cold war timeline

By Jbobby
  • Alger Hiss case

    Alger Hiss case
    Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948[1] and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.
  • Russian Revolution

    Russian Revolution
    The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, and the old regime was replaced by a provisional government during the first revolution of February 1917 March in the Gregorian calendar; the older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time. In the second revolution that October
  • Geneva Conference

    Geneva Conference
    The Geneva Conference (April 26 – July 20, 1954) was a conference among several nations that took place in Geneva, Switzerland, in order to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina.
  • Potsdam Conference

    Potsdam Conference
    Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 17 July to 2 August 1945. (In some older documents it is also referred to as the Berlin Conference of the Three Heads of Government of the USSR, USA and UK
  • Atomic bomb - Hiroshima/Nagasaki

    Atomic bomb - Hiroshima/Nagasaki
    The United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, during the final stage of World War II.
  • Iron Curtain

    Iron Curtain
    The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. A term symbolizing the efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and non-Soviet-controlled areas.
  • Truman Doctrine

    Truman Doctrine
    The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947
  • Molotov Plan

    Molotov Plan
    The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. It can be seen to be the USSR's version of the Marshall Plan, which for political reasons the Eastern European countries would not be able to join without leaving the Soviet sphere of influence.
  • Hollywood 10

    Hollywood 10
    The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the practice of denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other American entertainment professionals during the mid-20th century because they were accused of having Communist ties or sympathies.
  • Marshall Plan

    Marshall Plan
    The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion[1] (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value as of June 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning April 8, 1948.
  • Berlin Blockade

    Berlin Blockade
    The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control.
  • NATO

    NATO
    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949.
  • Berlin Airlift

    Berlin Airlift
    The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany.
  • Soviet bomb test

    Soviet bomb test
    The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb (Russian: Создание советской атомной бомбы) was a top-secret research and development program begun during World War II in the wake of the Soviet Union's discovery of the American, British, and Canadian nuclear project
  • Korean War

    Korean War
    Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as a result of an agreement with the United States, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south.
  • Rosenburg trial

    Rosenburg trial
    The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union).
  • Battle of Dien Bien Phu

    Battle of Dien Bien Phu
    The Battle of Dien Bien Phu IPA: was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries.
  • Army-McCarthy hearings

    Army-McCarthy hearings
    The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations between April 1954 and June 1954. The hearings were held for the purpose of investigating conflicting accusations between the United States Army and Senator Joseph McCarthy
  • Warsaw Pact

    Warsaw Pact
    The Warsaw Pact, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance and sometimes, informally, WarPac.[1] was a collective defence treaty among the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
  • Hungarian Revolution

    Hungarian Revolution
    The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Hungarian Uprising was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956.
  • U2 Incident

    U2 Incident
    The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace.
  • Bay of Pigs invasion

    Bay of Pigs invasion
    On April 17, 1961, 1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
  • Berlin Wall

    Berlin Wall
    The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989.[1] Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989
  • Cuban Missile Crisis

    Cuban Missile Crisis
    The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the Caribbean Crisis or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day (October 16–28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba.
  • Assassination of Diem

    Assassination of Diem
    The brutal murder of the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his powerful brother and adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu, on November 2, 1963, was a major turning point in the war in Vietnam
  • Assassination of JFK

    Assassination of JFK
    On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was fatally shot in Dallas, Texas while riding in a motorcade in Dallas' Dealey Plaza, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time
  • Tonkin Gulf Resolution

    Tonkin Gulf Resolution
    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.
  • Operation Rolling Thunder

    Operation Rolling Thunder
    Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a gradual and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the U.S. 2nd Air Division U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from 2 March 1965 until 2 November 1968, during the Vietnam War.
  • Tet Offensive

    Tet Offensive
    The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies.
  • Assassination of MLK

    Assassination of MLK
    Martin Luther King Jr. was an American clergyman and civil rights leader who was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.
  • Riots of Democratic convention

    Riots of Democratic convention
    Other events preceding the 1968 Democratic convention contributed to the tense national mood. On April 4, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated and riots broke out throughout the country. This included Chicago, where Mayor Daley reportedly gave a "shoot to kill" instruction to police.
  • Assassination of RFK

    Assassination of RFK
    On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after winning the California presidential primaries in the 1968 election, and died the next day while hospitalized.
  • Invasion of Czechoslovakia

    Invasion of Czechoslovakia
    The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by four Warsaw Pact nations – the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland – on the night of 20–21 August 1968.
  • Election of Nixon

    Election of Nixon
    The United States presidential election of 1968 was the 46th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1968. The Republican nominee, former Vice President Richard Nixon, won the election over the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
  • Kent State

    Kent State
    The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre) was the shooting of unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, by members of the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Twenty-nine guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis
  • Nixon visits China

    Nixon visits China
    U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and China. It marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC, which at that time considered the U.S. one of its foes, and the visit ended 25 years of separation between the two sides.
  • Ceasefire in Vietnam

    Ceasefire in Vietnam
    A ceasefire (or truce), also called cease fire, is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be declared as part of a formal treaty, but they have also been called as part of an informal understanding between opposing forces.
  • Fall of Saigon

    Fall of Saigon
    The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, depending on context,[1][2] was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (also known as the Việt Cộng) on April 30, 1975
  • Reagan elected

    Reagan elected
    In 1966 he was elected Governor of California by a margin of a million votes; he was re-elected in 1970. Ronald Reagan won the Republican Presidential nomination in 1980 and chose as his running mate former Texas Congressman and United Nations Ambassador George Bush
  • SDI announced

    SDI announced
    The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons deployment platforms, was first publicly announced by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983
  • Geneva Conference with Gorbachev

    Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
    The Geneva Summit of 1985 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on November 19 and 20, 1985, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders met for the first time to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race.
  • Tear down this wall speech

    Tear down this wall speech
    "Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by US President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961.
  • Fall of Berlin Wall

    Fall of Berlin Wall
    Contrary to popular belief the Wall's actual demolition did not begin until the summer of 1990 and was not completed until 1992.[1] The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on 3 October 1990