-
Gouzenko Affair
Igor Gouzenko was a clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa. He defected in September 1945, with 109 documents on Soviet espionage activities in the West. Gouzenko exposed Joseph Stalin's efforts to steal nuclear secrets, and the technique of planting spies. The "Gouzenko Affair" is often credited as a triggering event of the Cold War. -
Formation of the United Nations
The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization established to promote international cooperations. It replaced the League of Nations and the organization was created following WWII to prevent another conflict.
The goals of the United Nations are:
to keep world peace
to help countries get along
to help countries get along
to improve living conditions for people all over the world
to make the world a better place. -
Formation of NATO
the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. The alignment of nearly every European nation into one of the two opposing camps formalized the political division of the European continent that had taken place since World War II. -
The use of the Atomic Bomb
In August 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. It came as a great shock to the United States because they were not expecting the Soviet Union to possess nuclear weapon knowledge so soon. The impact that the possession of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union had upon the United States was that it caused Americans to question their own safety. -
Korean War
The Korean War begun when soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the boundary bewtween the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the North and the Pro-Western Republic of Korea to the South. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War -
Formation of the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defence treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the regional economic organization for the communist States of Central and Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was in part a Soviet military reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam war was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies. The ended with the withdrawl of U.S forces in 1973 and the unification of Vietnam inder Communist control 2 years later -
Suez Crisis
Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after the egyptian president nationalized the canal initializing the Suez Crisis. The Isaelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the soviet union into the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States. In the end, the British, French and Israeli governments withdrew their troops. -
Formation of NORAD
On August 1st, 1957 an agreement was announced that a new organization was to be formed between Canada and the United States to be known as NORAD or the North American Air Defence Agreement. -
The cancellation of the Avro Arrow
Avro Arrow, an advanced, supersonic, jet aircraft developed by A.V. Roe of Canada from 1949 until the government's controversial cancellation of the project. Encouraged by A.V. Roe's success in developing the Avro CF-100 Canuck and recognizing the need for an aircraft to counter the threat of Soviet bombers over the demanding Canadian North, enthusiastic RCAF officers, defence scientists and defence-industry officials had persuaded the Liberal government by December 1953 to authorize two prototy -
Cuban Missile Crisis
leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a 13-day political and military standoff over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. -
SALT Treaty
a series of treaties were issued under the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty to curtail the build up of nuclear weapons. SALT I was the first of the Strategic Arms Limitation talks between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. The two treaties signed that day were the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. -
Strategic Defence Initiative
Strategic Defence Initiative was a program first initiated under President Ronald Reagan. The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Communist government of the German Democratic Republic built a barbed wire and concrete wall between East and West Berlin. The purpose of this wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War. -
Break up of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union separated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.
