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The Russian Revolution
In October 1917, The Russian Revolution consisted of communism and events that caused tension throughout the U.S and Soviet Union. The people of Russia were suffering, starving, and working harder. A new government came to power and later caused tension to Russia. -
The Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference, was a conference based on the negotiations for the terms of World War 2. Both President Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were determined to secure political freedom and the democratic governments throughout Europe. -
The Atomic Bomb
The Atomic Bomb attacked two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6th, 1945. This occurrence was an appalling and dreadful turning point in history. This bomb changed warfare because it opened doors to new forms of brutality, which lead to tension and distress between nations as well as distrust. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the division of Europe in two different areas of the World from the end of World War 2. Winston Churchill created this Iron Curtain separating eastern Europe and western Europe so that the Soviet Union didn't know about our plans. -
The Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was created by the Soviet Union to provide aid in the eastern European countries. This is seen as the Soviet Unions version of the Marshall Plan. -
The Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was the principle that the US should give support to countries or to people threatened by the Soviet forces or communist insurrection. This provided economic, political, and military assistance to any country. -
Hollywood 10
The Hollywood 10 were celebrities, specifically actors, who would refuse the answer the questions of being a communist. Many of these movie stars were exiled and convicted for content of congress. After being convicted, they never worked in Hollywood again, and were blacklisted because they could not prove that they were not communists. -
The Alger Hiss Act
Alger Hiss was a former state employee who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union. The People feared that there was communism throughout the government, therefore they had to cleanse and investigate to see if these accusations were true. -
The Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was established by the US to aid Western Europe. The US gave over 12 billion dollars in economic assistance towards the Western European economies to help rebuild. -
The Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was a strive by the Soviet Union to limit the ability to France, Great Britain and the US to travel to their Sectors of Berlin. The Soviet union made an attempt to take away the US power and our supplies that we gave to Berlin. -
The Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Airlift was the division in Germany. Germany was divided into four sections and occupied by Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union while Berlin was also divided in the same way. This was technically the first battle of the Cold War, and occurred when countries were delivered food and supplies such as Berlin. -
NATO
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was an international alliance which consists 29 states from North America and Europe. This was created for us to defend the territories from the Soviet Union taking over their nation. -
The Soviet Bomb Test
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested a toxic atomic bomb. This startled the United States because they did not expect the Soviet Union to enact a deadly weapon that could kill millions of people and having the knowledge of assembling this atomic bomb. This was a threat to the US and to the people as well. -
The Rosenberg Trial
The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg was that people feared that they were passing secrets about the nuclear bombs. They did not want the secrets of this technology getting into the wrong hands while using this as a weapon as their own. This is coming from a country that wants to destroy us. -
The Korean War
The Korean War was an invasion between South Korea and the communists in North Korea. This was a crucial conflict between the two during the Cold War, because the Soviet Union supported North Korea and the United States supported South Korea. -
Battle of Dien Bien Phu
In November 1953, 12,000 French paratroopers landed in the valley of Dien Bien Phu in Northwest Vietnam. The soldiers mission, was to draw Vietnam into the final decisive battle to end the war. This was the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. -
The Army-McCarthy hearings
The Army-McCarthy hearings was a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate the conflicting accusations between the United States Army and US Senator Joseph McCarthy. Joseph McCarthy claimed he had a list of 205 communists working in the State Department. However, he lied about this accusation to scare the people into thinking that there was. -
Geneva Conference
At the Geneva Conference moral leaders gathered to discuss the problems of Indochina and worked towards a peaceful settlement for Vietnam. This caused the Geneva accords to be called for Vietnam to be temporarily divided at the 17th parallel. -
The Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a political and military alliance between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries. This was an important event during the Cold War because it was the Communist counteraction to NATO. It was also seen as a potential militaristic threat, as a sign of Communist dominance, and a definite opponent to American Capitalism. -
The Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution was a nationwide rebel against the Marxist-Leninist government. The Soviets and Nagy pushed the Hungarian rebel forward by abolishing the one-party rule. This was the nations greatest tragedies. -
U2 Incident
The U2 incident was a confrontation between the US and Soviet Union which occured after the shooting down of a reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union. This lead to a conference in France between the US, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs was created by the CIA to train 1,500 Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. The main plan was to overthrow Fidel Castro and his revolution, and that the exile force would serve as a rallying point for the Cuban citizenry. -
The Berlin Wall
The Berlin wall was a loophole that consisted of thousands of East Germans who fled to the democratic West. In retort, the Communist East German authorities built a wall in West Berlin. This was important during the cold war because it represented the lack of freedom under communism and the divide between the communist Soviet Bloc and the western democratic, capitalist bloc. -
