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Satellite Nations
The term 'satellite nation' was first used to describe certain nations in the Cold War. These were nations that were aligned with (but also under the influence and pressure of) the Soviet Union. The satellite nations of the Cold War were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany. -
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who governed the Republic of Cuba as its Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then its President from 1976 to 2008. Politically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011.
The US tried to overthrow his communist government during the Cold War, but failed. -
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Patrick Anthony McCarran
Patrick Anthony "Pat" McCarran (August 8, 1876 – September 28, 1954) was a Democratic United States Senator from Nevada from 1933 until 1954, and was noted for his strong anticommunism. -
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties. -
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M.A.D
A doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender -
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Bretton Woods Conference
Meeting of Western allies to establish a postwar international economic order to avoid crises like the one that spawned World War II. Led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, designed to regulate currency levels and provide aid to underdeveloped countries. -
Yalta Conference
A World War II meeting of the heads of the government of the United States, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union (The Big Three) to discuss post-war organization. Germany has to agree to an unconditional surrender.
Cold War: The Big Three decided the fate of post-war Europe. It divided the continent into Democratic and Soviet influences, such as Germany being divided into four occupations, US, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. -
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The Baby Boom
The baby boom began in 1946, when 3.4 million babies were born, 20 percent more than in 1945. In 1947, another 3.8 million babies were born; 3.9 million were born in 1952; and more than 4 million were born every year from 1954 until 1964, when the boom finally tapered off. -
Iron Curtain Speech
March 5, 1946. British Prime 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.”
The speech refers to the Soviet Union’s attempt to separate itself and its satellite states from the free countries in western europe. These satellite nations developed their own political and military policies and were essentially controlled by the Soviet Union. -
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The Arms Race
The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers. -
Truman Doctrine
In a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations.
It became a US policy to stop Soviet imperialism during the Cold War; US would intervene. -
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McCarthyism/Red Scare
As the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s, hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. became known as the Red Scare. The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that Communists and leftist sympathizers inside America might actively work as Soviet spies and pose a threat to U.S. security. -
National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68)
NSC-68 was a 58-page top secret policy paper by the United States National Security Council presented to President Harry S. Truman on April 14, 1950. It was one of the most important statements of American policy in the Cold War. -
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Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan, channeled over $13 billion to finance the economic recovery of Europe between 1948 and 1951. It was successful in helping Europe recover from World War II.
USSR viewed this as the US’s way of trying to buy their influence in Europe and interfere with international affairs so it refused the aid along with its satellite nations. This causes further strain in the USSR and US relationship. -
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Berlin Airlift
At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany.
Soviet forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to Allied-controlled areas of Berlin. The United States and United Kingdom responded by airlifting food and fuel to Berlin from Allied airbases in western Germany. Shortly before the end of the blockade, the Western Allies created NATO. -
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of being a Soviet Spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. -
Harry S. Truman State of the Union Address ("Fair Deal")
The Fair Deal was an ambitious set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address. It offered new proposals to continue New Deal liberalism, but with the Conservative Coalition controlling Congress, only a few of its major initiatives became law and then only if they had considerable GOP support. -
Formation of NATO
The prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
This led to the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe allies to form the Warsaw Pact and continue the political divide in Europe. Also provided framework for military standoff during Cold War. -
Soviets Detonate Atomic Bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name “First Lightning.” The explosion was roughly equal to “Trinity,” the first U.S. atomic explosion. -
Chinese Communist Revolution
The creation of the People's Republic of China also completed the long process of governmental upheaval in China begun by the Chinese Revolution of 1911. The “fall” of mainland China to communism in 1949 led the United States to suspend diplomatic ties with the PRC for decades. -
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Korean War
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. It is considered the first military action of the Cold War. -
Dennis v. United States
Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951), was a United States Supreme Court case relating to Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA. The Court ruled that Dennis did not have the right under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution to exercise free speech, publication and assembly, if the exercise involved the creation of a plot to overthrow the government. -
United States test first Hydrogen Bomb
The United States detonates the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.
This lead to speed up the arms race during the Cold War because the Soviets eventually develop and successfully detonate their own atomic bomb. It further accelerates the competition between the two to develop a deadlier weapon. -
Stalin's Death
In March 1953, Joseph Stalin, who had ruled the Soviet Union since 1928, died at the age of 73. His feared minister of internal affairs, Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, was subsequently shot for treason. Nikita Khrushchev then became first secretary of the Communist Party. -
Rosenberg Spy Case
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg were American citizens who spied for the Soviet Union and were executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, and passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviets. They were executed in the electric chair.
