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The Yalta Conference was a meeting of the leaders of three of the world's most powerful nations: Franklin Roosevelt (U.S.A.), Winston Churchill (Britain), and Joseph Stalin (Soviet Union). In this meeting, they discussed the postwar reorganization of Germany and the European continent.
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This was a meeting between America, the Soviet Union, and Britain following Germany's unconditional surrender. They gathered to decide how to administer Germany, as well as working to solve issues on the peace treaty and counter the effects of the war.
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Following WWII, 50 nations came together, committed to maintaining world peace. After meeting in San Francisco in April/June of 1945, the organization was ratified in October of the same year by 29 nations. -
Containment describes the foreign policy of America and its allies throughout the Cold War. Formulated by George Kennan in 1947, containment sought to find the middle ground between confrontation/overthrowing Communist powers and the relaxation of foreign involvement.
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On March 12, 1947, President Harry Truman addressed Congress in a speech that became known as the Truman Doctrine, in which he asked for aid for Greece and Turkey, who were facing Communist takeovers. In this doctrine, Truman asserted that the United States would provide assistance (politically, economically, and militarily) to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. -
Officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan delivered $13 billion in aid to European nations. This was done with the intent to rebuild war-torn regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, improve European prosperity, and prevent the spread of communism.
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The Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin that were under Western control. They offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin. -
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide each other collective, mutual security against the Soviet Union. -
Contrary to Soviet predictions, the Berlin Airlift was a great success, providing relief to the people of West Berlin. The embarrassment of this combined with economic issues in East Berlin prompted the Soviets to end the blockade.
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The Soviets successfully tested their first nuclear device, called RDS-1 or "First Lightning" (codenamed "Joe-1" by the West), at Semipalatinsk on August 29, 1949. This intensified the arms race between America and the Soviet Union. -
After years of increasing tensions between the Korean nations, the Korean War began when the North Korean army invaded South Korea in a coordinated along the 38th parallel, the line dividing communist North Korea from the non-communist South Korea.
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In order to counter the NATO alliance, the Soviet Union, along with seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe signed the Warsaw Pact. Much like NATO, this was an agreement of collective defence. -
On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. This is viewed as the start to the "Space Age/Race". -
Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista was overthrown in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's prime minister. -
In May of 1960, an American U-2 was shot down while flying deep in Soviet airspace while performing a reconnaissance mission. This caused the collapse of a scheduled summit conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France. -
The Bay of Pigs invasion was a failed landing on the southwestern coast of Cuba, which attempted to overthrow Castro's regime. As it was financed and directed by the U.S. government, its failure led to major shifts in international relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union.
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In the early hours of August 13, 1961, construction began on the Berlin Wall. The fences and barriers that were put up sealed off entry points from Soviet-controlled East Berlin into the Western-controlled west side of the city.
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Fueled by fears of Communism spreading, as well as economic interests, America decided to become involved in the Vietnamese conflict. So, in August of 1961, President Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1962, which provided "... military assistance to countries which are on the rim of the Communist world and under direct attack".
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After a U-2 plane spotted Soviet nuclear missiles on the island of Cuba, the Soviet and American governments were engaged in an intense 13 day standoff, on the brink of nuclear war. After realizing the potentially devastating impacts of nuclear war and coming to an agreement (Soviets would remove missiles from Cuba, America pledged not the invade Cuba), the crisis came to an end.
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American President Richard Nixon and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed SALT I on May 26, 1972, in Moscow. This was the first time in the Cold War that the United States and Soviet Union agreed to limit the number of missiles in their nuclear arsenals. -
As Saigon fell to the communist forces, the last remaining American troops were airlifted out of South Vietnam, marking an end to American involvement in the conflict. -
With the SDI, Reagan hoped to gain a major advantage over the Soviets by eliminating the threat of the many nuclear missiles they had aimed at America. In the announcement of the program, Reagan asked the scientists who “gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”
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Facing problems in their own country, which were being worsened by the high cost of international war (which was in a stalemate), Gorbachev decided to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan. This ended a long, bloody, and ultimately fruitless conflict for the Soviets.
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As the Cold War began to deescalate across Eastern Europe, the East Berlin Communist Party announced a change in the city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight on November 9, citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were free to cross the country's borders. -
A unification treaty was ratified in September, and went into effect on October 3, 1990. The GDR joined the Federal Republic as five additional Länder, and the two parts of divided Berlin became one city.
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Because of widespread corruption, nepotism and lack of transparency, Gorbachev decided to allow elections with a multi-party system and create a presidency for the Soviet Union. This began the slow process of democratization that eventually destabilized Communist control and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which officially dissolved in December 26, 1991.