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Potsdam Confrence
The Big Three—Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced on July 26 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee), and U.S. President Harry Truman—met in Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to August 2, 1945, to negotiate terms for the end of World War II. -
Communist sieze power in Poland / Marshall Plan Begins
On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe -
Berlin Airlift begins
A military operation in the late 1940s that brought food and other needed goods into West Berlin by air after the government of East Germany, which at that time surrounded West Berlin (see Berlin wall), had cut off its supply routes. The United States joined with western European nations in flying the supplies in. The airlift was one of the early events of the cold war. -
Nato is Created
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a military alliance of European and North American democracies founded after World War II to strengthen international ties between member states—especially the United States and Europe—and to serve as a counter-balance to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. -
Soviets Detonate Atomic Bomb
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. It came as a great shock to the United States because they were not expecting the Soviet Union to possess nuclear weapon knowledge so soon. Previously, the United States had used two atomic bombs on Japan to cause them to surrender during World War II. -
China Falls To Communism
The Chinese Revolution of 1949. On October 1, 1949, Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People's Republic of China (PRC). -
Warsaw Pact Formed
The Warsaw Pact is the name commonly given to the treaty between Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union, which was signed in Poland in 1955 and was officially called 'The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance'. -
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam. -
Red Army Crushes Hungarian Revolution
Following nearly two weeks of protest and political instability in Hungary, Soviet tanks and troops viciously crush the protests. Thousands were killed and wounded, and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. -
Sputnik Launched
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. -
Castro Installs Communist Government in Cuba
Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-) established the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere after leading an overthrow of the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He ruled over Cuba for nearly five decades, until handing off power to his younger brother Raúl in 2008. -
Berlin Wall Is Built
During the early years of the Cold War, West Berlin was a geographical loophole through which thousands of East Germans fled to the democratic West. In response, the Communist East German authorities built a wall that totally encircled West Berlin. It was thrown up overnight, on 13 August 1961 -
Sino Soviet Splits
The Sino-Soviet split was the deterioration of political and ideological relations between the neighboring states of People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the Cold War. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. -
Soviet Army Crushes Czech uprising
In the face of rising anti-Soviet protests in Czechoslovakia, Soviet troops (backed by troops from other Warsaw Pact nations) intervene to crush the protest and restore order. The brutal Soviet action shocked the West and dealt a devastating blow to U.S.-Soviet relations. -
Nixon visits China
Richard Nixon meets with Mao Zedong in Beijing, February 21, 1972. U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and China. -
Coup in Chile
he 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event in both the history of Chile and the Cold War. Following an extended period of social and political unrest between the center-right dominated Congress -
Civil War: Angola becomes communist
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Soviet invasion of afghanistan
The Soviet–Afghan War lasted over nine years from December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups fought against the Soviet Army and allied Afghan forces -
Gorbachev starts glasnost & Perestrokia
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Tiananmen Square Protest
Tiananmen Square incident, also called June Fourth incident or 6/4,
Tiananmen Square incident: Tiananmen Square, central Beijing series of protests and demonstrations in China in the spring of 1989 that culminated on the night of June 3–4 with a government crackdown on the demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. -
Solidarity forms first non communist government in Poland.
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Fall Of the Berlin wall
The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall. On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. -
Fall Of the Soviet Union
On December 25, 1991, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, thereafter replaced by the Russian tricolor. Earlier in the day, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.
