Cold War Timeline
1945
4-11 February: Yalta Conference between Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. The Yalta conference is often cited as the beginning of the Cold War. It renews American-Soviet Alliance, Roosevelt held his last meeting with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, a Crimean resort on the Black Sea. The Atlantic Charter is composed.
April 12: Roosevelt Dies: Now, Stalin has the most control at the Potsdam Conference and allows him to swing things his way and to get a lead.
7 May: German military leaders surrender unconditionally to Eisenhower at Rheims, France. World War II ends in Europe. Staffs are exchanged between US and Russian military forces meeting on the Elbe river and later Berlin.
26 June: The United Nations Charter is signed at San Francisco. Drawn up before the US had entered the war, stated noble objectives for the world after the defeat of fascism: national self-determination, no territorial aggrandizement, equal access of all peoples to raw materials and collaboration for the improvement of economic opportunities, freedom of the seas, disarmament, and :”freedom from fear and want.”
July 17th to August 2, 1945: Potsdam Conference: held just outside Berlin lacked the spirited cooperation characteristic of the wartime meetings of Allied leaders that Roosevelt had attended. The American, British, and Soviet delegations had a huge agenda, including reparations, the future of Germany, and the status of other Axis powers such as Italy. They agreed to demand Japan’s unconditional surrender and to try Nazi leaders as war criminals.
6 August: Explosion of Hiroshima atom bomb. A U.S. B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, dropped “Little Boy,” killing nearly 80,000 Japanese civilians and injuring 70,000. It was done to put an end to the war and to save American soldiers lives.
14 August: Japan surrenders. Japan surrenders because their country is almost completely destroyed and they have no further reason to fight the US.
5 November: Hungarian election: Communist party wins only 17 percent of the vote. Stalin moves to eradicate opposition and to consolidate the Soviet position in Hungary.
1945-1946: America and Great Britain withdraw their troops from Iran. The Soviet Union does not and this causes further controversy between the US and Soviet Union.
1946
28 February: Russia policy: Secretary of State James F. Byrnes introduces new "get tough with Russia" policy at Overseas Press Club, New York.
5 March: Winston Churchill, in a speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, says an "iron curtain" has come down across Europe. The dream of a community of nations had dissolved, but perhaps it had never been more than a fantasy contrived to maintain a fragile alliance amid the urgency of WWII.
14 June: Baruch Plan: Bernard Baruch presents Truman's international atomic energy control plan to U.N. Plan. It would place fissionable materials under control of a U.N. agency equipped with inspection powers and exempt from the great-power (Security Council) veto. Soviet Union objects to American domination of any U.N. agency and is unwilling to surrender their veto or accept inspection within the Soviet Union.
1947
12 March: President Truman urges the United States ``to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure'' (Truman Doctrine) the US had declared its right to intervene to save other nations from communist subversion.
12 March: Truman Doctrine: Truman asks Congress to support "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures." Congress grants $400 million in aid to Greece and Turkey to defend against Communist guerrillas.
March: Huebner-Malinin Agreement signed on creating military liaison missions, SOXMIS and USMLM, Accredited to the Soviet and United States Commander in Chief of the Zones of Occupation in Germany.
7 April: US Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) stands up under General Order 17 subsequent to the Huebner-Malinin Agreement signed in March 1947. This created military liaison missions accredited to the Soviet and United States Commander in Chief of the Zones of Occupation in Germany. USMLM staff headquartered in Potsdam, near Berlin. Soviet Mission (SOXMIS) headquartered in Frankfurt.
5 June: Marshall Plan: Secretary of State George C. Marshall calls on European nations to draft plan for European economic recovery, offering aid in planning and "later support." Eastern Europe walks out of initial Paris meeting at Soviet behest. The following March, Congress votes to fund the Marshall Plan to aid 16 European nations. Pledged the US to the containment of communism in Europe and elsewhere. The doctrine was the foundation of Truman’s foreign policy. It impelled the US to support any nation whose stability was threatened by communism or the Soviet Union.
