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Potsdam Conference
Potsdam Conference was to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. -
Creation of the United States
The Senate approved the UN Charter on July 28, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2. The United Nations came into existence on October 24, 1945, after 29 nations had ratified the Charter. -
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Second Red Scare
The Second Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War II, was preoccupied with the perception that national or foreign communists were infiltrating or subverting American society and the federal government. -
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Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. -
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Korean War
The Korean War fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950-1953. The war began on June 25th 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the border and rebellion's in South Korea -
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Suez Crisis
Israeli forces invaded Egypt towards the Suez Canal in an attempt to control the important waterway. United Kingdom and France would also attempt to take the canal away from Egypt and put it under European control which ultimately failed. -
1960 U2 Incident
On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
American CIA, with the knowledge of President JFK, trained exiled Cubans for the purpose of aiding the exiles in taking Cuba away from Fidel Castro. 1,400 Cuban exiles attacked the beaches along the Bay of Pigs in the morning. Fidel Castro sent 20,000 troops to defend and fought off the exiles leading to him retaining power. -
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Berlin Crisis of 1961
East German police and military units sealed off all arteries leading to West Berlin. The communists pulled up train tracks and roads, erected barriers topped with barbed wire, completely isolating the Western sectors and preventing East Germans from escaping to the West. -
Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Soviet Union led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on reformist trends in Prague. Although the Soviet Union's action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, it had unintended consequences for the unity of the communist bloc. -
Chernobyl Disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. -
Fall of the Soviet Union
The soviet government collapsed due to economic depression. It broke up into individual constituent republics. -
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a conflict from November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30th 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. -
Truman Doctrine
The principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or Communist insurrection. First expressed in 1947 by US President Truman in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey, the doctrine was seen by the Communists as an open declaration of the Cold War.
