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Tehran Conference
During the Conference, the three leaders (Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt) coordinated their military strategy against Germany and Japan and made a number of important decisions concerning the post World War II era. The most notable achievements of the Conference focused on the next phases of the war against the Axis powers in Europe and Asia. -
World War II Ends
World War II ends after Germany surrenders and two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan by the United States -
Iron Curtain Speech
Winston Churchill gives the Iron Curtain speech, which says that an iron curtain has descended across Europe, the Soviets are trying to take over Europe and spread communism. It slowly spreads to Poland and Czechoslovakia. -
Marshall Aid Program
The United States comes up with the Marshall Aid program to help rebuild European countries from the war. Russia turns down the aid as they did not want the U.S to have control over their economy or have to be in their debt. The U.S transferred over $12 Billion to Western European countries. -
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Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of the United States, Great Britain and France to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lay within Russian-occupied East Germany. Eventually, the western powers instituted an airlift that lasted nearly a year and delivered vital supplies and relief to West Berlin. The Berlin Blockade, and the Allied response in the form of the Berlin Airlift, represented the first major conflict of the Cold War. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty was signed. During the Cold War, NATO forces provided a frontline deterrence against the Soviet Union and its satellite states. 12 countries signed it, today there are 30 countries in NATO. -
USSR Detonates It's First Atomic Bomb
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. The atomic race had begun. -
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Korean War
Korean War, conflict between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea ( North Korea) and the Republic of Korea ( South Korea) in which at least 2.5 million persons lost their lives. The war reached international proportions in June 1950 when North Korea, supplied and advised by the Soviet Union, invaded the South. The war ended unofficially on 27 July 1953 in an armistice. -
Stalin Dies
Joseph Stalin, the second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at the Kuntsevo Dacha aged 74 after suffering a stroke. He was given a state funeral with four days of national mourning declared. His body was subsequently embalmed and interred in Lenin's & Stalin's Mausoleum until 1961. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was a mutual defense treaty between the Soviet Union (USSR) and seven Soviet satellite nations of Eastern Europe signed in Warsaw, Poland, on May 14, 1955, and disbanded in 1991. Officially known as the “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance,” the alliance was proposed by the Soviet Union to counter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a similar security alliance between the United States, Canada, and Western European nations established in 1949. -
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War represents the fight between communism and capitalism, the fight of the Cold War. Basically, the Vietnam War was a microcosm of the Cold War during that time period. It was the desire to spread communism versus the desire to stop it. -
Communist Government Cuba
Communist Dictatorship in Cuba (1959-present) Before communism, Cuba ranked among the most developed Latin American countries, with living standards exceeding those of many European countries. Forty years of communist dictatorship have now led the country to the verge of collapse. -
USSR shoots down US U-2 Spy Plane
The 1960 U-2 incident occurred on 1 May 1960, when an American U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. With no small degree of pleasure, Khrushchev pulled off one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War by producing not only the mostly-intact wreckage of the U-2, but also the captured pilot-very much alive. A angry Eisenhower had to publicly admit that it was indeed a U.S. spy plane. -
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Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was built to separate East and West Germany. After World War II, Germany was partitioned into two: the USSR-allied East Germany, and the US-allied West Germany. The wall was built to stop East Germans from escaping to West Germany. -
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Cuban Missile Crisis
An international crisis in October 1962, the closest approach to nuclear war at any time between the US and the Soviet Union. When the US discovered Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba, President John F. Kennedy demanded their removal and announced a naval blockade of the island; the Soviet leader Khrushchev acceded to the US demands a week later. -
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Test Ban treaty between UK, USSR, and US limits nuclear testing. France and China reject it and develop their own weapons. Prohibits nuclear weapons tests "or any other nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. While not banning tests underground, the Treaty does prohibit nuclear explosions in this environment if they cause "radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the State under whose jurisdiction or control" the explosions were conducted. -
Non-Proliferation Treaty
Signed by UK, USSR, and US: agree not to assist non-signatories in gaining nuclear weapons. This treaty is the first evidence of détente-era cooperation during the Cold War. Is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. -
START Treaty
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed on July 31, 1991 by President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The treaty limited the number of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and nuclear warheads either country could possess. When fully implemented, the treaty resulted in the removal of about 80 percent of all strategic nuclear weapons then in existence. -
USSR Dissolved
The Soviet Union officially dissolved on December 25, 1991, effectively ending the 40-year-long Cold War with the United States. When the Soviet Union dissolved, its 15 former Communist Party-controlled republics gained independence, leaving the United States as the world’s last remaining superpower.
