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World War II allies attend the Yalta Conference
The United States and the Soviet Union attend the Yalta Conference after World War II to discuss what to do with Germany. The country is divided and East Germany is controlled by the Soviet Union and made a communist nation. -
Communist Party Congress
Before the Communist Party Congress, Stalin suggests that communism and capitalism were incompatible. -
February 22, 1946
George Kennan's Long Telegram, one of the most famous documents of the Cold War, contending that Russian behavior was determined by a "traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity," and that "we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi." -
March 5, 1946
Former British prime minister Winston Churchill, at Fulton, Missouri, declares that an "Iron Curtain" has descended on Europe. -
March 12, 1947
President Truman announces the Truman Doctrine, informing Congress, "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." -
June 5, 1947
Secretary of State George Marshall, in a commencement address at Harvard University, announces a package of economic assistance to aid in European recovery. Though not "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos," the Marshall Plan further divides Europe into two spheres of influence. -
July 26, 1947
Congress passes the National Security Act, which creates a civilian Secretary of Defense (the first was James Forrestal), a National Security Council, a Central Intelligence Agency--but does not call for universal military training. -
February 25, 1948
Communists overthrow the government of Eduard Beneš in Czechoslovakia, the last democratic nation in the Soviet bloc. -
June 24, 1948
Further increasing tensions over Europe's future, the Soviets begin a blockade of the Western zones in occupied Berlin; the Allied powers would respond with an 11-month airlift to supply the beleaguered city. -
Apr. 4, 1949
The NATO treaty is signed. -
Celebrities are accused of being a member of the Communist Party.
Many celebrities in the U.S. are accused of being a communist for no reason. Senator Joseph McCarthy is the man behind the accusations and is responsible for hurting the careers of many innocent people who could not get jobs after being accused. -
July 14, 1949:
The USSR explodes its first atomic bomb -
January 1950
Truman announces that the United States will build the hydrogen bomb. -
June 1950
North Korea invades South Korea; the UN invokes its collective security provisions to aid the South; and the United States send troops. The war will end in stalemate nearly three years later. -
June 1950:
North Korea invades South Korea; the UN invokes its collective security provisions to aid the South; and the United States send troops. The war will end in stalemate nearly three years later. -
Fiscal Year 1951
With the implementation of NSC 68, U.S. military spending skyrockets -
1953
Republican Dwight Eisenhower inaugurated President.
