-
Berlin Falls to Soviet Forces
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II. General Eisenhower lost interest in the race to Berlin and saw no further need to suffer casualties by attacking a city that would be in the Soviet sphere of influence after the war. -
US tests first Atomic Bomb
The Trinity Test. At 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, Los Alamos scientists detonated a plutonium bomb at a test site located on the U.S. Air Force base at Alamogordo, New Mexico, some 120 miles south of Albuquerque. -
Japan Surrenders - WWII Ends
The surrender of Japan was announced by Imperial Japan on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting major operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration. -
Period: to
Cold War
The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its satellite states). Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common time frame is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine (a U.S. policy pledging to aid nations threatened by Soviet expansionism) was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. -
Period: to
Chinese Civil War
The war began in August 1927, that paused during the Japanese invasion of China. After World War II ended the civil war restarted and the conflict eventually resulted in two de facto states, the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China, both officially claiming to be the legitimate government of China. To this day no armistice or peace treaty has ever been signed, and there is debate about whether the Civil War has legally ended. -
Creation of the Iron Curtain
"Iron Curtain" is a term used to describe the boundary that separated the Warsaw Pact countries from the NATO countries from about 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The Iron Curtain was both a physical and an ideological division that represented the way Europe was viewed after World War II. To the east of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the former Soviet Union. This included part of Germany Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania. -
Period: to
First Indochina War
The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the northern border of Vietnam in 1949, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union. Evntually the French would give up trying to hold on to their colonial possessions, granting independence to various nations. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II in order to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild a war-devastated region, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, and make Europe prosperous again. -
Berlin Airlift
Soviets placed a blockade on the allied sector of Berlin to starve the population into the Soviet alliance. The blockade was a soviet attempt to starve out the allies in Berlin in order to gain supremacy. the blockade was a high point in the cold war, and it led to the Berlin airlift. The allied response was a unbelievably massive air supply- flying night and day to feed the city. -
Kim Il-sung installed as leader of North Korea
Despite United Nations plans to conduct all-Korean elections, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed with Kim as the Soviet-designated premier. The Soviet Union recognized Kim's government as sovereign of the entire peninsula, including the south. Kim and the communists had consolidated totalitarian rule in North Korea. Around this time, the cult of personality was promoted by the communists, the first statues of Kim appeared, and he began calling himself "Great Leader". -
NATO created
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are located in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, where the Supreme Allied Commander also resides. -
Soviet Union tests First Atomic Bomb
During World War II, the program was started by Joseph Stalin who received a letter from physicist Georgy Flyorov urging him to start the research, as Flyorov had long suspected that many of the Allied powers were already secretly working on a weapon after the discovery of nuclear fission in 1939. The Soviets accelerated the program after the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. -
Period: to
Korean War
Open warfare escalated when North Korean forces, supported by the Soviet Union and China, moved to the south to unite the country by force. On that day, the United Nations Security Council voted the invasion to be illegal and called for a peacekeeping force to repel the invading communist forces. When American troops pushed the invaders out of the South towards China, the Chinese launched their own attack and fought UN forces until a Armistice Agreement was made. -
Chinese Occupation of Tibet
The purpose of the campaign was to capture the Tibetan army in Chamdo, demoralize the Lhasa government, and to thus exert enough pressure to get Tibetan representatives to agree to attend negotiations in Beijing and sign terms recognizing Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. The campaign resulted in the capture of Chamdo and further negotiations between the PRC and Tibetan representatives, eventually resulting in the incorporation of Tibet into the People's Republic of China. -
United Kingdom tests first Atomic Bomb
Operation Hurricane was the test of the first UK atomic device on 3 October 1952. A plutonium implosion device was detonated in the lagoon between the Montebello Islands, Western Australia -
US tests first Hydrogen Bomb
Ivy Mike was the codename given to the first test of a full-scale thermonuclear device, in which part of the explosive yield comes from nuclear fusion. It was detonated on November 1, 1952 by the United States on the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll, in the Pacific Ocean, as part of Operation Ivy. It was the first full test of the Teller-Ulam design, a staged fusion device. -
Period: to
Cuban Revolution
Revolution led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara which overthrew former president Fulgencio Batista and instated a Marxist–Leninist socialist regime later on in Cuba. -
Warsaw Pact created
A collective defense treaty among the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. -
Period: to
Space Race
The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following World War II, aided by captured German missile technology and personnel from the Aggregat program. -
Period: to
Vietnam War
It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies and the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies and the war is therefore considered a Cold War-era proxy war. -
Soviet Union tests first Hydrogen Bomb
The Hydrogen Bomb was a reaction to the efforts of the United States. Previously, the Soviet Union used many of their spies in the U.S. to help them generate methods and ideas for the atomic bomb. The creation of the hydrogen bomb required less usage of this method, although they still received help from some spies, most importantly, Klaus Fuchs. -
Failed Hungarian Revolution
Was a nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Starting as a student protest when it first began, it was the first major threat to Soviet control in Eastern Europe. The revolt spread quickly across Hungary and the government collapsed. Thousands organised into militias, battling the ÁVH and Soviet troops. Ultimately the Soviet Union won and the rebels executed. -
Soviets launch Sputnik
The first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit. One consequence of the Sputnik shock was the perception of a "missile gap." This became a dominant issue in the 1960 US Presidential campaign. -
France tests first Atomic Bomb
Gerboise Bleue ("blue jerboa") was the name of the first French nuclear test. It was an atomic bomb detonated near Reggane, in the middle of the Algerian Sahara desert on 13 February 1960, during the Algerian War (1954–62). General Pierre Marie Gallois was instrumental in the endeavour, and earned the nickname of père de la bombe A ("father of the A-bomb"). -
U-2 Spy Incident
