U.S. History

December 1991: Soviet Union Collapses

1991 BCE

Hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.

October 1990: Germany is reunited

1990 BCE

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 joined the Federal Republic as a full-fledged Federal City-State.

November 1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall

1989 BCE

The head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.

1974: Vietnam War is over is over

1974 BCE

At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War.

October 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis

1962 BCE

U-2 spy plane data discovered that the Soviets were building medium-range missile sites in Cuba. The next day, President Kennedy secretly convened an emergency meeting of his senior military, political, and diplomatic advisers to discuss the ominous development. The group became known as ExCom, short for Executive Committee

August 1961: Berlin wall is Built

1961 BCE

During the early years of the Cold War, West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight

1961: US is defeated and humiliated at the Bay of pigs in Cuba

1961 BCE

Castro’s attacks on U.S. companies and interests in Cuba, his inflammatory anti-American rhetoric, and Cuba’s movement toward a closer relationship with the Soviet Union led U.S. officials to conclude that the Cuban leader was a threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. In March 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train and arm a force of Cuban exiles for an armed attack on Cuba. John F. Kennedy inherited this program when he became president in 1961.

1955: Warsaw Pact is formed

1955 BCE

The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union.

1954: Vietnam War Begins

1954 BCE

French trainers did not abruptly withdraw in 1954 after the Geneva accords, and, indeed, there was a French desire to stay involved in training the South Vietnamese. Part of this may have been pride, and partially a desire to maintain French influence. France's painful withdrawal may have led to its lack of cooperation in European defense arrangements that included the United States. France rejected European Defense Community on August 30, 1954

1950 to 1953: Korean War

1950 BCE

The 38th parallel behind a thunderous artillery barrage. The principal offensive, conducted by the KPA I Corps The KPA entered Seoul in the afternoon of June 28, but the North Koreans did not accomplish their goal of a quick surrender by the Rhee government and the disintegration of the South Korean army.

1949: North Atlantic Treaty Organization is formed

1949 BCE

Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a program of large-scale economic aid to Europe. The resulting European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan not only facilitated European economic integration but promoted the idea of shared interests and cooperation between the United States and Europe.

May 1948: US and Britain break the Soviet blockade of West Berlin with Berlin

1948 BCE

Germany was divided into occupation zones. The United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and, eventually, France, were given specific zones to occupy in which they were to accept the surrender of Nazi forces and restore order.

March 1946: Winston Churchill delivers the iron curtain speech

1946 BCE

Minister Winston Churchill condemns the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declares, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.

1945: World War Ends and the Cold war Begins

1945 BCE

The relationship between the two nations was a tense one. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long.