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Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917 which dismantled Tsarist autocracy and led to the rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century, which the violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. The Bolsheviks would later take over and become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. -
Postdam Conference
The Postdam Conference was held near Berlin, and began July 17, 1945 and ended August 2, which was the last of the World War II meetings held by the "Big Three" heads; such as American President Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. The leaders arrived at various agreements on the German economy, placing primarily emphasis on the development of agriculture and nonmilitary industry. -
Atomic Bomb- Hiroshima/Nagasaki
During the final stage of World War II, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The United States dropped the bombs after obtaining the consent of the United Kingdom, as required by the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed 129,000-226,00 people, mostly that were civilians. These bombs remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1992. The notional barrier separated the former Soviet block and the West prior to the decline of communism that followed the political events in Eastern Europe. -
Hollywood 10
10 members of the Hollywood film industry publicly denounced the tactics employed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, an investigate committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, during its probe of alleged communist influence in the American motion picture business. -
Hollywood 10
Ten members of the Hollywood film industry publicly denounced tactics employed by the House Un-American Activities Committee; an investigative committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, during its probe of alleged communist influence in the American motion picture business. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to counter Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion, almost $100 billion in U.S. dollars to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years. -
Berlin Blockade and Airlift
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. This international crisis that arose from an attempt by the Soviet Union, to force Western Allied powers to abandon their post World-War II jurisdictions in West Berlin. The Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, roads, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. -
NATO
NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international alliance that consists of 29 member states from North American and Europe. NATO promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defense, building trust and in the long run, preventing conflict. NATO is also committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. -
Soviet Bomb Test
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. This surprised the United States considering they were nor expecting the Soviet Union to possess nuclear weapon knowledge so soon. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, and all began when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. As a result of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea had been split into two sovereign states. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. -
Eisenhower's Massive Retaliation Policy
Eisenhower's Massive Retaliation Policy, is a military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a states commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack. Massive retaliation works on the same principles as mutual assured destruction (MAD), with the important warning that even a minor conventional attack on a nuclear state could conceivably result in a all-out nuclear war. -
Army-McCarthy
The Army-McCarthy hearings dominated national television. The congressional hearings were among the first to be televised, and they captured national attention because of McCarthy's notoriety.The word McCarthyism has become synonymous with the practice of publicizing accusations of treason and disloyalty with insufficient evidence. -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution was a nationwide revolt against the Marxist-Leninist government of the Hungarians People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, which were crippling post-war Hungary. The Hungarian Revolution is considered by many as the nation's greatest tragedy. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact, was formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellites of Central and Eastern Europe in May during the Cold War. The Soviet Union formed this alliance as a counterbalance of NATO. -
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, a protracted conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam and its allies in South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, against the government of South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.The Vietnam War pitted communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong against South Vietnam and the United States. -
Khruschev Takes over
Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953–64) and premier of the Soviet Union (1958–64). Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, serving as a premier from 1958 to 1964. Although, Khrushchev largely pursued a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West, he instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis by placing nuclear weapons within 90 miles from Florida -
U2 Incident
A United States U-2 plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory. CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers had been on a top secret mission, in which called him to fly over and photograph denied territory from his U2 spy plane deep inside Russia. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
1400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the South Coast of Cuba. The plan was to overthrow Fidel Castro and his revolution. Around 1,200 exiles armed with American weapons and using American landing craft, waded ashore at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. The official purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. Many years later, Khrushchev claimed that he had won the Cuban missile crisis. America never bothered Cuba again and the US missile sites in Turkey were dismantled in November 1962. -
Detente under Nixon
Détente is the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation. Détente is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971 and took decisive form when President Richard M. Nixon visited the secretary-general of the Soviet Communist party. -
The Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was a strategy orchestrated and implemented by the United States under the Reagan Administration to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in an attempt to end the Cold War. Ronald Reagan took a bold foreign policy stance against the Soviet Union, and communism in general. He was willing to negotiate with the Soviets, although he wanted to do so from a position of strength. -
Reagan’s Berlin Wall Speech
"Tear down this wall!" is a line from a speech made by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987, calling for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open up the barrier which had divided West and East Berlin since 1961. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)
The Fall of the 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. The wall symbolized the lack of freedom under communism. It symbolized the Cold War and divide between the communist Soviet bloc and the western democratic, capitalist bloc. Professor Stein: Berlin was on the frontline in the Cold War struggle between the superpowers.
