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Cold War Timeline
Timeline of the history of events during the Coldwar from 1947 to 1966. -
Truman Doctrine
President Truman promised to help any country facing a Communist takeover -
Marshall Plan
This was a program of economic aid offered by the United States to any European country. The plan was rejected outright by Stalin and any Eastern Bloc country considering accepting aid was reprimanded severely. Consequently, the aid was only given to Western European Countries. -
Cominform
The USSR set up Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) which was the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties responsible for the creation of the Eastern bloc. -
Rio Pact
U.S. meet 19 Latin American countries and created a security zone
around the hemisphere -
Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia
Benes gave in to communist demands and handed his cabinet over to the party. Rigged elections were held in May to validate the communist victory. Czechoslovakia became a single-party state. -
Loyalty Program
ruman's Loyalty Program created to catch Cold War spies -
Formation of West Germany
The French, USA and UK partitions of Germany were merged to form West Germany. -
Berlin Blockade
Russia’s response to the merger of the French, USA, and UK partitions of Berlin was to cut all road and rail links to that sector. This meant that those living in Western Berlin had no access to food supplies and faced starvation. Food was brought to Western Berliners by US and UK airplanes, an exercise known as the Berlin Airlift. -
NATO ratified
On 4 April 1949, the 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington D.C. The Treaty committed each member to share the risk, responsibilities, and benefits of collective defense. -
End of Berlin Blockade
Russia ended the blockade of Berlin. -
Russia tested its first atomic bomb
Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, code-named 'RDS-1', at the Semipalatinsk test site in modern-day Kazakhstan. The device had a yield of 22 kilotons. -
Truman approved H-bomb development
President Harry S. Truman publicly announces his decision to support the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. -
Joe McCarthy begins Communist witch hunt and loyalty tests
McCarthy was an Republic Senator for the state of Wisconsin who made claims that Communist spies were in the U.S Federal Government. -
Korean War Begins
Stalin supports North Korea invading South Korea
equipped with Soviet weapons. Some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. -
Federal Civil Defense Administration established
U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration, Blackbird. The Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) was organized by Democratic president Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) on December 1, 1950. -
United Nations Troops
United Nations troops recapture Seoul. -
Truman fires MacArthur
President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command of the U.S. forces in Korea. The firing of MacArthur set off a brief uproar among the American public, but Truman remained committed to keeping the conflict in Korea a “limited war.” -
A-bombs developed by Britain
Britain's first atomic bomb was detonated on 3 October 1952. The mud-laden cauliflower explosion. Britain developed its own atom bomb to remain a great power and avoid complete dependence on the United States, which was refusing to share atomic information. -
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista overthrows the Cuban government of President Prio Socarras. -
Hungary Prime Minister
Matyas Rakosi become prime minister of Hungary. -
Nuclear Arms Race atomic test series of 11 explosions at Nevada Test Site
the government detonated its first atomic device on the site, resulting in a tremendous explosion, the flash from which was seen as far away as San Francisco. -
RAND report on the "Vulnerability of U. S. Strategic Air Power"
The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. -
Ike's Atoms for Peace speech
In his Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations General Assembly on December 8, 1953, President Eisenhower sought to solve this terrible problem by suggesting a means to transform the atom from a scourge into a benefit for mankind. -
Castle-Bravo Test
H-bomb Castle-Bravo test -
Geneva Accords
This set of documents ended the French war with the Vietminh and divided Vietnam into North and South states. The communist leader of North Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh while the US-friendly south was led by Ngo Dinh Diem. -
France
France agrees to leave North Vietnam. -
The Baghdad Pact
The Baghdad Pact is founded by Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. It is committed to resisting Communist expansion in the Middle East. March: Soviet aid to Syria begins. -
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact was formed with member states East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, and the Soviet Union. -
Diplomatic Relations
Diplomatic relations were restored between West Germany and the Soviet Union. -
Nikita Khrushchev denounces leader
Nikita Khrushchev criticizes former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin. -
USSR sent tanks into Poznan, Poland, to suppress demonstrations by workers
About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of the Polish People's Army and the Internal Security Corps under the command of the Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification fired at the protesting civilians. -
USSR Tanks
USSR sent tanks into Poznan, Poland, to suppress demonstrations by workers -
Rebellion put down in Communist Hungary
A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. They were fighting to protest against the USSR's geopolitical domination of Hungary with the Stalinist government of Mátyás Rákosi. -
