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Yalta Conference
Meeting between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin to decide what would happen at the end of WWII. Topics discussed included partitioning of Germany, fate of Poland, The United Nations, German reparations. -
Iron Curtain Speech
Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech expressed the want for a “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. In addition, Churchill spoke of an “iron curtain” that fell between Western capitalist democracies and and Eastern communist dictatorships. Churchill believed that Communism could be destroyed and democracy would prevail. -
The Marshall Plan
As nations of Europe faced famine and economic crisis after World War II, the United States proposed to rebuild the continent in the interest of political stability and a healthy world economy. The resulting Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 restored European agricultural and industrial productivity. -
The Berlin Airlift
The Soviets placed a blockade on the allied sector of Berlin to try and gain supremacy. To counter the blockade, the western powers organized and airlifted unbelievable amounts of food, coal, passengers, and other items into the city. The planes flew around the clock, day and night, taking off and landing every 90 seconds. -
NATO Formed
As the Soviet Union was rising to power, other countries and nations feared that they would expand their control and take over other countries. This is when the Western nations formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO is a formal alliance between the territories of North American and Europe. Its main purpose was to defend each other from the possibility of communist Soviet Union taking control of their nation. -
Formation of the Warsaw Pact
The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communit nations came together and formed the Warsaw Pact, as a counterreaction to NATO. The signing of the pact became a symbol of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. -
Sputnik
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite. This marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. In July 1958, Congress passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act - aka 'NASA'. -
The U-2 Incident
On May 1, 1960, an American U2 spy plane flew over Russia, taking photographs of denied territory. The plane was shot down by the Soviet Union. The United States government at first denied the plane's purpose and mission, but then was forced to admit its role as a covert surveillance aircraft when the Soviet government produced its intact remains and surviving pilot. -
The Bay of Pigs
In 1960 Castro took over U.S. oil refineries in Cuba. As a result, the United States stopped buying Cuban sugar. Castro responded by talking over all of U.S. businesses in Cuba. This led President Kennedy to authorize the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. The United States attempted to invade Cuba and overthrow premier Fidel Castro. About 1,300 exiles armed with United States weapons landed at Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the southern coast of Cuba. They were quickly defeated by Castro's army. -
Creation of the Berlin Wall
On July 25, 1961 JFK gave a speech stressing the need for NATO countries to hold onto West Berlin. He said any Soviet attack on Berlin would be equivalent to an attack on NATO. On August 4, Khrushchev reacted to this speech to the leaders of the Warsaw Pact and stated he was preparing to seal the borders of East Berlin with a concrete wall, but the plan was kept top secret. Nine days later, a 96 mile long and 11.8 feet high, concrete wall was built to separate East and West Berlin. -
The Cuban Missle Crisis
The Cuban Missle Crisis is the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war. The Soviet Union began building secret missile bases in Cuba. President Kennedy was shown photographs of the missile installations, and responded by televising an address stating the discovery of the weapons and that any attack coming from Cuba would be treated as an attack from the Soviet Union. Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy stating that the sites would be dismantled as long as the US did not invade Cuba. -
Assassination of JFK
On November 22, 1963, while on a visit to Dallas, Texas JFK was assassinated. Bullets struck the president's neck and head, and the Texas governor was also hit in the chest. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder, although there is still speculation he was not a lone killer. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with West Berlin. People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall, while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. -
End of the Warsaw Pact
As a result of global Communist losses, the power and control of the Soviets in the pact sharply fell in 1989 and 1990. East Germany resigned from the alliance in 1990 as it was reunified into one, united Germany. Hungary left the pact in 1991, along with Czechoslovakia and Poland. In 1991, the remaining six countries decided to formally end their alliance, and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded. -
Fall of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was formally dissolved on December 26, 1991 when Gorbachev conceded power the day before, realizing that he could no longer contain the power of the population. The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.