Many people were accused of being a communist or spying for the Soviets during this time, but this was the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. -
Massive Retaliation
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces that the United States will protect its allies through the “deterrent of massive retaliatory power.” Massive Retaliation is a military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force if attacked.
The policy announcement was further evidence of the Eisenhower administration’s decision to rely heavily on the nation’s nuclear arsenal as the primary means of defense against communist aggression. -
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Battle of Dien Bien Phu
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. Ended in French defeat.
This event led to the US to support South Vietnam and eventually intervene with the Vietnam War, a part of the Cold War. -
Eisenhower "Domino Theory" Speech
The domino theory was a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. -
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Guatemalan Coup
The Guatemalan Revolution was widely disliked by the United States government, which was predisposed by the Cold War to see it as communist, and the United Fruit Company (UFC), whose hugely profitable business had been affected by the end to brutal labor practices -
The Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a collective defense treaty among Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. -
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War can be considered a "proxy" war in the Cold War. Although the Soviet Union and the United States did not directly go to war, they each supported a different side in the war. -
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made a keynote address to international communist leaders at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He used his speech to make unexpected and unprecedented condemnations of the policies and excesses of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, setting off a chain of reaction that led to calls for reform in Eastern Europe and a new policy in the Soviet Union for dealing with the West. -
The Interstate Highway Act of 1956
The bill created a 41,000-mile “National System of Interstate and Defense Highways” that would, according to Eisenhower, eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes, traffic jams and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” -
Launch of Sputnik
The launch of Sputnik on October 4 1957 by the Soviet Union as the first artificial satellite in space triggered the Space Race, a part of the Cold War.
Cold War: The launch was during the time when the United States was going through the Red Scare of communism during the Cold War. The fact that the Soviet Union was able to launch a satellite caused fear in Americans that they were able to spy on the United States citizens and weaponize the satellite. -
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The Space Race
Beginning in the late 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system.
Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition between USSR and US. -
The Neutron Bomb
The neutron bomb is a low yield thermonuclear weapon in which a burst of neutrons generated by a nuclear fusion reaction is intentionally allowed to escape the weapon, rather than being absorbed by its other components. Two out of three bomb-types were retired by President George H. W. Bush in 1992, following the end of the Cold War. -
National Defense and Education Act (NDEA)
NDEA was among many science initiatives implemented by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1958 to increase the technological sophistication and power of the United States. The act authorized funding for four years, increasing funding per year: for example, funding increased on eight program titles from $183 million in 1959 to $222 million in 1960. -
U-2 Spy Plane Affair
USSR shot down an American U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Confronted with the evidence of his nation’s espionage, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years.
The U-2 spy plane incident raised tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets during the Cold War about espionage. -
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Leonid Brezhnev
Brezhnev was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. During Brezhnev's rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time. His tenure as leader was marked by the beginning of an era of economic and social growth of the Soviet Union. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The CIA launched a full-scale invasion of Cuba by 1,400 American-trained Cubans who had fled their homes when Castro took over. However, the invasion did not go well: The invaders were badly outnumbered by Castro’s troops, and they surrendered after less than 24 hours of fighting. Castro established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and US failed to overthrow communist gov in Cuba. -
Berlin Wall
The Communist government of East Germany began to build a barbed wire and concrete “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.
To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War. -
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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. many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s offer to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. -
The Feminine Mystique
The Feminine Mystique is a 1963 book by Betty Friedan which is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. -
Hotline
To lessen the threat of an accidental nuclear war, the United States and the Soviet Union agree to establish a “hot line” communication system between the two nations.
The agreement was a small step in reducing tensions between the United States and the USSR following the October 1962 Missile Crisis in Cuba, which had brought the two nations to the brink of nuclear war. -
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Representatives of the United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater or in the atmosphere. The treaty, which President John F. Kennedy signed less than three months before his assassination, was hailed as an important first step toward the control of nuclear weapons. -
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.
The resolution marked the beginning of an expanded military role for the United States in the Cold War battlefields of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. -
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Indonesian Coup
Between October 1, 1965, and April or May of the following year, the right-wing military regime of Generals Nasution and Suharto seized power and consolidated its strength in Indonesia.The "Indonesian Killing" was the massacre of up to 500,000 or more alleged Communists between 1965 and 1968 by the Suharto regime -
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Cultural Revolution
Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to preserve 'true' Communist ideology in the country by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Maoist thought as the dominant ideology within the Party.