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union. This occured when the two superpowers came closest to the uttermost nuclear conflict.This was an important confrontation during the Cold War because this came closest to a nuclear war. -
Assassination of Diem
On November 2, 1963 the President of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated. Both him and his brother were captured. Soon after this a military coo was launched by Americas consent to kill Diem. -
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas Texas. He rode in a convertible through Dealey Plaza to his death, and was shot by a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was created to authorixze President Johnson to take any measures he belived were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. -
Operation Rolling Thunder
Operation Rolling Thunder was a bombardment campaign conducted by the U.S 2nd Air Division, U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). It lasted over 3 and a half years and more than 800,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam at a cost of nearly 1 billion dollars to U.S tax payers. But even at that price the area failed to make a dent in the resistance. -
Tet Offensive
In late January, 1968, the North Vietnamese and communist Viet Cong forces launched a coordinated attack in South Vietnam. This played an important role towards weakening the U.S public support for the war in Vietnam. As North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, the attacks created a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of horrific American withdrawal from the region. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American baptist minister and activist who became one of the most famous and visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights movement. He spoke on behalf of the people and fought for equal rights for all people. Unfortunately, he was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. King was then rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy was a politician and lawyer who served as the 64th United Stated Attorney General. His role was important during this time because he fought organized crime and worked for civil rights for African Americans. He was considered a committed advocated towards the poor and racial minoritites and also prevented escalation of the Vietnam War. He was then shot in Los Angeles CA at the Ambassador Hotel. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague. They took over Bohemia, and established a protectorate over Slovakia. Hitlers invasion led to an end of appeasement and on March 17th Chamberlain gave a speech saying that he could not trust Hitler not to invade other countries. -
Riots of Democratic convention
In 1968, a Democratic National Convention was held in the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois. The Convention was held during a year of violence, political turbulence, and civil unrest which was not a healthy time to benefit this convention. Thousands of protesters swarmed the streets to rally against the Vietnam War and the political status quo. -
Election of Nixon
Richard Nixon was the 37th president of the U.S from 1969 until 1974, and later resigned from office. During the Cold War, Nixon arrived in China to visit the peoples Republic of China and was seeking to improve relations with a Communist country. However, Nixon was known for the corruption and the Watergate scandal which resulted in a way where the public lost all trust of him and his resignation. -
Kent State University
At Kent State University four students were shot and nine were injured on May 4th, 1970. This tragic event occurred during a massive protest against the bombing of Cambodia by the United States military forces. This later turned into a national response to the school shootings where hundreds of Universities, Colleges, and High Schools closed throughout the U.S due to a strike of 4 million students. -
Nixon visits China
In 1972, Richard Nixon was the first to visit China's Republic. The US was seeking to improve their relationship with a Communist Country during the Cold War. Nixon also visited China because of his undisputed reputation of being a staunch anti-Communist and wanted to change that. -
Ceasefire in Vietnam
On January 15, 1973, President Richard Nixon ordered a Ceasefire Act of the aerial bombings in North Vietnam. This act was also known as The Paris Peace Accords. It was an agreement signed for Restoring Peace in Vietnam and finally ending the Vietnam War. -
Fall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon was a capture of Saigon in the capital of South Vietnam by the Peoples Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Saigon was captured because it was an inevitability that they would fall to communist forces. This was an important event during the Cold War, because it not only marked the end of the Vietnam War, but the beginning of the formal reunification of Vietnam under Communist Rule. -
Reagan elected
Ronald Reagan was a former actor and California governor and soon became our 49th president in the United States of America. Reagan was best known for redefining the purpose of government and pressured the Soviet Union to end the Cold War. -
Strategic Defense Initiative announce
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as Star Wars, was a program created by Ronald Reagan to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system. This was mainly created to prevent missile attacks from other countries such as the Soviet Union. This strategic system costed the U.S more than 200 billion dollars later. -
Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
In 1985 a Geneva Conference was constructed with a Soviet General named Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan during the Cold war Era. These two leaders met for the first time to discuss issues such as disarmament, unification of Germany, and increased economic ties. -
‘Tear down this wall’ speech
On June 12, 1987 president Ronald Reagan migrated towards West Berlin to give a captivating speech towards the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev to open the barrier between West and East Berlin. This wall was a symbol of the lack of freedom between the communist Soviet bloc and the western Democratic capitalist bloc and also the Cold War. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989 the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced that the citizens of the German Democratic Republic were free to cross the country's borders. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the end of the Cold War which represented the shredding of the iron curtain, and there was no longer any communism in Germany.