26 July-17 September: National Security Act creates DoD, and several new agencies, These new agencies including the National Military Establishment with three separate departments of the Army, the Navy and the new U.S. Air Force, National Security Council (NSC), CIA, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
5 October: Establishment of Cominform. “The organization for the ideological unity of the Soviet
1948
24 June (until May 12, 1949): Beginning of the Berlin blockade by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union blockades all highway, river, and rail traffic into Western-controlled West Berlin to force the Western powers out of Berlin. USMLM allowed to continue travel throughout Eastern Germany but with some restrictions on access to Berlin and travel corridor. USMLM attempts to monitor Soviet forces buildup and intentions around Berlin.
1949
4 April: The North Atlantic Treaty is signed: Signed in Washington by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kindgom and the United States. Later joined by Greece, Spain, Turkey, and West Germany. In 1955 Soviet Union forms competing Warsaw Pact
9 May: The Berlin blockade is lifted.
23 September: Truman announces that the Soviet Union exploded an atomic bomb sometime during the latter half of August. 2 Nations now had atomic bombs and proceeded to stockpile bombs and to put nuclear warheads on missiles, inaugurating the fateful nuclear arms race that scientists had feared since 1945. The two superpowers were now firmly locked into the cold war.
6 October: Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949 is signed by President Truman.
1950
February 9, McCarthyism: McCarthy issued wild accusations and led a flamboyant offensive against not only New Deal Democrats but the entire Truman administration for failing to defend the nation’s security. Democrats were “soft on communism,” he charged; they had “lost” China. His name has provided the label for the entire campaign to silence critics of the Cold War.
April: NSC 68 Reappraisal of America's strategic position by the NSC. The definition for the Cold War shifted from political to military, postulating a Soviet "design for world domination." NSC 68 called for both a build-up of nuclear weapons and for enlarged capacity to fight conventional wars whenever the Russians threatened "piecemeal aggression." It also called for a reduction of social welfare programs and other services not related to military needs and for tighter internal security programs.
June 25, Korean War: North Korean communist forces cross the 38th parallel and invade South Korea. On June 27, Truman orders U.S. forces to assist the South Koreans while the U.N. Security Council condemns the invasion and establishes a 15-nation fighting force. Chinese troops enter the conflict by year's end.
19 December: The North Atlantic Council appoints General Dwight D. Eisenhower to be the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).
Alger Hiss convicted of Perjury: in 1948, Whittaker Chambers first made his public charges that Hiss was a secret communist. Hiss denied the charge and filed a libel suit against Chambers, but after Chambers produced a number of copies of State Department documents and said they were given to him by Hiss for transmission to the Soviet Union, perjury charges were brought against Hiss when he denied before a grand jury that he had committed espionage. The Hiss-Chambers affair would prove to be the watershed case of the McCarthy period and one of the most important of the century.
1951
March 29, Rosenberg Spy Case: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of selling U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs are sent to the electric chair in 1953, despite outrage from liberals who portray them as victims of an anti-communist witch hunt.
17-22 October: Signature in London of the protocol to the North Atlantic Treaty on the accession of Greece and Turkey.
1952
28 April: First meeting of the North Atlantic Council in permanent session in Paris.
November 1: Hydrogen bomb: the United States explodes the first hydrogen bomb at a test site in the Marshall Islands. Less than a year later, the Soviets announce their first test of a hydrogen bomb.
1953
5 March: The death of Josef Stalin. Stalin dies; Korean War ends: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin dies of a stroke on March 5. On July 27, an armistice is signed ending the Korean War, with the border between North and South roughly the same as it had been in 1950. The willingness of China and North Korea to end the fighting was in part attributed to Stalin's death.
14 August: Soviet Union explodes a hydrogen bomb. 2 Nations now had atomic bombs and proceeded to stockpile bombs and to put nuclear warheads on missiles, inaugurating the fateful nuclear arms race that scientists had feared since 1945. The two superpowers were now firmly locked into the cold war.
15 19 August: US installs the Shah of Iran
1954
1 May: Soviet Union unveils M-4 its first jet-engine propelled long-range bomber. The race for improved technology is fueled between the US and Soviet Union.
