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A timeline reflecting major events from 1947- 1966 during the Cold War.
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The purpose of the Truman doctrine was to establish that the United States would support a democratic nation under threat from an internal or external authoritarian force. This support could include economic, political or military assistance. -
This was a programme of economic aid offered by the United States to any European country. The plan was rejected outright by Stalin and any Eastern Bloc country considering accepting aid was reprimanded severely. Consequently the aid was only given to Western European Countries. -
Delegates from the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Italy and France gathered near Warsaw and created the Cominform, an information bureau located in Belgrade. -
An agreement signed by Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, creating a collective defense alliance. It led to the formation of NATO and the Western European Union. -
When Soviet forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to Allied-controlled areas of Berlin. The United States and United Kingdom responded by airlifting food and fuel to Berlin from Allied airbases in western Germany. -
Cominform was initially located in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, but after the Tito–Stalin split expelled Yugoslavia from the group in June 1948, the seat was moved to Bucharest, Romania. Officially, Yugoslavia was expelled for "Titoism" and anti-Sovietism, based on accusations of deviating from Marxism-Leninism. -
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
The United States and United Kingdom responded by airlifting food and fuel to Berlin from Allied airbases in western Germany. The crisis ended on May 12, 1949, when Soviet forces lifted the blockade on land access to western Berlin. -
After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings, Stalin was convinced of developing his own nuclear arsenal. RDS-1. RDS-1, the first Soviet atomic test was internally code-named First Lightning and was code-named by the Americans as Joe 1. The design was very similar to the first US "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, using a TNT/hexogen implosion lens design. -
National Security Council Paper NSC-68 (entitled “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security” and frequently referred to as NSC-68) was a Top-Secret report completed by the U.S. Department of State's Policy Planning Staff on April 7, 1950. NSC-68 concluded that the only plausible way to deter the Soviet Union was for President Harry Truman to support a massive build-up of both conventional and nuclear arms. -
After five years of simmering tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when the Northern Korean People's Army invaded South Korea in a coordinated general attack at several strategic points along the 38th parallel, the line dividing communist North Korea from the non-communist Republic of Korea in the south. North Korea aimed to militarily conquer South Korea and therefore unify Korea under the communist North Korean regime. -
The proposal for what was known as the European Defence Community (EDC) was submitted by French Prime Minister René Pleven to the National Assembly in October 1950. It called for the creation of a European Army to be placed under supranational authority and to be funded by a common budget. It rearmed West German soldiers to be part of a European Defence Community (EDC). -
The Chinese Army captured Seoul in January of 1951 and continued to press south, but their advance was stopped at the 37th parallel north. The South Korean and UN Forces seized this opportunity and went on a counteroffensive and recaptured Seoul in March, and they pushed up to the 38th parallel. -
Based on Robert Schuman's proposal, negotiations were conducted between the six countries supporting the project: Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The Treaty was signed on 18 April 1951, creating the ECSC. -
On October 24, 1951, President Harry Truman finally proclaims that the nation’s war with Germany, begun in 1941, is officially over. Fighting had ended in the spring of 1945. In his proclamation on this day, Truman stated that it had always been America’s hope to create a treaty of peace with the government of a united and free Germany, but that Soviet policy had “made it impossible.” -
On 18 February, Greece was formally welcomed as one of NATO's first new members since the creation of the Alliance in 1949, along with Turkey. His Majesty King Paul I, king of the Hellenes, signs the Instrument of accession for Greece in Athens on 11 February 1952. -
The Stalin Note, also known as the March Note, was a document delivered to the representatives of the Western Allies (the United Kingdom, France, and the United States) from the Soviet Union in separated Germany including the two countries in West and East on 10 March 1952. -
Former World War II military commander Dwight Eisenhower is elected president of the United States. Eisenhower defeats Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson, carrying 39 states to Stevenson’s nine. -
Joseph Stalin dies at age 74, having never regained consciousness. He has not nominated a successor and it is unclear who will replace him as leader of the Soviet Union. He was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev. -
On July 27, 1953, seven months after President Eisenhower's inauguration as the 34th President of the United States, an armistice was signed, ending organized combat operations and leaving the Korean Peninsula divided much as it had been since the close of World War II at the 38th parallel. -
The Atoms for Peace speech reflected the President's deep concern about “Atoms for War.” The escalating nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, which included the development of thermonuclear bombs, brought President Eisenhower to the United Nations. -
The KGB was created in 1954 to serve as the “sword and shield of the Communist Party.” The new security service, which played a major role in the purge of Beria's supporters, was designed to be carefully controlled by senior Communist Party officials. -
In July 1954, the Geneva Agreements were signed. As part of the agreement, the French agreed to withdraw their troops from northern Vietnam. Vietnam would be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel, pending elections within two years to choose a president and reunite the country. -
In Vietnam, the accords create two “regroupment” zones separated by a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) roughly along the 17th parallel, and restrict the activities of foreign military personnel in Southeast Asia. French forces must withdraw south of the DMZ and Communist forces north. -
The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) becomes a sovereign state when the United States, France and Great Britain end their military occupation. With this action, West Germany was given the right to rearm and become a full-fledged member of the western alliance against the Soviet Union. -
NATO welcomed West Germany as a member on 6 May 1955, a day after its status as an occupied country came to an end (the Bonn-Paris conventions came into effect on 5 May 1955) -
The Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War -
About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of the Polish People's Army and the Internal Security Corps under the command of the Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification fired at the protesting civilians. -
