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The beginning and end to the Cold War
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Berlin Blockade begins
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major causes of the Cold War. What the Soviets did was block all food and fuel supplies coming into Berlin in an act to push out their Western rivals. -
Truman approves the development of the H-Bomb
This was the first ever hydrogen bomb and it was talked about to be hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan during WWII. About 5 months earlier, the Soviet Union had successfully detonated their atomic bomb at their crash site. A little later, the US found that one of their top scientists in nuclear development was a spy for the Soviet Union. With these events, Truman made the go ahead to start this project. -
Start of the Korean War
The Korean War was a battle between capitalism and communism. Korea was divided into north and south and were ruled by their respective powers. North Korea, with the defensive assurances from the Soviet Union, invaded South Korea, beginning the war. -
Warsaw Pact is formed
The Warsaw Pact is a common name given to the treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovikia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union. It was a treaty based on equality between the countries and mutual non interference in one anothers internal affairs. -
Start of the Vietnam War
The importance of the Vietnam War was the efforts of the country of Vietnam to stay under a communist government and the US's efforts to stop this spread. -
Fidel Castro takes over Cuba
This was an important event because the US did not trust Castro and saw him as a threat. He was a dictator by definition, taking over the entire country and trying to rule over everything. He wanted total power and the US had to keep a close eye on him for fear of war. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The original plan was to bomb two air bases in Cuba. The first mishap happened when 8 bombers left Nicaragua to bomb Cuban Airfields. The second invasion was cancelled. On April 17, the Cuban-exile invasion force landed at beaches along the Bay of Pigs and came under immediate fire. The Cuban planes shot and bombed the invaders, sank two escort ships, and half of the exiles air support. -
Construction of the Berlin Wall begins
The Berlin Wall was erected to seperate communist East Berlin from free West Berlin. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
This was a acrisis between the Soviet Union and the US. After the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban and Soviet governments began to build bases located in Cuba for nuclear missiles. President Kennedy, sent in missions on a two hour basis to make sure nothing was going on. With the threat of invasion on both sides, Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle the missiles as long as the US didn't invade Cuba. This was the closest encounter to a nuclear war that the world has seen. -
End of the Cold War!
The end of the Cold War came when the Soviet ended. it began when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. He wanted to reconstruct the countries society and economy. The USSR began to sign treaties and to withdraw from wars they were in.
