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Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution began in March of 1917 and proceeded through November of 1917. The revolutions shaped the beginning of the Cold War to make clear that the U.S. wanted to rule out communism, and this caused many tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. -
Postdam Conference
The Postdam Conference consisted of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill , and U.S. President Harry Truman, all three met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II and changes for the new postwar world.This was an extreme event for the Cold War because the U.S. announced that they had successfully tested their 'secret weapon' which was an atomic bomb. -
The Atomic Bomb
On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber jet dropped the world’s first ever dropped atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima,Japan. The explosion destroyed 90% of the city and immediately killed over 60,000 people,not to mention the thousands more that would later die from radiation exposure. On August 9,1945, three days later a second B-29 dropped an A-bomb on Nagasaki. Japan’s Emperor later had announced his country's surrender, & he explains the devastating power of “a new & most cruel bomb.” -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was established by the Soviets in March of 1946. This was the dividing of Europe, the West referred to the boundary line that divided Europe into two separate areas of political powers from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War. During this period, Eastern Europe was under the political control of the Soviet Union, while Western Europe allied with the U.S. and Canada within NATO. -
Truman Doctrine
On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman announced that the Truman Doctrine was Americas new foreign policy. The policy stated the principle that the U.S. should provide political,military, and economic aid to countries or people threatened by Soviet Union forces or communist rule. Later, on July 12, 1947, Truman advised a plan to support Greece and Turkey. With this doctrine established for the U.S., it displays that America will do what it takes to put an end to communism. -
Hollywood 10
The Hollywood 10 was a group of motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who stood before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October of 1947, and refused to answer any questions regarding any possible association between them and the communists. Shortly after, the Hollywood blacklist was created to deny employment to any persons accused of having affiliations with Communist.They then received jail sentences and were banned from working for any major Hollywood studios. -
The Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was a system similar to the Marshall plan, but created by the Soviet Union in 1947, which stated in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe, they must be politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. The plan was a system to try to create an economic alliance with socialist countries. This plan allowed European countries to stop relying on America for relief and aid. -
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 ,Soviet Union tried to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the U.S. to travel to their sectors of Berlin. Eventually, the western powers instituted an airlift that lasted nearly a year and delivered aid/supplies and relief to West Berlin. The blockade was known as the first major clash of the Cold War and future conflict over the city of Berlin was to be seen. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was known as a European Recovery Program. Established in April of 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed a bill granting 5 billion dollars in aid to 16 European nations. The goal of the U.S. was to rebuild post war regions, remove trade barriers, make Europe strong/powerful yet once more, and prevent further spread of Communism. -
Alger Hiss Case
The Alger Hiss Case of 1948 consisted of a man named Alger Hiss, an American Government Official, was convicted of being a Soviet Spy. It caused people to become fearful of the world. Hiss went to trial two times, and was charged with perjury two times. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Airlift continued from June 1948 through May 1949. After the blockade, Americans created an airlift that was supposed aid as the Soviets refused to lift the blockade. For over a year, hundreds of American, British and French cargo planes flew supplies from W. Europe to the American,British, and French airfields in W. Berlin. At the beginning, planes delivered near 5,000 tons of supplies to W. Berlin every day, it had increased to about 8,000 tons of supplies per day. -
Soviet Bomb Test
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first ever atomic bomb. This caused many Americans to question their own safety of everyday life and within their economy/government. President Harry S. Truman responded by redefine the United States position in the world, and called for the United States to build up its conventional and nuclear weapons to destroy the spread of Soviet influence around the world. -
NATO
NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was signed in April of 1949, and was an expectation of no further Communist expansion. It prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival organization, known as the the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. -
Korean War
The Korean War was the war between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on June 25,1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. Shortly after, the U.N. and the U.S. came to the aid of of South Korea, while China came to the aid of North Korea. President Harry S. Truman's plan was to go in and break down the attack while restoring peace throughout the area. -
Rosenburg Trial
In March of 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, were convicted of espionage prosecution of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. The trial lasted nearly a month, finally ending on April 4 with convictions for all the defendants. The Rosenburgs were sentenced to death row on April 6th. -
Geneva Conference
The Geneva Conference was a conference between many nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland from April 26 through July 20, 1954. It was supposed to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War. The outcome were the Geneva Accords, which arranged a settlement that brought an end to the First Indochina War, the agreement was reached at the end of the Geneva Conference. A ceasefire was signed and France agreed to withdraw its troops from the region. -
Battle at Dien Bien Phu
The Battle at Dien Bien Phu began on March 12, 1954- May 7, 1954. The Viet Minh army, moved against Dien Bien Phu and encircled it with 40,000 Communist troops and heavy artillery.The first assault against the French troops came on March 12, despite massive air support, the French only held 2 square miles by late April. On May 7, after 57 days of siege, the French collapsed.The U.S. soon stepped up, and gave military aid to S. Vietnam, sending the first U.S. military advisers to the country. -
Army-McCarthy Hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations. The hearings lasted from April 1954 through June 1954, to investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy had turned his investigations to army security and accused the army of having soft relations with communism but the army in turn charged him with using improper accusations and evidence. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact of 1955 is the name given to the collective defensive treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, which was signed in Poland and was officially called 'The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance'. The pact was later then dissolved in July 1991. -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 began in October of 1956; the people of Hungary rebelled against the oppression/rule of The Soviet Union. The rebellion almost succeeded but the Soviet Union, forcefully shut them down and re-established its control and the revolution was gone as quickly as it had started. -