In October, 1956, the Soviet Union ordered its troops to crush a nascent rebellion in Budapest, the capital of the Soviet satellite state of Hungary. Undertaken while the West was preoccupied by developments in the Middle East, the conflict demonstrated emerging political dissent in the Eastern Bloc. -
The Suez Crisis of 1956, in which the Egyptian Government seized control of the Suez Canal from the British and French owned company that managed it, had important consequences for U.S. relations with both Middle Eastern countries and European allies. -
The Treaty of Rome set up the European Economic Community (EEC), bringing together Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to work together towards integration and economic growth through trade. It established a common market based on the free movement of goods, people, services, and capital. -
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for three weeks before its three silver-zinc batteries ran out. -
Sputnik 2, launched on November 3, 1957, carried the dog Laika, the first living creature to be shot into space and orbit Earth. Laika was a stray dog found on the streets of Moscow. As the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, Laika's survival was never expected. She died of overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit. -
Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year. The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, beginning the Cold War Space Race between the two nations. -
On November 10, 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech in which he demanded that the Western powers of the United States, Great Britain and France pull their forces out of West Berlin within six months. -
In November 1958, Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western Powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city. -
The Cuban communist revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro took part in the Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Following on from his early life, Castro decided to fight for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's military junta by founding a paramilitary organization, "The Movement". -
The Kitchen Debate was a series of impromptu exchanges through interpreters between U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon, then 46, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita Khrushchev, 65, at the opening of the American National Exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow on July 24, 1959. -
The state visit of Nikita Khrushchev to the United States was a 13-day visit from 15–27 September 1959. It marked the first state visit of a Soviet or Russian leader to the US. -
On May 5, 1960, the Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. that an American spy plane had been shot down on May 1 over Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), referring to the flight as an “aggressive act” by the United States. -
The 1960 United States presidential election was the 44th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee. -
After the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military aid and was an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. -
The beginning of the space era for mankind, 12 April 1961 was the date of the first human space flight, carried out by Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet citizen. This historic event opened the way for space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. -
On April 17, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. -
The decision was taken to build a Wall. Work began in the early hours of 13 August 1961. The Berlin Wall became the symbol of the Cold War and a tangible manifestation of the world's separation into two distinct ideological blocs. Map from the era, illustrating Berlin's division between the Allied forces. -
In February 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff established the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (USMACV), in Saigon as the senior American military headquarters in South Vietnam, and appointed General Paul D. Harkins as commander (COMUSMACV). -
For thirteen days in October 1962 the world waited—seemingly on the brink of nuclear war—and hoped for a peaceful resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis. In October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. -
Tanganyika became independent under Julius Nyerere in 1961, followed by Uganda under Milton Obote in 1962 and Kenya under the premiership of Jomo Kenyatta in 1963. -
Kennedy opened his press conference on March 23, 1961, with an extended discussion of Laos, calling for an end to hostilities and negotiations leading to a neutralized and independent Laos. The Pathet Lao accepted the ceasefire offer on May 3 -
On August 5, 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. After Senate approval, the treaty that went into effect on October 10, 1963, banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. -
JF Kennedy was assassinated while on a visit to Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder but there has always been speculation that he was not a lone killer and that there may have been communist or CIA complicity. -
In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. -
By the early 1960s however, Khrushchev's popularity was eroded by flaws in his policies, as well as his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This emboldened his potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964. -
The People’s Republic of China joins the rank of nations with atomic bomb capability, after a successful nuclear test on October 16, 1964. China is the fifth member of this exclusive club, joining the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. -
Under the authority of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States first deployed troops to Vietnam in 1965 in response to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident of August 2 and 4, 1964. March 2, 1965 — Operation Rolling Thunder begins. March 8, 1965 — First U.S. ground troops arrive in Da Nang composed of 3,500 US Marines of the 3rd Marine Division on Okinawa. -
On April 28, more than 22,000 U.S. troops, supported by forces provided by some of the member states of the Organization of American States (a United Nations-like institution for the Western Hemisphere, dominated by the United States) landed in the Dominican Republic. Over the next few weeks they brought an end to the fighting and helped install a conservative, non-military government. -
July 28, 1965 — In a nationally televised speech, President Johnson announced his decision to send an additional 50,000 American troops to South Vietnam, increasing the number of personnel there by two-thirds and to bring the commitment to 125,000. -
Holt was sworn in as prime minister on 26 January 1966, following the retirement of Robert Menzies six days earlier. He won the leadership election unopposed, with William McMahon elected as his deputy. He is replaced by Harold Holt. -
Following the failure of an identical mission on 1 March 1966 which never left Earth orbit and was designated Cosmos 111, Luna 10 was launched on 31 March 1966 at 10:48 UT. Luna 10 was the first spacecraft to go into orbit around the Moon, and the first human-made object to orbit any body beyond the Earth. -
In 1966, France decided to withdraw from the Alliance's integrated military command. That decision in no way undermined France's commitment to the Alliance's collective defence. As General de Gaulle put it, the aim was to change the form of our Alliance without changing its substance.