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Potsdam Conference
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. Split Germany into 4 sections. -
Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech
Iron Curtain Speech. Winston Churchill's "Sinews of Peace" address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College, used the term "iron curtain" in the context of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe. Split Communist and American communities. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy to stop Soviet imperialism during the Cold War. It was announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. -
Berlin Blockade and Airlift
The Berlin Blockade (1 April 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. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutschmark from West Berlin. -
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 $13 billion (approximately $130 billion in current dollar value as of August 2015) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War 2. -
NATO Formed
The Treaty of Brussels, signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom, is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. The treaty and the Soviet Berlin Blockade led to the creation of the Western European Union's Defence Organization in September 1948.[11] However, participation of the United States was thought necessary both to counter the military power of the USSR and to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism, so talks for a new mili -
West Germany Formed
West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG, in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States of America fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. The war arose from the division of Korea at the end of World War II and from the global tensions of the Cold War that developed immediately afterwards. -
Geneva Accords
On Indochina, the conference produced a set of documents known as the Geneva Accords. These agreements temporarily separated Vietnam into two zones, a northern zone to be governed by the Việt Minh, and a southern zone to be governed by the State of Vietnam, then headed by former emperor Bảo Đại. -
Warsaw Pact Formed
The Warsaw Pact (formally, the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, sometimes, informally WarPac, akin in format to NATO) was a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War, led by the USSR. -
Republic of South Vietnam Fomed - U.S. pledges aid
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam was a state governing the southern half of Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. It received international recognition in 1949 as the "State of Vietnam" (1949–55), and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" (1955–75). Its capital was Saigon. The term "South Vietnam" became common usage in 1954, when the Geneva Conference provisionally partitioned Vietnam into communist and non-communist parts. -
Sputnik Launched
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm (23 in) diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. It was visible all around the Earth and its radio pulses were detectable. This surprise 1957 success created the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race, a part of the larger Cold War. -
U-2 Incident
The 1960 U-2 incident happened 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 from Soviet airspace. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion, was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. A counter-revolutionary military, trained and funded by the United States government's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. -
Construction of Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. 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 it was opened in November 1989.[ -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, was a 13-day (October 16–28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in Cuba. It played out on television worldwide and was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
First U.S. Troops to Arrive in Vietnam
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and also known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. -
First Man on the Moon
Apollo 11's mission was to land two men on the moon. They also had to come back to Earth safely. Apollo 11 blasted off on July 16, 1969. Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins were the astronauts on Apollo 11. -
SALT Treaty
Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the ABM Treaty and interim SALT agreement on May 26, 1972, in Moscow. For the first time during the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union had agreed to limit the number of nuclear missiles in their arsenals. -
Paris Peace Accords - Vietnam War
The Paris Peace Accords of January 27, 1973 intended to establish peace in Vietnam and an end to the Vietnam War. It ended direct U.S. military combat, and temporarily stopped the fighting between North and South Vietnam. -
Soviet Troops Invade Afghanistan
At the end of December 1979, the Soviet Union sent thousands of troops into Afghanistan and immediately assumed complete military and political control of Kabul and large portions of the country. This event began a brutal, decade-long attempt by Moscow to subdue the Afghan civil war and maintain a friendly and socialist government on its border. It was a watershed event of the Cold War, marking the only time the Soviet Union invaded a country outside the Eastern Bloc -
Olympic Boycott by U.S.A. and Allies
The 1980 Summer Olympics boycott of the Moscow Olympics was one part of a number of actions initiated by the United States to protest the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union and other countries would later support the 1984 Summer Olympics boycott. -
Olympic Boycott by USSR and Allies
The boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles was a follow-up to the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The boycott involved 14 Eastern Bloc countries and allies, led by the Soviet Union, which initiated the boycott on May 8, 1984. -
Gorbachev announces Glasnost and Perestroika
When Mikhail S. Gorbachev (1931-) became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, he launched his nation on a dramatic new course. His dual program of “perestroika” (“restructuring”) and “glasnost” (“openness”) introduced profound changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations. Within five years, Gorbachev’s revolutionary program swept communist governments throughout Eastern Europe from power and brought an end to the Cold War. -
Tiananmen Square Protests
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, were student-led popular demonstrations in Beijing which took place in the spring of 1989 and received broad support from city residents, exposing deep splits within China's political leadership. The protests were forcibly suppressed by hardline leaders who ordered the military to enforce martial law in the country's capital. -
Poland Becomes a Democracy
In 1989–1991, Poland engaged in a democratic transition which put an end to the People's Republic of Poland and led to a democratic regime, called the Polish Third Republic. After ten years of democratic consolidation, Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. -
Fall Of Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. -
Malta Summit
The Malta Summit comprised a meeting between U.S. President George H. W. Bush and U.S.S.R. leader Mikhail Gorbachev, taking place between December 2-3, 1989, just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was their second meeting following a meeting that included then President Ronald Reagan, in New York in December 1988. During the summit, Bush and Gorbachev would declare an end to the Cold War, although whether it was truly such is a matter of debate. -
German Reunification
The German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic (GDR/East Germany) joined the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG/West Germany) to form the reunited nation of Germany, and when Berlin reunited into a single city. The end of the unification process is officially referred to as German unity, celebrated on 3 October. -
Warsaw Pact Dissolved
On 25 February 1991, the Pact was declared at an end at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers from the remaining member states meeting in Hungary. On 1 July 1991, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally declared an end to the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance which had been established in 1955. The USSR itself was dissolved in December 1991. -
START Talks
START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994. The treaty barred its signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads atop a total of 1,600 inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers. -
Start Treaty Signed
START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994. -
Russia Recognizes the End of the Soviet Union
On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the remaining twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation (formerly the Russian SFSR) assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and is recognized as its continued legal personality.
