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World War II Ends and the Cold War Begins
World War 2 ended with the total surrender of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan). On May 8, 1945, the Allies (United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union) accepted Germany's surrender, about a week after Adolf Hitler had committed suicide. Two years later, the two world powers, United States and the U.S.S.R., brought tension bringing the start of the Cold War. -
Winston Churchill delivers the Iron Curtain Speech
The importance of Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech is that it announced the beginning of the Cold War. However, Churchill also used it as a platform to deliver his hope that the United States and Great Britain could work more closely together to police a post-war world. -
US and Britain break the Soviet blockade of West Berlin with the Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the United States to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lays within Russian-occupied East Germany. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization is formed
The odds of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). -
Korean War
The Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of South Korea. China came to the aid of North Korea, and the Soviet Union gave some assistance. -
Vietnam War Begins
The anti-Communist government of South Vietnam resisted this and fought the North Vietnamese army with the help of the U.S. The U.S.'s involvement in this Cold War era conflict was part of the U.S.'s larger goal of preventing the spread of Communism. -
Warsaw Pact is formed
This pact was the Communist counteraction to NATO. The Warsaw Pact came to be seen as quite a potential warlike threat, as a sign of Communist dominance, and a definite opponent to American capitalism. The signing of the pact became a symbol of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. -
US is defeated and humiliated at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba
1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a mishandled invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. The attack was a total failure. Fidel Castro had been a concern to U.S. policymakers since he seized power in Cuba with a revolution in January 1959. -
Berlin Wall is Built
The Berlin Wall was created by the communist government of East Germany in an effort to stem the tide of refugees attempting to leave East Berlin and dividing it with West Berlin. The construction of the wall caused a short-term crisis in U.S.-Soviet bloc relations, and the wall itself came to symbolize the Cold War. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis happened when the Soviet Union began building missile sites in Cuba in 1962. Together with the Berlin Blockade, this crisis is seen as one of the most important confrontations of the Cold War. It may have been the moment when the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war -
Vietnam War is over
President Nixon pulled out American troops from South Vietnam, but the impact of the war was dealt with. American's reexamined the power of the presidency, the struggle against communism, and America's overall role in the world. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
As the Cold War began to soften across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. It was then announced at midnight that day that the citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. -
Germany is reunited
With the continuous fading of Soviet power in the late 1980s, the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its hold on power. The German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, and five new Federal States on its former territory joined the Federal Republic of Germany. East and West Berlin were reunited, and then joined the Federal Republic as a full-fledged Federal City-State. -
Soviet Union Collapses (Establishment of the Russian Federation)
The Soviet Union has collapsed as the flag lowered for the last time. Later on, it was replaced by Russian tricolor. Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.
