Download Major Events of the Cold War


February, 1945 – Yalta Conference
› Allies agree to divide up Germany after the war


May, 1945 – Germany surrenders
June, 1945 – United Nations chartered
› Security Council
 5 Permanent members = Great Britain, China, France,
Soviet Union, U.S.A.

July – August, 1945 – Potsdam Conference
› Truman tells Stalin about the atomic bomb


August 6th & 9th, 1945 – U.S. drops atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan
September, 1945 – Japan surrenders
March 5, 1946 – Churchill’s “Iron Curtain”
Speech
 March 12, 1947 – Truman Doctrine

› $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey to
prevent communist revolutions

1948 – 1952 – Marshall Plan
› $12.5 billion in aid to Western Europe to
rebuild

June, 1948 – May, 1949 – Berlin Airlift
Peep under the
Iron curtain
March 6, 1946

Containment = U.S. policy to attempt to
prevent the spread of communism
› Forming alliances against the Soviet Union
› Helping countries resist communist influence

Containment policy in action
› Truman Doctrine
› Marshall Plan
› Berlin Airlift
› NATO

NATO (1949) = North Atlantic Treaty
Organization
› 10 western European nations, U.S. & Canada
› Defensive military alliance

Warsaw Pact (1955)
› Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia,
Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and
Albania
› 1961 – Berlin Wall built, becomes the physical
symbol of the Cold War

Many countries do not join either side
› India and China
1945 – U.S. tests and uses the first atomic
bombs
 1949 – U.S.S.R. tests an atomic weapon
 1952 – U.S. tests first H-bomb (hydrogen
or thermonuclear bomb)
 1953 – U.S.S.R. tests an H-bomb
 1953 – U.S. Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles begins “brinkmanship”

› Threaten to go to the “brink” of war against
the Soviet Union

1957 – U.S.S.R. tests first ICBMs
(Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles)
› Missiles that could carry a nuclear weapon
thousands of miles

1957 – U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik into orbit
› First ever artificial satellite

1960 – U.S. U-2 spy plane shot down over
the Soviet Union
› U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers captured



1957 – U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik
1958 – U.S.A. launches Explorer I
1961 – U.S.S.R. sends first man into space
› Yuri Gagarin


1961 – Alan Shepard becomes first American in
space
1969 – U.S. lands first men on the moon
› Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, & Michael Collins


1971 – U.S.S.R. creates first manned space
station
1975 – U.S. & U.S.S.R. begin working together in
space

1946 – China renews its civil war
› Jiang Jieshi leads the Nationalists
 Was given money by the U.S. to help
› Mao Zedong leads the Communists
 Was given money and weapons by the U.S.S.R. to
help

Zedong’s communist forces take control in
October 1949
› Creates the People’s Republic of China

Jieshi and his followers retreated to Taiwan
› Creates the Nationalist Republic of China

Mao leads Marxist Socialism
› Created collective farming and nationalized businesses
and factories

The Great Leap Forward
› Created giant collective farms (communes)
› Failed to produce enough food and led to famine

Split with the Soviet Union
› Both wanted to lead the world of communism
› Disagreements over the border

Cultural Revolution
› Red Guard – high school and college students who led a
militant revolution
› Beat and killed any enemy of Mao
› Eventually put down by Mao’s army
The Korean War: A “Police Action” (1950-1953)
Kim Il-Sung
Syngman Rhee
June 25, 1950 – North Korea invades
South Korea (38th Parallel)
 The U.N. sent troops to defend South
Korea

› Mostly Americans led by Douglas MacArthur
U.N. forces come close to taking over all
of North Korea, and then China joins the
conflict
 Fighting ends with a ceasefire in July,
1953

› Still no peace treaty
About 1,789,000
Americans
served in the
Korean War
(about 90% of the
U.N. force). An
estimated 36,576
Americans were
killed in the War.
A total of 95,700
U.N. forces were
killed. As for the
North Koreans,
about 215,000
soldiers were
killed. China lost
more than
400,000 soldiers.
Country
Soldiers who served
in the Korean War
Australia
17,164
Belgium
3,498
Canada
27,000
Colombia
6,200
Ethiopia
3,518
France
4,000
Greece
5,000
Luxembourg
89
Netherlands
5,300
New Zealand
4,500
Philippines
7,420
South Africa
Thailand
811
6,500
Turkey
15,000
United Kingdom
60,000
Vietnam War: 1965-1973
Ho Chi Minh

French Indochina
› Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
› Independence movement begins in the early 1900s

Ho Chi Minh
› Gains communist support in the 1930s against the
French
› Leader of the Vietminh against Japan during World
War II

Fighting Begins
› Fights against the French after WWII
› Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends French involvement

Domino Theory
› U.S. theory (Eisenhower) that believed
communism would move from nation to nation
› Justified involvement in Vietnam