24 August: Communist Party outlawed in United States as Eisenhower signs Communist Control Act.
1955
14 May: Warsaw Pact signed, calling for the mutual defense of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, and the Soviet Union.
1956
Khrushchev's 'secret speech' In a speech before Communist Party members on February 14, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounces the policies of Stalin. Khrushchev rejects the Leninist idea of the inevitability of war and calls for a doctrine of "peaceful coexistence" between capitalist and communist systems.
1957
4 October: Soviet Union launches Sputnik, first satellite to orbit Earth: The Space Race begins and now the Eisenhower Administration pledged to strengthen support for educating American students in math, science and technology through The National Defense Act.
3 November: Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2, which carries the first living creature (a dog) into space.
17 December: First successful test of US Atlas ICBM.December: Gaither Report to the NSC states Soviet Union has achieved superiority in long-range ballistic missiles leading to fears of a "missile gap."
1958
31 January: First U.S. satellite, Explorer I, is launched into orbit. The United States joins the Space Race
30 March: Soviet Union suspends atmospheric nuclear testing.
1959
24 July: Nixon visits the Soviet Union, takes on Khrushchev in the "kitchen debate" on the merits of capitalism vs. communism.
13 September: Soviet spacecraft reaches the moon and crashes there.
1960
1 May: American U2 aircraft is shot down over Soviet territory. Pilot Gary Powers is held by the Soviet Union. Incident is announced by Khrushchev on May 5. The U-2 Affair On May 1, an American high-altitude U-2 spy plane is shot down on a mission over the Soviet Union. After the Soviets announce the capture of pilot Francis Gary Powers, the United States recants earlier assertions that the plane was on a weather research mission.
20 July: United States fires first ballistic missile from a submerged submarine off Cape Canaveral.
8 November: Kennedy elected president. He ran under the banner of the New Frontier. His liberalism inspired idealism and hope in millions of young people at home and abroad. In foreign affairs, Kennedy generally followed, and in some respects, deepened the cold war precepts that dominated postwar policy making.
1961
12 April: Soviet Major Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man orbited in space.
3 January: Cuba: Eisenhower Administration breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba over Castro's unwillingness to hold democratic elections.
12 April: Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin is the first man to orbit the Earth.
17 April: Bay of Pigs landing by more than 1,000 CIA-trained Cuban refugees fails in its attempt to "liberate" Cuba. A U.S.-organized invasion force of 1,400 Cuban exiles is defeated by Castro's government forces on Cuba's south coast at the Bay of Pigs. Launched from Guatemala in ships and planes provided by the United States, the invaders surrender on April 20 after three days of fighting. Kennedy takes full responsibility for the disaster.
5 May: First American in space, Alan B. Shepard, makes suborbital flight aboard a Mercury capsule.3 June: Vienna Summit:Khrushchev reissues ultimatum to begin talks on Germany within 6 months or face a permanent the division of Germany. Kennedy responds with call for military build-up, beginning of civil defense program.
August 15: Berlin Wall The United States rejects proposals by Khrushchev to make Berlin a "free city" with access controlled by East Germany. On August 15, communist authorities begin construction on the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from fleeing to West Berlin.
1 September: Soviet Union resumes atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.
15 September: United States resumes underground testing of nuclear weapons. In reponse to the Soviets resuming atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons
1962
20 February: John Glenn is first American to orbit the Earth.
23 October: Cuban Missile Crisis: United States establishes air and sea blockade of Cuba in response to photographs of Soviet missile bases under construction in Cuba. United States threatens to invade Cuba if the bases are not dismantled and warns that a nuclear attack launched from Cuba would be considered a Soviet attack requiring full retaliation After the failed Bays of Pigs invasion, the Soviet Union installs nuclear missiles in Cuba capable of reaching most of the continental United States. After U-2 flights confirm their existence, Kennedy orders a naval blockade of Cuba on October 22 until the Soviet Union removes its missiles. On October 28, the Soviets agree to remove the missiles, defusing one of the most dangerous confrontations of the Cold War.