In the Cold War the US tries to prevent communism from spreading, but this lead to another big nation established on communism. -
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Six Day War
Israel responds to build-up of Arab forces along its borders by launching simultaneous attacks against Egypt and Syria. Jordan subsequently entered the fray, but the Arab coalition was no match for Israel’s proficient armed forces. In six days of fighting, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the Golan Heights of Syria, and the West Bank and Arab sector of East Jerusalem, both previously under Jordanian rule. -
U.S.S. Liberty Incident
The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats during the Six-Day War. -
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The Khmer Rouge / Cambodia
The Khmer Rouge was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the Vietnam People's Army from North Vietnam. It was the ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led primarily by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge allied with North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and Pathet Lao during the Vietnam War against the anti-communist forces. -
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Prague Spring Rebellion
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. The brief period of time when the government of Czechoslovakia led by Alexander Dubček seemingly wanted to democratise the nation and lessen the stranglehold Moscow had on the nation’s affairs. The Prague Spring ended with a Soviet invasion, the removal of Alexander Dubček as party leader and an end to reform within Czechoslovakia. -
Tet Offensive
70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive, a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.
Tet Offensive marked a crucial turning point in American participation in the Vietnam War. US slowly pull out of Vietnam. -
U.S.S. Scorpion
The USS Scorpion was a Skipjack-class nuclear submarine of the United States Navy that was lost on 22 May 1968, with 99 crewmen dying in the incident. USS Scorpion is one of two nuclear submarines the U.S. Navy has lost, the other being USS Thresher. -
Vietnamization
A policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops." -
Vietnamization
President Richard Nixon introduced a new strategy called Vietnamization that was aimed at ending American involvement in the Vietnam War by transferring all military responsibilities to South Vietnam.
In 1973, the U.S. negotiated a treaty with the North Vietnamese, withdrew American combat troops and declared the Vietnamization process complete. However, in 1975, South Vietnam fell to Communist forces. -
Detente
Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party, Leonid I. Brezhnev, in Moscow, May 1972. -
SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) I
Two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II. -
Title IX
Federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.
Women got more involved in traditional men roles. -
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First Unelected President- Gerald Ford
America’s 38th president, Gerald Ford took office on August 9, 1974, following the resignation of President Richard Nixon, who left the White House in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. Ford became the first unelected president in the nation’s history. -
Helsinki Final Accords
The United States, the Soviet Union, Canada and every European nation (except Albania) sign the Helsinki Final Act on the last day of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The act was intended to revive the sagging spirit of detente between the Soviet Union and the United States and its allies. -
Voice of America
The Voice of America (VOA) is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. The VOA provides programming for broadcast on radio, TV, and the Internet outside of the U.S., in English and some foreign languages. A 1976 law signed by President Gerald Ford requires the VOA to "serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news."[ -
SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) II
Two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II. -
Solidarity
Solidarity is a Polish trade union that was founded at the Gdańsk Shipyard under the leadership of Lech Wałęsa.It was the first trade union in a Warsaw Pact country that was not controlled by a communist party. -
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Ronald Reagan Presidency
Reagan was first among post–World War II presidents to put into practice the concept that the Soviet Union could be defeated rather than simply negotiated with. Reagan's aggressive rhetoric toward the USSR probably made no difference to the Soviets, but gave encouragement to the East-European citizens opposed to communism. -
SDI (Star Wars)
President Reagan proposed the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), an ambitious project that would construct a space-based anti-missile system. The SDI was intended to defend the United States from attack from Soviet ICBMs by intercepting the missiles at various phases of their flight.
This system would tip the nuclear balance toward the United States. The Soviets feared that SDI would enable the United States to launch a first-strike against them. -
John Walker
John Anthony Walker, Jr. was a United States Navy Chief Warrant Officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1968 to 1985. -
Perestroika and Glasnost
Launched by Gorbachev, was a program of “perestroika” (“restructuring”) and “glasnost” (“openness”). In less than a decade, the program swept communist governments throughout Eastern Europe from power and brought an end to the Cold War -
Gorbachev
When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the reins of power in the Soviet Union in 1985, no one predicted the revolution he would bring. A dedicated reformer, Gorbachev introduced the policies of glasnost and perestroika to the USSR.
Contributed to collapse of Soviet Union. -
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Perestroika and Glasnost
Mikhail S. Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985. 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 and the fall of the Soviet Union. -
INF Treaty
The INF treaty eliminated nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate ranges, defined as between 300–3,400 miles but did not cover sea launched missiles. In July 2014, the United States notified Russia that it considered them in breach of the treaty for developing and possessing prohibited weapons. -
German Reunification
The process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany to form one nation of Germany including Berlin reuniting into a single city. The end of the unification process is officially referred to as German Unity and celebrated on October 3 annually. -
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The Afghanistan War
The American War in Afghanistan is the period in which the United States invaded Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, to which the primary objectives were to to dismantle al-Qaeda and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power.