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis began on October 29, 1956, when Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal, a valuable waterway that controlled two-thirds of the oil used by Europe. -
USSR sent military aid to Afghanistan
Between 1954 and 1978, Afghanistan received more than $1 billion in Soviet aid, including substantial military assistance. In 1956, a major arms agreement with the USSR allowed Afghanistan to modernize its army for the first time since World War II. -
Vostok rocket launched 1st ICBM
Successfully flight tested in August 1957, the R-7 missile was powerful enough to launch a nuclear warhead against the United States or to hurl a spacecraft into orbit. -
Sputnik launched into orbit
the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. The satellite, an 85-kilogram (187-pound) metal sphere the size of a basketball, was launched on a huge rocket and orbited Earth at 29,000 kilometers per hour (18,000 miles per hour) for three months. -
Sputnik II launched - Laika died in space
the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth. The satellite, an 85-kilogram (187-pound) metal sphere the size of a basketball, was launched on a huge rocket and orbited Earth at 29,000 kilometers per hour (18,000 miles per hour) for three months. -
Explorer I launched
Explorer 1 launched, carried into space by a Jupiter-C rocket, which was a modified Redstone ballistic missile. Explorer 1 became the first American satellite to orbit the Earth and the first to make a scientific discovery from space. With the successful launch of Explorer 1, the space race began. -
NASA began Mercury project using Atlas rocket
After the successful launch of the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958, crewed spaceflight became the next goal. -
Khrushchev demands withdrawal of troops from Berlin
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech in which he demanded that the Western powers of the United States, Great Britain and France pull their forces out of West Berlin within six months. -
Cuba taken over by Fidel Castro
The Cuban communist revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro took part in the Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Following on from his early life, Castro decided to fight for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's military junta by founding a paramilitary organization, "The Movement". -
Khrushchev visits United States; The Kitchen Debate
The Kitchen Debate was a series of impromptu exchanges through interpreters between U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon, then 46, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Nikita Khrushchev, 65, at the opening of the American National Exhibition. -
Member of the United Nations Vote
Member states vote again against the admission of China to the United Nations. -
Algeria Independence
The United Nations decided not to interfere with the independence struggle in Algeria. -
Soviet Union reveals that U.S. spy plane was shot down over Soviet territory
the Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev told the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. that an American spy plane had been shot down on May 1 over Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), referring to the flight as an “aggressive act” by the United States. The wreckage of Francis Gary Powers's U-2 reconnaissance plane. -
Paris Summit
the leaders of the Soviet Union, USA, Great Britain, and France met in Paris to discuss the situation in Berlin. The Soviet Union wanted Berlin to be designated as a 'Free City' with minimal military presence from other powers, and also wanted to conclude a Peace Treaty with East Germany. -
John F. Kennedy elected President of USA
In a closely contested election, Democratic United States Senator John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee. -
Cuba openly aligns itself with the Soviet Union and their policies.
With Cuba's proximity to the United States, Castro and his regime became an important Cold War ally for the Soviets. The relationship was for the most part economic, with the Soviet Union providing military, economic, and political assistance to Cuba. -
Bay of Pigs invasion
After the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs invasion, and while the Kennedy administration planned Operation Mongoose, in July 1962 -
Berlin border is closed
The border was closed in the early hours of August 13th 1961 and the East German military immediately began construction of a wall dividing the city. -
Construction of Berlin Wall begins
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. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. -
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified
The treaty prohibited nuclear weapons tests "or any other nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater. -
John F. Kennedy is Assasinated
John F. Kennedy the 35th president of the United States is assassinated by Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas. -
Gulf of Tonkin incident
North Vietnamese warships purportedly attacked United States warships, the U.S.S. Maddox and the U.S.S. C. Turner Joy, on two separate occasions in the Gulf of Tonkin, a body of water neighboring modern-day Vietnam. -
A-bombs developed by China
the People's Republic of China conducted its first nuclear test, making it the fifth nuclear-armed state after the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. -
U.S. Marines sent to Dominican Republic to fight Communism
President Johnson ordered American troops to intervene in the Dominican Republic to maintain order and ensure that there would be no communist government established. -
Announcement of dispatching of 200,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam
Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade arrived in Da Nang to protect the U.S. airbase there from Viet Cong attacks. -
B-52s Bomb North Vietnam
Strategic Air Command B-52 bombers attack targets in North Vietnam for the first time.