Cold War World History

  • Iron curtain speech

    Iron curtain speech
    Sir Winston Churchill visited Westminster College as the Green Lecturer and delivered "Sinews of Peace," a message heard round the world that went down in history as the "Iron Curtain Speech." "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the continent.
  • Truman Doctrine

    Truman Doctrine
    With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.
  • Marshall plan

    Marshall plan
    The Marshall Plan was an American initiative passed in 1948 to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II.
  • Berlin Airlift

    Berlin Airlift
    Berlin Airlift begins. In response to the Soviet blockade of land routes into West Berlin, the United States begins a massive airlift of food, water, and medicine to the citizens of the besieged city. For nearly a year, supplies from American planes sustained the over 2 million people in West Berlin.
  • berlin blockade

    berlin blockade
    The Berlin Blockade 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
    an international alliance that consists of 29 member states from North America and Europe. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty
  • Communists take over China

    Communists take over China
    Chinese Civil War may be able to help recruit an expert. The Chinese Communist Revolution or the Chinese revolution of 1949 was a revolution in China that was led by the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong which resulted in the proclamation of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949.
  • Korean War

    Korean War
    Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south.
  • Revolt in Hungary

    Revolt in Hungary
    Soviets put brutal end to Hungarian revolution. A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on this day in 1956.The Soviets did so, but Nagy then tried to push the Hungarian revolt forward by abolishing one-party rule.
  • Sputnik

    Sputnik
    when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.
  • Great Leap Forward

    Great Leap Forward
    The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China from 1958 to 1962. It is widely regarded by historians that The Great Leap resulted in tens of millions of deaths.
  • Apollo program

    Apollo program
    he Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth. Six of the missions (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) achieved this goal. Apollos 7 and 9 were Earth orbiting missions to test the Command and Lunar Modules, and did not return lunar data.
  • Cuban Missile Crisis

    Cuban Missile Crisis
    During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores.
  • Cultural Revolution

    Cultural Revolution
    China’s Communist leader Mao Zedong launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government.
  • Revolt in Czechoslovakia

    Revolt in Czechoslovakia
    the Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague. Although the Soviet Union’s action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, it had unintended consequences for the unity of the communist bloc.
  • Vietnam War

    Vietnam War
    The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.