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Hitler Dies
that Hitler had committed suicide at about 3.30 pm on 30 April 1945, and that Eva Braun had died with him. In Hitler's case, the manner of death was by shooting - the Fuhrer had put a pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger. -
Civil War in Greece
was fought from 1946 to 1949 between the Greek government army, backed by the United Kingdom and the United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece , the military branch of the Greek Communist Party , backed by Yugoslavia and Albania as well ... -
Truman Doctrine Speech
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 is announced
was the American initiative to aid Europe and Asia, in which the United States gave $17 billion (approximately $160 billion in current dollar value) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. -
Berlin Airlift
At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. -
Creation of NATO
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. -
Soviets test an atomic bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name “First Lightning.” In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. -
Korean War begins
The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union. -
KGB Established
The KGB, an initialism for Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. -
Creation of Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization (also known as the Warsaw Pact) was a political and military alliance established on May 14, 1955 between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries. -
Sputnik
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. -
Partioning of Germany
This is because for nearly a half-century after the end of World War II (WWII), Germany was split into two states. With one communist government and one capitalist government, Germany was on the front lines of the Cold War in the second half of the 20th century.
