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Cold War Timeline
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Berlin Blockade and Airlift
The Berlin Blockade was started in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the United States to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lay within Russian-occupied East Germany.The western powers instituted an airlift that delivered needed supplies and relief to West Berlin. The blockade was the first major clash of the Cold War and foreshadowed future conflict over the city of Berlin. -
Korean War
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. -
Space Race
Beginning in the late 1950s, each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system. This led to a race to the moon -
Bay of Pigs
On January 1, 1959, a Cuban nationalist, Fidel Castro, drove his army into Havana and overthrew General Fulgencio Batista, the nation’s president. For the next two years, officials at the CIA tried to push Castro from power. -
U-2 spy plane
In May 1960 the soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane in soviet air space and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Confronted with this evidence , President Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to admit to the Soviets that the CIA had been flying spy missions over the USSR for several years. This incident raised tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets . -
Cuban Missle Crisis
Leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a 13 day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear Soviet missiles on Cuba, 90 miles from U.S. shores.
President John Kennedy notified Americans about the presence of the missiles, explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. -
SALT
Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon, meeting in Moscow, sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreements. These agreements were the best attempts to control nuclear weapons ever. -
Soviets invade Afghanistan
On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan, .On December 27, Babrak Karmal, exiled leader of the Parcham faction of the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), was installed as Afghanistan’s new head of government. And Soviet ground forces entered Afghanistan from the north. -
Reagan visits Berlin Wall
June of 1987, President Ronald Reagan stopped in West Berlin on the 750th anniversary of the city. He demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall. -
Reunited Germany
Less than one year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany come together on what is known as “Unity Day.” Since 1945, when Soviet forces occupied eastern Germany, and the United States and other Allied forces occupied the western half of the nation at the close of World War II.
