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Yalta Conference forshadows Cold War
This conference between the allied powers was right before the end of World War II, when Germany's defeat was already assured. Allies met to decide how to divide up Europe and Japan after the war over. The Western powers feared that the Soviets would try to take over Eastern and central Europe. In essence, the conference was between Stalin, Churchhill, and Rooselvelt; Yalta Conference forshadows Cold War.
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UN Meeting
In San Fransico, California, the United Naions was manifested in their first meeting on April 1945. This nation was given the power to enforce the United States' verdicts. This nation also took over the unsuccessfull League of Nations. Additionally, the organization was on the basis of cooperation between the Great powers. Later, you see the UN intervene the Korean War against the USSR.
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Truman Doctrine
Harry Truman proposed the Truman Doctrine in 1947. Truman feared that the USSR will possibly be expanding. The Doctrine stated that the US would financially help countries where communism was a possibility.
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Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was implemented by US Secretary of the State George Marshall, along with other major contributors such as William Clayton and George Kennan. This plan was to prevent the spread of communism, particularly in Western Europe, and to rebuild Europe's economy. European nations got $13 billion in aid, which resulted in shipments of food, staples, fuel and machinery from the United States, along with investment in industrial capacity in Europe.
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Chinese Civil War
In 1949, a civil war divides China. Nationalist leader Jiang Jieshi was dominated by the communist leader Mao Zedong. As a result, Mao's communists took complete control of the "world's most populous country, renaming it the People's Republic of China."
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NATO
NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Orginization, is a treaty signed by twelve Wetsern Europe and North American nations. They promised to provide mutual help if one of them is attacked. In addition, they agreed to act together in defense of Western Europe.
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USSR Detonate Atomic Bomb
On August of 1949, the Soviet Union successfully detonated their first atomic bomb at a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. The USSR code names it "First Lightning." In addition, this was the beginning of the tension rising between America and the USSR. The United States no longer had an advantage over Stalin;They no longer had control of the war in which they feared a weapon that could kil millions at once in the hands of the communists.
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Korean War
North Korea, controlled by and with the accompany of the USSR, Invadas South Korea to conquer their land and take over. In response, the U.S. and the United Nations intervened in the Korean war to stop the spread of communism and in fear of their potential aggrandized power.
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Stalin Dies
On March 5, 1953, USSR leader Joseph Stalin dies from an heart attack in Moscow, Russia. SOURCE: 10 -
Warsaw Pact
In response, Soviet Union and its sallelite states formed a rival military alliance. The Warsaw Pact appered as quite of a potential militaristic threat, as a sign of Communist dominance, and a certain opponent to American capitalism.This pact was created six years after the creation of NATO.
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Sputnik ; Space Race
Sputnik was the first artificial satellite that was about the size of a beach ball. Sputnik was launched on October 4, 1957 from the Soviet Union and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch “ushered a new political, military, technological, and scientific developments.” While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age between the U.S.and U.S.S.R; space race.
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Berlin Wall
On August 1961, the Communist government of the Eastern German Democratic Republic began to build a barbed wire and concrete wall between East and West Berlin. This was a symbolic boundary communism during the Cold War. Furthermore, it was to prevent Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state.
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Cuban Missle Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a hostile, 13-day political and military standoff about the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. In a TV address, President John Kennedy informed Americans about the existence of the missiles, explained his choice to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it certain the U.S. was prepared to use military force if needed.
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Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty
Provisions of the ABM treaty included regulation of antiballistic missiles that could possibly be used to destroy incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s) launched by other countries.
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Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union initiating a campaign of openness called "glasnost" and restructuring called "perestroika"
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Destruction of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to 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 German Democratic Republic were free to cross the border.
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Fall of the Soviet Union
The USSR disintegrated into fifteen separate countries after the West's victory for freedom; Cold War ends
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