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The Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was about President Truman asking for money from Congress to help out Greece and Turkey so they would not get overthrown by the powerful Soviets. Truman wanted to aid them with weapons and give them money to build supplies for their protection. Truman wanted to make sure that the spread of Communism did not get to these two countries. -
The Marshall Plan
The purpose for the Marshall Plan was to get the European nations to rebulid their economies and get them back onto their feet. The U.S. wanted to moderize Europe and let them have a free trade market with a solid "modernized" industry. The U.S. ended up giving Europe billions of dollars to try to get their nations back to the way that the U.S. wanted them to be. -
Berlin Airlift
The Soviets who had a zone of Germany and the zone that they had the capital of Berlin. But the each nation, U.S., Britain, France, and Russia, all had a piece of Berlin. But the Russians wanted of all Berlin so they decided to shut down the west part of Berlin down to the Western side of Germany so they would leave the city. But in response, the allies (U.S., Britain, and France) flew 2.3 million tons of supplies to their area in order for them to survive. This went on for about a year. -
Creation of NATO
The North American Treaty Organization was brought up in response to the Soviet's action to spread communism in Europe. The NATO promised that if one of their countries were attack that the rest of the countries in the organization would have respond to the threat that has just occured at that country. NATO also aided the Germans that were in need of military and economic help; also, they needed to be aided with food if you lived in the East part of German. -
Korean War
The war started due to the North Korean's invasion on the South Koreans. The Americans decided to step in because they wanted to stop the spread of communism and try to keep democracy around. According to the textbook, "the U.N. sent some 525,000 troops to South Korea, mostly American" (pg. 775). Due to the spread of Communism to the west, the U.S. felt that it need to stop the war in order to avoid any conflict with the Soveits or Chinese. On July 1953, the war was finally over. -
Creation of the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was created in response to the creation of the NATO creation. The purpose of this act was to protect each other from invasion of non-allie countries. The Soviet Union used this pact to have some sort of control of the countries and their military. They would go after any country that they felt was not going by the pacts promise of communism. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a long, devasting war for the United States and the Cold War era. It started when North Korea became a communist nation under the power of Ho Chi Minh. The U.S. involvement in the war led to a division of people in American and President Nixon finally stated that he want out of the war in 1973. In 1975, the Communist took control of all of Vietnam and it became the "Socialist Republic of Vietnam". -
Soviets launch Sputnik
The Soviets were able to launch an unmanned satelittle into space. This made the Americans upset becuase it showed that we could be less advanced in our technology and may not be as powerful as the Soviets could be. The U.S. also thought that this could lead to more power that the Soviets could gain in Africa and Asia. The U.S. decided that the should try to launch a satellite and they did within six months and called it Explorer 1. This was the start of the important space race. -
Bay of Pigs
The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) set up an invasion that would attempt to dethrone Fiedel Castro from Cuba, but the attempt failed after a day because of the amount of troops that Castro had to defend his country. Most of the invaders were killed or taken as prisoner. -
Fidel Castro comes to power
Fidel Castro led Cuba to be the first communist nation in the Western Hemisphere. He was able to overthrow the dictarorship that the Cuban nation had and replace with his own. While leader, Castro tried to make be literate, give them health care, and try to avoid racism within the country. But, he relation with the U.S. led to very high tensions between them and eventually led to the Bay of Pigs invasion. The U.S. would soon put trade embargos on Castro because of his actions. -
The Berlin Wall Goes Up
The Berlin Wall divided East and West Germany. But more importantly, it divided Communist East and the Democartic West. The purpose of the wall was to keep the East German from going to the West and it did so for 28 years. The Berlin Wall was a major problem for the U.S. because they had to worry about the people that were being affected by the East and prevent their citizens from being starved. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons on Cuba that made the U.S. upset because it was only 90 miles away from their shores. President Kennedy was preparing for military action against the Soviets but was avoided since the Soviets agreed to move the missles of off Cuba. The U.S. in respnse did not invade Cuba and moved some of their missles of off Turkey's land. Thankfully, a full out Nuclear War was avoided between the two nations. -
1980 Olympic Hockey game
The Miracle on Ice was one of the greatest moments in U.S. sports history. The U.S. was an underdog in the 1980 Olympics and they had to play the heavily favorite USSR in the Gold metal match. Everybody was saying that the U.S. was heavily outnumberd and that they had no chance of beating the Russians because of the Russian performances in the previous rounds. But the U.S. pulled off a huge upset and beat the Soviets 4 to 3, and since then, the game has been called the "Miracle on Ice". -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
On this date, the wall that divided East Germany and West Germany was taken down and the two side could finally come together. This was symolized as the end of the Cold War and was the start of the re-unite of the two German sides. -
Collapse of the Soviet Union
On Christmas day in 1991, the Soviet flag flew for the last time in Russia. All of the countries that were apart of the USSR decided to leave as well. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev made many of decisions that led to the fall of the Soviet Union and the rest of the USSR. The fall of the USSR lead for Gorbachev to resign from his job the day that the flag dropped in Russia. Finally, there was peace in a long dark time in U.S. and world history.
