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The Berlin Blockade and Airlift began.
Soviet forces in eastern Germany began a blockade of all rail, road, and water communications between East and West Berlin. The United States and Britain responded to this by dropping packages of food and supplies from planes on West Berlin. It lasted nearly 300 days, until Joseph Stalin finally decided to back down in 1949.Slide 6, Berlin Bockade/Airlift -
NATO was forrmed as a military alliance.
The North Atlantic Trade Organization (NATO) was formed by the United States, Canada, and several European countries. It was created to be a mutual defense agency in order to prevent situations like the one that started World War II from happening again. The Soviets responded to this with the Warsaw Pact. Slide 7, Europe’s “Iron Curtain” -
China became a communist country.
Ever since the 1920s, a civil war had been going on in China between communists and nationalists. In 1949, the communists officially took over, with Mao Zedong as the leader. Many nationalists fled to Taiwan. This heightened the Red Scare.Slide 4, Realities of International Politics -
The Soviets created the Warsaw Pact.
The Warsaw Pact was created in response to NATO. It was a similar defense alliance that included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. It remained intact until 1991, around the end of the Cold War. History.com -
The Soviets launch Sputnik satellites, starting the Space Race.
The Soviets launched Sputnik 1 and 2, which were two rocket-powered satellites. The idea that the Soviets were ahead in technology worried people, which started the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, when Kennedy became president in 1961, he promised that the U.S. would be the first to put men on the moon. Slide 10, Space Race -
The Bay of Pigs Invasion began as part of a plan to remove Fidel Castro from power in Cuba.
The plan was for the CIA to train Cuban exiles to invade Cuba with the hope that other Cubans would join them and start a revolt against Castro. It turned out to be a disaster. Castro knew they were coming, and they ended up surrendering very quickly. This, in part, leads to the Cuban Missile Crisis.Slide 13, Bay of Pigs Invasion -
The Berlin Wall is built, separating East Germany from the West.
The wall was fortified over the years, and was 80 miles long if stretched in a straight line. It was built by the Soviets and their East German allies to keep Germans living under communist rule from escaping to West Germany. There were many people who died trying to get to the other side.Slide 6, Berlin Blockade/Airlift -
The Cuban Missile Crisis began when U.S. surveillance planes flying over Cuba took photographs of the Soviets constructing nuclear weapons facilities there.
After President Kennedy saw the photographs, the U.S. started what was basically a naval blockade of Cuba, and came very close to being in a state of war. It ended with an agreement that Cuba would remove its nuclear weapons in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. The U.S. also promised more secretly to remove their missiles from Turkey. Slide 17, Cuban Missile Crisis -
Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first men to set foot on the moon.
Apollo 11 launched on the morning of July 16, 1969. After a few days in orbit, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. He and Aldrin explored the moon for two and a half hours, and left behind an American flag. This puts the United States ahead of the Soviets in the Space Race. Over the next three and a half years, ten other astronauts also visit the moon. NASA -
SALT I is passed in order to end the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) was finalized on this date after months of negotiation between President Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. It was ratified by the U.S. Senate on August 3, 1972, and was to have a duration of five years. It was followed in 1979 by SALT II, which imposed more specific regulations on missiles. The Cold War Museum -
The Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) was initiated under Ronald Reagan as a nuclear defense system.
The plan was intended to guard against possible nuclear attacks against the U.S. It was sophisticated, and planned to intercept missiles while they were still flying in order to minimize their effects. However budget restrictions and concerns that this violated SALT led to abandonment of the plan a few years later. The Cold War Museum -
The fall of the Berlin Wall began, reuniting East and West Germany.
On this date, the government of East Germany announced that citizens were free to visit West Germany. Over the next few weeks, the public began to chip away the wall. The wall was physically destroyed in 1990 by the government, and Germany was completely reunified by October 3, 1990.Wikipedia -
The Soviet Union collapses, ending the Cold War.
The Soviet Union faced much civil unrest, and national movements were breaking out in many non-Russian areas of the Soviet Union. Communist leaders tried to fight this by staging a coup in August 1991, but the coup failed. A few months later, the Soviet Union completely dissolved into 15 separate countries, ending the Cold War and leading to a reorganization of political and military alliances. The Cold War Museum
