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The Allies were gradually gaining the upper hand and began to look towards victory. The USSR, the United States, and the United Kingdom began a series of meetings to prepare for the post-war period. The three agreed to divide and occupy Germany after its defeat.
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Churchill and Stalin agreed that Greece should come under British influence. But just a few days later, as Greece was liberated, the Greek Communist Party, which had played a major role in the resistance, found itself in a position of strength, which did not sit well with the British. The British then intervened militarily to restore a royalist government, triggering a civil war.
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The US announced its intention to establish international institutions to pacify the world, stabilize the global economy, and increase its influence.
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The heads of government of the US (President Roosevelt), the UK (Prime Minister Churchill), and the USSR (General Stalin) met to discuss the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe.
These three states, along with China and France, played a major role, becoming the five permanent members of the Security Council. The US formalized the creation of the UN, and also obtained a commitment from the USSR to attack Japan within three months of the German defeat. -
The German Instrument of Surrender was a legal document effecting the unconditional surrender of the remaining German armed forces to the Allies, and ended World War II in Europe. Germany surrendered unconditionally in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945. Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) was proclaimed on May 8, 1945, amid celebrations in Washington, London, Moscow, and Paris.
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Soviet forces encircled Berlin, the German capital on April 25, 1945. That same day, Soviet forces linked up with their American counterparts attacking from the west in central Germany (Torgau). After heavy fighting, Soviet forces neared Adolf Hitler’s command bunker in central Berlin. On April 30, 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Within days, Berlin fell to the Soviets.
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San Francisco Conference, formally United Nations Conference on International Organization, international meeting that established the United Nations. The basic principles of a worldwide organization that would embrace the political objectives of the Allies had been proposed at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 and reaffirmed at the Yalta Conference in early 1945. The conference initially brought together 51 countries.
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This conference was held to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace. Germany, Berlin, Austria, and Vienna were officially divided into four occupation zones. First signs of dissension among the powers were clear as they were unable to agree on how the country should be administered, or whether Germany should pay war reparations. The conferees did not attempt to write peace treaties. Each nation was concerned with its own self-interest, and Churchill was suspicious of Stalin.
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From 1868 onward, Hiroshima was a military centre which made it a potential target for Allied bombing during World War II. It became the first city in the world to be struck by an atomic bomb, dropped by a B-29 bomber of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Most of the city was destroyed. The estimates of the number of people killed outright or shortly after the bombing ranged upward from 70,000. Deaths and illnesses from radiation injury continued through the succeeding decades.
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In the early 20th century the city became a major shipbuilding centre; it was this industry that led to Nagasaki’s being chosen as a target by the US. While the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the USSR kept its promise and began a military invasion of Manchuria, southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. The US negotiated and obtained a temporary division of Korea at the 38th parallel to occupy the country's south.
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Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on 26 July 1945—the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction." The US and the USSR became the world's two superpowers, while Europe was ravaged. Weakened France and the United Kingdom concentrated their efforts on regaining control of their colonies around the world.
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The speech was delivered by Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, in which he stressed the necessity for the US and Britain to act as the guardians of peace and stability against the menace of Soviet communism, which had lowered an “iron curtain” across Europe. Churchill used this term to refer to the political, military, and ideological barrier created by the USSR following WW II to prevent open contact between the Communist camp and the Western camp.
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On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe.
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The National Security Act of 1947 established CIA as an independent, civilian intelligence agency within the executive branch. The Act charged CIA with coordinating the Nation's intelligence activities and, among other duties, collecting, evaluating, and disseminating intelligence affecting national security.
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Cominform, formally Communist Information Bureau, or Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, Russian Informatsionnoye Byuro Kommunisticheskikh I Rabochikh Party, was an agency of international communism founded under Soviet auspices in 1947 and dissolved by Soviet initiative in 1956.
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(1948-1949) American airlift of supplies sustained West Berlin during the Soviet blockade.
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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. -
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Mao Zedong and the Communist Party proclaimed the People's Republic of China. -
On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union secretly conducted its first successful weapon test (First Lightning, based on the American "Fat Man" design) at the Semipalatinsk-21 in Kazakhstan. Stalin alongside Soviet political officials and scientists were elated at the successful test. -
This war demonstrated a new American policy to "contain" communism. The Korean War was a conflict between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in which at least 2.5 million persons lost their lives. -
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Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. -
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Joseph Stalin, the second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at his Kuntsevo Dacha after suffering a stroke, at age 74. He was given a state funeral in Moscow on 9 March, with four days of national mourning declared. His death opened a new era in the Soviet and East European history. -
On May 7, 1954, the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam fell after a four-month siege led by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh. After the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the French pulled out of the region. -
The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance concluded after three days of discussions in Warsaw created a belated eastern military counterpart to the western powers’ North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In particular, it was a reaction to West Germany becoming an independent nation and joining NATO. The Soviet Union’s delegation to Warsaw was led by the premier, Nikolai Bulganin, with foreign minister Molotov and two formidable military men in Marshals Zhukov and Koniev. -
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Suez Crisis, (1956) was an international crisis in the Middle East, precipitated on July 26, 1956, when the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. The canal had been owned by the Suez Canal Company, which was controlled by French and British interests. -
Europe's Common Market founded in major step toward economic unity. On March 25, 1957, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg sign a treaty in Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), also known as the Common Market. -
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. -
Fifth Republic, system of government in France from 1958. Under the constitution crafted by Charles de Gaulle with the help of Michel Debré, executive power was increased at the expense of the National Assembly. -
Great Leap Forward, in Chinese history, was the campaign undertaken by the Chinese communists between 1958 and early 1960 to organize its vast population, especially in large-scale rural communes, to meet China’s industrial and agricultural problems. The Chinese hoped to develop labour-intensive methods of industrialization, which would emphasize manpower rather than machines and capital expenditure. This program led to a deadly famine. -
Cuban Revolution was an armed uprising in Cuba that overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista on January 1, 1959. The revolution’s leader, Fidel Castro, went on to rule Cuba from 1959 to 2008. -
On April 12, 1961, Gagarin was launched into orbit by a Vostok rocket and became the first man in space. After completing one orbit, the spacecraft's automatic controls brought him safely back to Earth. -
Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government of the GDR on 13 August 1961. It included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. -
In 1962 the Soviet Union began to secretly install missiles in Cuba to launch attacks on U.S. cities. The confrontation that followed, known as the Cuban missile crisis, brought the two superpowers to the brink of war before an agreement was reached to withdraw the missiles. -
War for Algerian independence from France. The movement for independence began during World War I (1914–18) and gained momentum after French promises of greater self-rule in Algeria went unfulfilled after World War II (1939–45). In 1954 the National Liberation Front (FLN) began a guerrilla war against France and sought diplomatic recognition at the UN to establish a sovereign Algerian state. -
On August 5, 1963, after more than eight years of difficult negotiations, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
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The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. It created disruptions all throughout China. -
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Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, and Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon's surface six hours on July 21. -
It was a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. Called the “American War” in Vietnam, the war was also part of a larger regional conflict and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States, and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. It ended with the communists' victory. -
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