U2 Incident
The U-2 Incident occurred in May 1960 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot. Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, President Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. The Soviets convicted powers of espionage charges and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. -
Bay Of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency. The invasion occurred on April 17, 1961. Around 1,200 exiles, armed with American weapons and using American crafts, wait ashore at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The initial plan immediately fell apart and the landing force met with the Cuban air force, and they sank most of the exiles supply ships, the U.S. did not provide any necessary air support,and the expected uprising never happened. -
Berlin Wall
On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of East Germany began to build a barbed wire and concrete wall between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western fascists from entering East Germany. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought a 13-day political and military standoff in October of 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, near U.S. shores. On October 22, 1962, President John Kennedy notified Americans about the missiles, explained his decision the naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was ready to use military force if necessary to clear perceived threat to national security. -
Assassination Of Diem
President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother were captured and killed by a group of soldiers in November of 1963. The death of Diem caused celebration among many people in South Vietnam, but also lead to political chaos in the nation. The United States subsequently became more heavily involved in Vietnam as it tried to stabilize the South Vietnamese government and beat back the communist rule. -
Assassination of JFK
The assassination of JFK occurred on November 22, 1963, as he rode through the downtown streets of Dallas, Texas, he was blindly shot dead. The alleged shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of a nearby building and fatally wounded President Kennedy and seriously scaring Mrs.Kennedy. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder was the name given to America's sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was started in an effort to demoralize the North Vietnamese people and to undermine the capacity of the government in North Vietnam to govern. The plan was carried out from March 2, 1965 through November 1, 1968. -
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt of rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and was to encourage the United States to bring back its involvement in the Vietnam War. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the attacks, the battle lasted for a long period, occurring from January 30, 1968 through September 23, 1968. -
Assassination Of MLK
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. occurred on April 4, 1968. Dr.King and his friend, the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, were staying at the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. The next night, King, having had a meeting with Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, stepped out onto the second floor balcony and was shot by a sniper. The single bullet shattered his jaw, broke his neck and severed his jugular vein. Abernathy raised the alarm and King was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead soon after. -
Assassination Of RFK
On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.His murder was unknown, however in 1969, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan an immigrant from Palestine, was convicted of Kennedy’s murder and sentenced to death. -
Election of Nixon
November 5, 1968, President Richard Nixon is elected as the new president. Nixon improved the United States relations with the Soviet Union, he called it Detente. He explained his reasoning as lessening the power of nuclear war. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
On August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union led their Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague. It was a joint invasion including the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany and Poland. There were some long-term consequences after the invasion, the Soviet leadership justified the use of force in Prague under what would become known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. -
Riots of Democratic Convention
Convention Riots began in 1968, the primary cause of the demonstrations and the violent, repeated riots during the 1968 Chicago convention was opposition to the Vietnam War. Also, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., many riots broke out due to civil rights movements. -
Kent State
In May 1970, students in Ohio protest the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces and the Ohio National Guardsmen on the Kent State University campus. The guardsmen shot and killed four students, the Kent State Shootings became the focal point of a nation deeply divided by the Vietnam War. -
Nixon Visits China
United States, President Richard Nixon visits China in 1972 , it was an important strategic and diplomatic overture of the Nixon administration's approach between the United States and China. The seven-day official visit to three Chinese cities was the first time a U.S. president had visited the Republic of China. Nixon's arrival in Beijing ended 25 years of no communication, diplomatic ties, between the two countries and was the key step in normalizing relations between the U.S. and China. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
On January 15, 1973,Unites States President Richard Nixon ordered a ceasefire of the aerial bombings in North Vietnam. The decision came after Dr. Henry Kissinger, the National Security Affairs advisor of the president, returned to Washington from Paris, France with a draft of a peace proposal. The ceasefire went into affect and and Vietnamese villages took back their cities and towns from communists rule. -
Fall of Saigon
On April 30, 1975, the Communist North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong forces captured the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, they ended up forcing South Vietnam to surrender and bringing an end to the Vietnam War and cause the Saigon to be dismissed. -
Reagan Elected
The United States Presidential Election of 1980 ended in President Ronald Reagan being elected as the new president. His main goal was to completely rid communism forever. This election marked the beginning of what is called the "Reagan Revolution" , and signified a conservative realignment in national politics. -
SDI Announced
The strategic defensive initiative was announced as a concept and was first announced publicly by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983. It was a proposed defensive shield to shoot down enemy missiles. The program was very expensive but it kept the U.S.s' safety under control. -
Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
The Geneva Conference of 1985 was a Cold War era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on November 19 and 20, 1985, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders met for the first time to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race. -
'Tear Down This Wall' Speech
In June of 1987, Reagan travels to the Berlin Wall, stands in front and states ,"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" -
Fall of The Berlin Wall
Shortly after Reagans speech,in 1989 people from all nations were free to enter and leave throughout, blockades were taken down. Many civillians came out and begun to tear the wall down with their hands and hammers to resemblance their new sense of freedom.
