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WW2 Ends
With the end of WW2, there were two main superpowers that had emerged as the leaders of the war, The U.S. and the USSR -
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The Cold War
The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted for decades and resulted in anti-communist suspicions and international incidents that led the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear disaster. -
NATO
In 1949, the prospect of further Communist expansion prompted the United States and 11 other Western nations to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet Union and its affiliated Communist nations in Eastern Europe founded a rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. -
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The 1950s
“America at this moment,” said the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945, “stands at the summit of the world.” During the 1950s, it was easy to see what Churchill meant. The United States was the world’s strongest military power. Its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity–new cars, suburban houses, and other consumer goods–were available to more people than ever before. However, the 1950s were also an era of great conflict. -
The Suez Crisis
The Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt with the help of France and Great Britain after Egypt nationalized the Suez canal, which controlled two-thirds of Europe's oil, but Isreal ultimately lost the war. -
Fidel Castro
Cuban leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016) 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. Castro’s Cuba also had a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States–most notably resulting in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. -
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The CIA launched what its leaders believed would be the definitive strike: a full-scale invasion of Cuba by 1,400 American-trained Cubans who had fled their homes when Castro took over. However, the invasion did not go well: The invaders were badly outnumbered by Castro’s troops, and they surrendered after less than 24 hours of fighting. -
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The Berlin Wall
The Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark,” between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep so-called Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, -
Cuban Missile Crisis
In a TV address on October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and made it clear the U.S. was prepared to use military force if necessary to neutralize this perceived threat to national security. However, disaster was avoided when the U.S. agreed to Soviet offers to remove the Cuban missiles in exchange for the U.S. promising not to invade Cuba. (https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cuban-missile-crisis) -
The Space Race
Beginning in the late 1950s, space would become another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower, and–by extension–its political-economic system. -
Collapse of The Soviet Union
Representatives from Soviet republics (Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) had already announced that they would no longer be part of the Soviet Union. Instead, they declared they would establish a Commonwealth of Independent States. It was a peaceful end to a long, terrifying, and sometimes bloody epoch in world history.