went to sleep on was where they stayed. -
The Cuban Missile Crisis
After a U-2 spy plane discovered a number of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev entered into a 13 day confrontation that ended up being the closest the United States has ever come to full-blown thermonuclear war. This was a pivotal moment in the cold war. The confrontation lasted from October 16 through October 28, 1962. An estimated 100 million people on either side would die if thermonuclear war had actually taken place.
www.cubanmissilecrisis.org -
The Assassination of JFK
On November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. While John F. Kennedy Rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza, Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from a book depository building not far away. Many have speculated on whether or not communist countries were somehow involved in the assassination, however, those theories are controversial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy -
Another Close Call
On September 26, 1983, there was another close call that potentially could've ended with a nuclear attack against the United States. On this day, a Soviet Lieutenant monitoring American air space misinterpreted a signal that appeared to be a US nuclear launch. It turned out to be a satellite glitch and and no retaliation was ever taken.
http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/5-cold-war-close-calls -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989, Soviet reforms allow Eastern Europe to change the communist governments. On that day, the Berlin Wall fell after a spokesman, that was not correctly informed, mistakenly announced at a news conference that the borders had been opened in East Berlin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_in_the_Cold_War -
The End of the Cold War/Dissolution of the USSR
In large part due to the number of radical reforms the Soviet government had made under Mikhail Gorbachev, The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991. This was a result of the declaration number 142 – H that declared acknowledgment of the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States. This would mark the end of the Cold War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union