Divided Vietnam
› North Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh leads communist
government
› South Vietnam – Ngo Dinh Diem leads anticommunist government
 Vietcong – South Vietnamese Communist fighters
 1963 – Diem assassinated

Gulf of Tonkin
› American ships attacked near North Vietnam

U.S. escalation
› President Lyndon Johnson increases U.S.
involvement
› U.S. fights ground and air war
› South Vietnam government and the U.S. become
more and more unpopular

U.S. Withdrawal
› President Nixon begins Vietnamization program =
South Vietnam takes over the fighting
› U.S. bombs Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
› 1973 – last U.S. soldier leaves
› 1975 – North Vietnam takes over
United States Marines injured during operation 'Starlight', near Chu Lai. Batang Peninsula, 1965. In August 1965, three
Marine Corps battalions overran the 1st Vietcong Regiment and, during the course of a 6 day period, killed over 600
Vietcong soldiers with the loss of 51 Marines and over 200 wounded. 58,169 Americans died in the Vietnam War.
May 1968 - This woman hit by helicopter rocket fire was helped by a nervous South
Vietnamese soldier in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam. Estimates of civilian deaths in
the Vietnam conflict vary, but as many as 2 million Vietnamese civilians died in the North
and South between 1959 and 1975 because of the fighting.
Vietnamese children flee from their homes in Trang Bang June 8th, 1972. A South Vietnamese air force
plane has accidentally dropped a napalm bomb on the village 26 miles outside of Saigon. This is
without a doubt one of the most remembered images of the war. Twenty-five years later, the young girl
running naked from her village, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, was named a UNESCO goodwill ambassador.
April 30,1975, Saigon, South Vietnam --- North Vietnamese troops enter Saigon on tanks, ending the
Vietnam War. --- Image by © Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma/CORBIS
Two years after the U.S. officially withdrew from Vietnam, the North Vietnamese Army conquered South
Vietnam. Vietnam is still a Communist country today. About 1.1 million NVA (North Vietnamese Army)
and 224,000 ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) soldiers died in the war.
Pol Pot was the leader of the
Communist government known as
the Khmer Rouge. His policies
led to about 1/4th of the
Cambodian population being
killed (about 2 million people).
In Phnom Penh, the Cambodian
capital, the Khmer Rouge converted
this former school building into an
infamous prison known as S21. Here, men, women and children
were shackled to iron beds and
tortured — before they were beaten
to death, prosecutors said. Prisoners
were all photographed before they
were put to death.
Bobby Fisher, one of the greatest
chess players of all time, plays a
“pick-up” chess match with Cuban
leader Fidel Castro in 1966 in Havana.
The aid given to European
countries under the Marshall
Plan helped Western Europe
get back on its feet, thus
avoiding a possible turn to
Communism.
The Soviet Union gave
financial help to Egypt in
building the Aswan High
Dam.
Francis Gary Powers was
the pilot of a U-2 spy
plane shot down over
the Soviet Union in 1960.
Americans Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
were tried and executed for espionage
(passing secrets about the atomic bomb
to the Soviet Union) in the early 1950s in
the U.S. These were the first two
executions of citizens for spying in U.S.
history and the case remains
controversial to this day.
The KGB (Komitet
Gosudarstvennoi
Bezopasnosti or Committee
of State Security) was the
main Soviet intelligence
agency and Soviet
equivalent of the American
CIA.
The Korean War
Soviet troops entering
Afghanistan
Afghan Rebels (1979)

1959 – Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista
› U.S. begins embargo on Cuba
› Cuba turns to the Soviet Union for economic
and military aid

Bay of Pigs Invasion
› President Kennedy allows for the U.S. CIA to
train exiled Cuban nationals to invade Cuba
› Fails, U.S. and Soviet relations get worse
Cuban exiles taken
prisoner after the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion (April,
1961).
Soviet Union builds missile bases in Cuba
 U.S. placed a naval blockade on Cuba
 U.S. President Kennedy and Soviet
Premier Khrushchev face off for 13 days

› World prepares for nuclear war between the
two super powers!

Soviet Union agrees to remove missiles in
Cuba and U.S. removes missiles in Turkey
Aerial view of a missile site discovered
by the U.S. in Cuba in 1962
US Navy Picket Ship, the Vesole, intercepting the Soviet ship Potzunov (which
was carrying missiles) as it is leaving Cuba during US Naval blockade during
Nixon followed a policy of détente, or
easing of tensions, with the Soviet Union
and China. He signed the SALT I Treaty
with Leonid Brezhnev in 1972.
After initially taking a very hard-line stance
against the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan saw
relations improve when Mikhail Gorbachev took
power in 1985. Reagan and Gorbachev signed the
INF Treaty (above) in 1987.
1989 – Berlin Wall
torn down
1991 – Soviet Union
dissolves