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Conference at the end of the war in Europe between the U.S., Russia, and U.K. Discussion of post-war Germany. Stalin promises free elections in Europe. The conference was specifically meant to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. -
The United States becomes the first nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when an atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited the Cold War. -
The speech helped support American and Western European opposition to communism and the Soviet Union. In his speech, Churchill went on to argue that strong American-British relations were essential to stopping the spread of communism and maintaining peace in Europe. -
Hollywood blacklist, a list of media workers ineligible for employment because of alleged communist or subversive ties, generated by Hollywood studios. The Hollywood Ten paid a high price for their actions at the HUAC hearings. They were cited for contempt of Congress. Facing trial on that charge in April 1948, each man was found guilty and sentenced to spend a year in prison and pay a $1,000 fine. -
The Long Telegram circulated widely in Truman's administration. It gave rise to the policy of containment—keeping communism within its present territory through the use of diplomatic, economic, and military actions. The goal of George F. Kennan's containment policy was to withdraw all the U.S. forces from Europe. -
The Truman Doctrine is an American foreign policy, it helped to prevent the spread of communism into weaker European countries and therefore upheld the policy of containment. -
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned with the Soviet Union. -
The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. -
Berlin blockade, an international crisis that arose from an attempt by the Soviet Union. It forced the Western Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin. -
The crisis started on June 24, 1948, when Soviet forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to Allied-controlled areas of Berlin. It was to force the Western Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin. -
An intergovernmental military alliance between 28 European countries and 2 North American countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty. The Soviets decided to seal all land routes going into West Berlin. Stalin gambled that the Western powers were not willing to risk another war to protect half of Berlin. On 26 June 1948, Western allies started a massive airlift to counter the Berlin blockade imposed by the Soviet regime. -
On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, code-named 'RDS-1', at the Semipalatinsk test site in modern-day Kazakhstan. The device had a yield of 22 kilotons. Realizing that the nuclear monopoly was over and that this could quickly spiral into an expensive and dangerous arms race, the US reacted to the news of a Soviet bomb by putting together a plan to offer to turn over all weapons to the UN. This offer was rejected by the USSR, and an arms race ensued. -
The Chinese Communist Revolution, known in mainland China as the War of Liberation, was the conflict, led by the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao Zedong, that resulted in the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, on October 1st, 1949. Peasants were given land but then Mao moved people from their small villages and individual farms into communes of thousands of people on thousands of acres. -
Alger Hiss, a former U.S. State Department official who was convicted in January 1950 of perjury concerning his dealings with Whittaker Chambers, accused him of membership in a communist espionage ring. -
Korean War, the 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. The war reached international proportions when North Korea, supplied and advised by the Soviet Union, invaded the South. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal participant, joined the war on the side of the South Koreans, and the People’s Republic of China came to North Korea’s aid. -
Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs were a married couple who were members of the American Communist Party. Julius was fired from his job because of his involvement with the party and was arrested for suspicious activity. His wife was also arrested. They were both sentenced to death. They were the first American civilians to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage and the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime. -
The armistice was designed to “ensure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” China normalized relations and signed a peace treaty with South Korea in 1992. -
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, fought from March 13 to May 7, 1954, was a decisive Vietnamese military victory that brought an end to French colonial rule in Vietnam. In its wake came the separation of the country into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, creating the political framework for continued conflict and, ultimately, the Vietnam War. -
The Army-McCarthy hearings dominated national television. A subcommittee of the Senate Committee was seeking to learn whether Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had used improper influence to win preferential treatment for Pvt. G. McCarthy countercharged that the army was trying to derail his demeaning investigations of army security practices through blackmail and intimidation. The word McCarthyism became synonymous with practice of publicizing accusations of treason and disloyalty with poor evidence. -
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty established by the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. It was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 and represented a Soviet counterweight to NATO. The Warsaw Pact provided for a unified military command and the systematic ability to strengthen the Soviet hold over the other participating countries. -
A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. The problems in Hungary began in October 1956, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. -
An international diplomatic crisis erupted in May 1960 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) 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 Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. -
The Bay of Pigs invasion was an abortive invasion of Cuba in April 1961 by some 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro. the Cuban-exile invasion force, known as Brigade 2506, landed at beaches along the Bay of Pigs and immediately came under heavy fire. Cuban planes strafed the invaders, sank two escort ships, and destroyed half of the exile's air support. -
The Berlin Wall was built by the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin, which was controlled by the major Western Allies. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the first step towards German reunification. -
Leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. -
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas during a campaign visit. The driver of the president’s Lincoln limousine, with its top off, raced to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital, but after being shot in the neck and head, Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. He was 46 years old. A generation of Americans would forever remember when they heard about the president’s assassination, as it would have a profound political and cultural impact on the nation. -
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 to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Despite the initial support for the resolution, it became increasingly controversial as Johnson used it to increase U.S. commitment to the war in Vietnam. Repealing the resolution was meant as an attempt to limit presidential war powers. -
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 to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. -
During the evening of August 28, 1968, with the police riot in full swing on Michigan Avenue in front of the Democratic party's convention headquarters, the Conrad Hilton hotel, television networks broadcast live as the anti-war protesters began the now-iconic chant "The whole world is watching". -
Four Kent State University students were killed and nine were injured on May 4, 1970, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War. Some political observers believe the events of that day in northeast Ohio tilted public opinion against the war and may have contributed to the downfall of President Richard Nixon. -
All parties to the conflict, including South Vietnam, signed the final agreement in Paris on January 27. As it turned out, only America honored the cease-fire. When the cease-fire went into effect, Saigon controlled about 75 percent of South Vietnam's territory and 85 percent of the population. A little over 2 years later, 30 North Vietnamese divisions conquered the South and restored peace in Vietnam. -
The phrase 'the fall of Saigon' refers to the takeover of the city by the Viet Cong two years later on 30 April 1975. The US was forced to abandon its embassy in the city and evacuate more than 7,000 US citizens and South Vietnamese by helicopter. The takeover forced the South Vietnamese to surrender and end the war. -
The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter in a landslide victory. -
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), proposed U.S. strategic defensive system against potential nuclear attacks—as originally conceived, from the Soviet Union. The SDI was first proposed by President Ronald Reagan in a nationwide television address on March 23, 1983. The SDI was intended to defend the United States from attack from Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles by intercepting the missiles at various phases of their flight. -
"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall", also known as the Berlin Wall Speech, was a speech delivered by United States President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin. Reagan's stark challenge to tear down the Berlin Wall gave shape to increasing international pressure on Moscow to make good on its promises of openness and reform. The wall, which had become a symbol of Soviet oppression, came down two years later, on November 9, 1989. -
It was on 9 November 1989, five days after half a million people gathered in East Berlin in a mass protest, that the Berlin Wall dividing communist East Germany from West Germany crumbled. East German leaders had tried to calm mounting protests by loosening the borders, making travel easier for East Germans. They had not intended to open the border up completely. The changes were meant to be fairly minor - but the way they were delivered had major consequences.