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Yalta Conference
The Big Three (President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Joseph Stalin) met to discuss plans for the occupation of Germany, the status of Poland, and the creation of the United Nations. Stalin also agreed to attack Japan. -
United Nations Established
The U.N. was created to prevent another great-power war. It encouraged cooperation and peace among the nations. It consisted of a Security Council, which was the US, Britain, the USSR, France and China, and a General Assembly which was controlled by smaller countries. -
Truman Doctrine
Spurred by the earlier “containment doctrine”, Truman declared that it must be the policy of the United States to help any country fighting communist aggression. The Doctrine aided Greece and Turkey who were resisting communists pressures. -
Marshall Plan
Secretary of State George C. Marshall asked the Europeans to work out a joint plan for their economic recovery and if they did so then the U.S. would provide substantial financial help. The agreement was offered to the Soviets but they refused. The plan was a huge success and Europe’s economy flourished. -
National Security Act
The National Security Act created the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency. It laid the foundation for foreign policy making during the Cold War. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established
Truman saw that democratic and communist countries were beginning to fight and called for a defense alliance of nations. Twelve countries signed originally and pledged to regard an attack on one as an attack on all. -
First Soviet Atomic Bomb
The Soviets exploded this bomb three years earlier than the U.S. expected. This was a huge threat because now they needed to come up with a new way to keep the Soviets in line since their first was a one-sided nuclear attack. -
NSC-68
The memorandum did not start off with very much support from the public but with the start of the Korean War there was enough support for Truman to finally sign it into policy. It called for the U.S. to rapidly expand it’s military and its nuclear arsenal. The $50 billion dollars that can from the memorandum also helped develop the H-Bomb. -
Beginning of Korean War
Korea was divided by the thirty-eighth parallel with the Soviets accepting a surrender in the North and the U.S. accepting one in the south. There were hostilities between the sides and in June 1950 the North Korean army invaded the south. Due to the Soviets’ absence at the U.N. Security Council, the council decided that North Korea was the aggressor and Truman ordered a massive military buildup, as called for by NSC-68, sent to support South Korea. -
Policy of Boldness
Eisenhower decided to focus on building up the Strategic Air Command’s air fleet rather that the army. He equipped the super bombers with nuclear bombs for retaliation in the event of Soviet or Chinese hostilities. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
This battle was a nationalist movement to remove French colonial rule from Vietnam. The weaknesses of the policy of boldness was shown here as well and the Nationalists were victorious over the French. Vietnam was then divided on the seventeenth parallel with Ho Chi Minh ruling the north and Ngo Dinh Diem ruling the south. -
Suez Crisis
The Egyptian President Nasser seized the Suez Canal and nationalized it. This angered the Israelis and joined by the French and British troops they pushed toward the canal. The Soviets supported Egypt and they almost got involved in the crisis. Eisenhower was angry with the British for their failure to inform the US about their intentions. He then threatened the three countries with economic sanctions if they persisted in their attack. -
Federal Highway Act
The Act allocates $27 billion to build forty-two thousand miles of interstate highways. The benefits of this to the country were that it made it easier for troops to mobilize anywhere in the country in the event of a Soviet invasion. This also contributed to the suburbanization of America. -
Sputnik
Sputnik was a Soviet satellite launched into space to prove that communism produces superior industrial products. It rattled American self-confidence and in response Eisenhower established NASA. To improve education on science and engineering, Congress also passed the National Defense Education Act. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The invasion was Kennedy’s attempt to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuban. The plan was to invade Cuban with 1,400 of its own anti-communist exiles but it failed rather quickly. Castro caught on to the plan and his troops caused the invaders to surrender in under 24 hours. -
Construction of the Berlin Wall
The Soviets began constructing the wall to stop the heavy population drain from East to West Germany through Berlin. It was made out of concrete and barbed wire and to the outside world it was a wall of shame that symbolized the division of Europe after WWll. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the crisis, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in a 13-day standoff over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba. The standoff ended when the Soviet leader agreed to remove the missiles if the U.S. agreed to not invade Cuba. The U.S also secretly removed missiles pointed at the Soviets from Turkey. -
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
JFK and his wife, Jacqueline, were in a motorcade through downtown Dallas when Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president from the sixth floor of a nearby building. Texas Governor John Connally was seriously injured by another shot as he was in the car too. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act banned racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public. It also banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The sexual clause included in it was a powerful instrument in the gender equality movement as well. -
Six-Day War
Egypt, Jordan, and Syria attacked Israel with the support of the Soviets. Israel fought back and, much to the world’s surprise, defeated its attackers. Israel then expanded in the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank of the Jordan River. -
Vietnamization
This was the first thing Nixon wanted to do after becoming president. To him there was a burning need to quiet the public over Vietnam. The plan was to gradually withdraw the 540,000 troops from South Vietnam over an extended period of time. It was from this that the Nixon Doctrine evolved. -
Watergate Scandal
Five men from the Republican Committee for the Re-election of the President were caught breaking into the Watergate hotel. They were installing cameras and other recording devices in the Democrats room. The “smoking gun” tape was ultimately what lead to Nixon being pressured to resign from the presidency. This damaged the public's trust and faith in the government substantially. -
War Powers Act
Congressional opposition to the expansion of presidential
war-making powers by Johnson and Nixon is what lead to the creation of act. Presidents now have to report to Congress within forty-eight hours about all commitments of U.S. troops to foreign conflicts. This manifested the feeling of “New Isolationism” and lead to new caution in foreign affairs. -
Iran Hostage Crisis
Iranian students took more then 60 Americans hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran in November of 1979. The immediate cause was that President Carter had allowed the Shah to come to the US for cancer treatment. The hostages were released on President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day after 444 days in captivity. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Communist regimes were quickly collapsing in Eastern Europe including East Germany. The Berlin Wall quickly came down and both sides of Germany were reunited in October 1990.
