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Alger Hiss Case
Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union in 1948, but statutes of limitations had expired for espionage. He was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. -
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a political and social revolution across the territory of the empire. It took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War. This caused Russia's army to be in a state mutiny. Grassroots community assemblies called Soviets insisted on a prerogative to influence the government and control various militias. The Soviets were dominated by soldiers and urban industrial working class. -
Potsdam Conference
The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm in Potsdam. The participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, represented respectively. Stalin, Churchill, and Truman gathered to decide how to administer Germany, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks before. The goals of the conference were to include the establishment of postwar order, peace treaty issues, and to counter the effects of the war. -
Atomic Bomb
Scientists first developed nuclear weapons technology during World War II. Atomic bombs have been used only twice in war both times by the United States against Japan at the end of World War II. The atomic bombs killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki. -
Long Telegram
George F Kennan was observing the Kremlin and wrote the Long Telegram. The Long Telegram was a review of how the Soviet Union saw the world. It was an 8000- word dispatch to Washington. -
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was initially a non-physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts of the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West and its allied states. -
The Hollywood 10
The Hollywood Ten is a 1950 American 16mm short documentary film. In the film, each member of the Hollywood Ten made a short speech denouncing McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklisting. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy whose purpose was to counter Soviet expansion during the Cold War. On March 12, 1947 the Truman Doctrine was announced to congress by president Harry S. Truman. The Truman Doctrine was further developed on July 4, 1948 when he pledged to contain threats from Turkey and Greece. -
Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan was an American initiative passed in 1948 to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $12 billion in economic assistance to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II.Replacing an earlier proposal for a Morgenthau Plan, it operated for four years beginning on April 3, 1948. -
Berlin Blockade
The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of France, Great Britain and the United States to travel to their sectors of Berlin. -
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. -
First Soviet Bomb Project
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. It was used to develop nuclear weapons. Although the Soviet scientific community discussed the possibility of an atomic bomb throughout the 1930s, going as far as making a concrete proposal to develop such a weapon in 1940. -
Chinese Communist Revolution
The Chinese Communist Revolution, led by the Communist Party of China and Chairman Mao Zedong, resulted in the proclamation of the People's Republic of China, on October 1, 1949. The revolution began in 1946 after the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and was the second part of the Chinese Civil War (1945–49). In China, the revolutionary period is known as the War of Liberation. -
Molotov Plan
The Molotov Plan was the system created by the Soviet Union in 1947 in order to provide aid to rebuild the countries in Eastern Europe that were politically and economically aligned to the Soviet Union. It was originally called the "Brother Plan" in the Soviet Union. -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South
Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. As a product of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States divided Korea into two sovereign states in 1948 with the border set at the 38th parallel. -
Rosenberg Trial
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who were accused and convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple were accused of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and valuable nuclear weapon designs; at that time the United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 in new york. -
The Army-McCarthy hearings
The Army–McCarthy hearings were a series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization officially known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, commonly known as the Warsaw Pact or DDSV was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. -
Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 , or the Hungarian Uprising, was a nationwide revolution against the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Leaderless at the beginning, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the Red Army drove Nazi Germany from its territory at the End of World War II in Europe. -
U2 Incident
On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was hit by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk . Powers parachuted safely and was captured. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs invasion was a failed attempt by US-sponsored Cuban exiles to reverse Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, beginning with a military invasion of northern Cuba.A Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored rebel group, Brigade 2506, attempted an invasion on 17 April 1961 that lasted just three days. Brigade 2506 was a counter-revolutionary military group made up mostly of Cuban exiles who had traveled to the United States. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. The confrontation is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. -
Assassination of JFK
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald firing in ambush from a nearby building. The motorcade rushed to the Hospital when 30 mins lager he was pronounced dead. -
Invasion of Czechoslovakia
The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, officially known as Operation Danube, was a joint invasion of Czechoslovakia by five Warsaw Pact countries, on the night of 20–21 August 1968. Approximately 250,000 Warsaw pact troops attacked Czechoslovakia that night, with Romania and Albania refusing to participate. East Germans except for specialists did not participate in the invasion because they were ordered from Moscow not to cross the Czechoslovak border. -
Nixon visits China
U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important because it marked the culmination of the Nixon administration's resumption of harmonious relations between the United States and mainland China after years of diplomatic isolation. The seven-day official visit to three Chinese cities was the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC. -
Reagan elected
The 1980 United States presidential election was the 49th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. Republican nominee Ronald Reagan defeated Democrat Jimmy Carter. Due to the rise of conservatism following Reagan's victory, some historians consider the election to be a realigning election that marked the start of the "Reagan Era". -
SDI announced
The Strategic Defense Initiative was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons The concept was first announced publicly by President Ronald Reagan on 23 March 1983. Reagan was a vocal critic of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, which he described as a "suicide pact", and he called upon the scientists and engineers of the United States to develop a system that would render nuclear weapons obsolete. -
Geneva Conference with Gorbachev
The Geneva Summit of 1985 was a Cold War-era meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. It was held on November 19 and 20, 1985, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders met for the first time to hold talks on international diplomatic relations and the arms race. -
‘Tear down this wall’ speech
"Tear down this wall", also known as the Berlin Wall Speech, is a speech delivered by United States President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on Friday, June 12, 1987. Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had separated West and East Berlin since 1961. The name is derived from a key line in the middle of the speech: "Mr. Gorbachev...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" -
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Construction of the Wall was commenced by the German Democratic Republic on 13 August 1961. The Wall cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany, including East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds", and other defenses. -
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall, on 9 November 1989, was a pivotal event in world history which marked the falling of the Iron Curtain. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterwards. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit three weeks later, and the reunification of Germany took place during the following year.