The 1960 U-2 incident occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. The aircraft, flown by Central Intelligence Agency pilot Francis Gary Powers, was performing photographic aerial reconnaissance when it was hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk. Powers parachuted safely and was captured -
First Man in Space
USSR surprised the world again by launching Yuri Gagarin into a single orbit around the Earth in a craft they called Vostok 1. They dubbed Gagarin the first cosmonaut, roughly translated from Russian and Greek as "sailor of the universe". -
Bay of Pigs
The Bay Of Pigs invasion refers to the CIA sponsored American attack of the Cuban government in order to overthrow Fidel Castro. Though the US planned to appear “not being involved” in this attack and declared about their non-intention to intervene in Cuban affairs, Cuba had already approached the UN with the facts about the US training mercenaries for this planned invasion. -
Berlin Wall Construction Begins
The Eastern Bloc claimed that the Wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that had marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. The United States armed forces were at their highest state of readiness ever and Soviet field commanders in Cuba were prepared to use battlefield nuclear weapons to defend the island if it was invaded. The two sides eventually came to a deal, the US would withdraw missiles from Turkey and the Soviets would do the same in Cuba. -
Pol Pot becomes leader of Cambodia
He presided over a totalitarian dictatorship,[6] in which his government made urban dwellers move to the countryside to work in collective farms and on forced labour projects. The combined effects of executions, strenuous working conditions, malnutrition and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population. In all, an estimated 1 to 3 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died due to the policies of his four-year premiership. -
China tests first Atomic Bomb
596 is the codename of the People's Republic of China's first nuclear weapons test, detonated on October 16, 1964, at the Lop Nur test site. It was a uranium-235 implosion fission device and had a yield of 22 kilotons. With the test, China became the fifth nuclear power. In response, the Taiwanese leadership, including President Chiang Kai-shek, called for a military response against Chinese nuclear facilities and the formation of an Asian anti-communist defense organisation which never happen. -
Period: to
Cambodian Civil War
Was a military conflict that pitted the forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (known as the Khmer Rouge) and their allies the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Viet Cong against the government forces of the Kingdom of Cambodia and, after October 1970, the Khmer Republic, which were supported by the United States (U.S.) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). -
Six Day War
Relations between Israel and its neighbours had never fully normalised following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In the period leading up to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened. In reaction to the mobilization of Egyptian forces along the Israeli border in the Sinai Peninsula, Israel launched a series of preemptive airstrikes against Egyptian airfields who were armed by the Soviets. -
Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia
Joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by four Warsaw Pact nations – the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. The invasion successfully stopped Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring liberalization reforms and strengthened the authority of the authoritarian wing within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). The foreign policy of the Soviet Union during this era was known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. To use force when Socialist nations attempt to return to capitalism. -
First Man on the Moon
Apollo 11 was the first spaceflight that landed humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. Armstrong became the first to step onto the lunar surface six hours later on July 21. Apollo 11 effectively ended the Space Race and fulfilled a national goal proposed in 1961 by U.S. President John F. Kennedy -
Yom Kippur War
The war fought by the coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria armed by the Soviet Union against Israel. The fighting mostly took place in the Sinai and the Golan Heights, territories that had been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. Both the United States and the Soviet Union initiated massive resupply efforts to their respective allies during the war, and this led to a near-confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers. Israel won the war but suffered high casulties. -
Cambodian Genocide Ends
Carried out by the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime led by Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979 in which an estimated one and a half to three million people died. As the Cambodian Civil War resulted in the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea by the victorious Khmer Rouge, KR planned to create a form of agrarian socialism, founded on the ideals of Stalinism and Maoism. he genocide ended in 1979 following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. -
Period: to
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
Prior to the arrival of Soviet troops, communists took power in a 1978 coup, installing Nur Mohammad Taraki as president. He initiated a series of radical modernization reforms throughout the country that were deeply unpopular. The regime vigorously suppressed any opposition and arrested thousands, executing as many as 27,000 political prisoners. The Islamic insurgency was too much for the government requiring Soviet intervention which ended in failure. -
US invasion of Grenada
Grenada gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1974. The leftist New Jewel Movement seized power in a coup in 1979, suspending the constitution. After a 1983 internal power struggle ended with the deposition and murder prime minister Maurice Bishop, the invasion began early on 25 October 1983. Military advisers from the Soviet Union, North Korea, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Libya were killed or captured by the 82nd Airborne Division. -
Tiananmen Square Massacre
Set against a backdrop of rapid economic and social changes in post Mao-era China, the protests reflected anxieties about the country's future in the popular consciousness and among the political elite. The students drew upon Western-inspired ideals and called for democracy, greater accountability, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, though they were loosely organized and their goals varied. The government crack down resulted in an untold number of deaths across 400 cities -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The wave of refugees leaving East Germany for the West kept increasing. By early November refugees were finding their way to Hungary via Czechoslovakia, or via the West German Embassy in Prague. East Germans began gathering at the Wall, at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin, demanding that border guards immediately open the gates. It soon became clear that no one among the East authorities would take personal responsibility allowing the people to dismantle the wall. -
Soviet coup d'état attempt
Also known as the August Putsch, was an attempt by members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup leaders were hard-line members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who were opposed to Gorbachev's reform program and the new union treaty that he had negotiated which decentralized much of the central government's power to the republics. The coup eventually ended in failure and sealed the fate of the Soviet Union. -
Dissolution of the USSR
The declaration to disolve acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), although five of the signatories ratified it much later or not at all. On the previous day, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, resigned, declared his office extinct, and handed over its powers including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
