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Stalin delivers a speech in Moscow that blames capitalism of the two world wars and says that capitalism and communism will never be in harmony.
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Harry S. Truman gave the policy of containment in a speech to a joint session of Congress and asked for $400 million in financial and military aid for Greece and Turkey.
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The USA made the Marshall Plan, a 13 billion dollars foreign aid package designed to help Europe recover from the devastation of World War II.
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Soviets impose the Berlin blockade, cutting off rail and road access to the capital city, which is located in the middle of the Soviet zone of eastern Germany.
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For 11 months, Under General Lucius Clay, the United States begins Operation Vittles—which brings necessary supplies into the Berlin by plane.
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American voters reelect Democrat Harry Truman to serve another term as president, surprisingly.
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A military alliance forms between the US, Great Britain, France, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Iceland, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
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A group of communist nations tries form.
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The former zones of British, French, and American occupation officially become the state of West Germany after the adoption of a new German constitution known as the Basic Law.
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This was the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
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The USSR tries out their newly built nuclear bomb, it is a success.
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Soviet leader Josef Stalin celebrates his 70th Birthday, and Chinese leader Mao Zedong visits Moscow to negotiate an alliance with the Soviet Union.
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Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong sign the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance, an agreement committing the two nations to 30 years of mutual defense.
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North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung goes to Moscow to ask Soviet leader Josef Stalin's permission to invade South Korea and begin the Korean War.
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President Harry Truman orders American forces to assist South Korea, which is being overrun by Communist North Korean troops.
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The Soviet Union starts the space age with the launch of Sputnik 1. Then in Sputnik 2 the first dog goes out into space.
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During the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, the USSR shot down an American spy plane.
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A force of some 1,500 American trained and supplied Cuban exiles landed on the island, and within two days all had been killed or captured.
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Germany is officially divided into the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
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The world stood on the brink as two superpowers risked nuclear war over the stationing of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba in what has been called the Cuban missile crisis.
