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"Iron Curtain"
The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a speech called "Iron Curtain". The speech marks the beginning of the Cold War. -
Berlin Blockade
During this time, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railraods, roads, and canals to the sectors of Berlin, under allied control. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NATO was a formal alliance between the territories of North America and Europe. The main purpose of this was to defend each other from the possiblitiy of the communist Soviet Union taking control of their nation. -
Korean War
As it begins, it becomes the first armed conflict in the Cold War. This was a global struggle between communism and democracy. -
The Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact is formed by the Soviet Union and communist countries in eastern Europe as a military defense organization to counter NATO. The treaty included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. -
Hungarian Uprising
The people of Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe were ruled over with a rod of iron by Communist Russia and anybody who challenged the rule of Stalin and Russia paid the price. -
Cuban Missle Crisis
The Cuban Missile crisis sparks a major confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union when the U.S. discovers the existence of Soviet missile installations in Cuba. -
Tonkin Gulf Resolution
Congressional resolution passed in 1964 that authorized military action in Southeast Asia. On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. -
Non-Nuclear Treaty
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was an agreement signed in 1968 by several of the major nuclear and non-nuclear powers that pledged their cooperation in stemming the spread of nuclear technology. -
End of Vietnam War
The Vietnam War severely damaged the U.S. economy. Unwilling to raise taxes to pay for the war, President Johnson unleashed a cycle of inflation. The war also weakened U.S. military morale and undermined, for a time, the U.S. commitment to internationalism. -
Soviet War in Afghanistan
Civil war raged after the withdrawal, setting the stage for the Taliban's takeover of the country. The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan, beginning a decade-long war that ends with their withdrawal in 1988. -
Testing out the Waters
The Soviet Union begins what it has announced is a 5-month unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. The Reagan administration dismisses the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda and refuses to follow suit. Gorbachev declares several extensions, but the United States fails to reciprocate, and the moratorium comes to an end on February 5, 1987. -
Reykjavik Summit
The meeting, the second between the two leaders, was intended not as a summit but as a session in which the leaders explored the possibility of limiting each country’s strategic nuclear weapons to create momentum in ongoing arms-control negotiations. -
Fall of the Wall
The Berlin Wall Falls -
Fall of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.
