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Mao Zedong's Communist Red Army takeover of China
The Red Army was Mao’s lifeline during such incidents as the Long March. Without the dedication of those people in the Red Army, the Chinese Communist Party would have collapsed in the late 1920’s and 1930’s. -
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively, for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. -
Soviet Sat. lead to Iron Curtain
The Satellite States are seemingly an irrelevant factor of the Cold War, however the Soviet Control and breakup of these states play a huge role. The initial control of these nations by the Soviet Union made up the Iron Curtain in Europe, which was the territorial division of Europe between Communist and non Communist nations. This ‘curtain,’ was the main focus of the Cold War and the tension between Western democracies against the spread of communism. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $17 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. -
Truman Doctrine / Containment
The Truman Doctrine, 1947. 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. -
Berlin Airlift
The Berlin Blockade (1 April 1948 – 12 May 1949) 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. -
Arab / Israeli Conflict
refers to the political tension and military conflicts between certain Arab countries and Israel. The roots of the modern Arab–Israeli conflict are bound in the rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. -
Korean War
a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States of America fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. The war arose from the division of Korea at the end of World War II and from the global tensions of the Cold War that developed immediately afterwards. -
Hydrogen Bomb testing in U.S
The United States detonates the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. -
Cuban Revolution
an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and its allies against the US-backed authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. -
Soviet Testing of the Hydrogen Bomb
On August 12, 1953, the Soviet Union tested its first fusion-based device on a tower in central Siberia. The bomb had a yield of 400 kilotons. Though not nearly as powerful as the American bomb tested nine months earlier, it had one key advantage: It was a usable weapon, small enough to be dropped from an airplane. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact (formally, the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, sometimes, informally WarPac, akin in format to NATO) was a collective defense treaty among eight communist states of Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. -
Vietnam War
was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War (1946–54) and was fought between North Vietnam—supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies—and the government of South Vietnam—supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. -
Sputnik Sat. Launch by Soviet Union
was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. -
U-2 Spy Plane Incident
on 1 May 1960, during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace. The aircraft, flown by Central Intelligence Agency pilot Francis Gary Powers, was performing aerial reconnaissance when it was hit by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile and crashed in Sverdlovsk. -
Bay of Pigs
was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961. -
Berlin Wall
was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989, constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until it was opened in November 1989. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
was a 13-day confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet ballistic missiles deployed in Cuba. It played out on television worldwide and was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
Soviet takeover in Czechoslovakia
On August 20, 1968, 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. -
Richard Nixon's Detente Policy
Détente (a French word meaning release from tension) is the name given to a period of improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union that began tentatively in 1971. -
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks lead to SALT 1&2 Treaty
two rounds of bilateral talks and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union—the Cold War superpowers—on the issue of armament control. The two rounds of talks and agreements were SALT I and SALT II.
