Cold War Timeline Flashcards
Russian Civil War
1918
Stalin becomes USSR leader
1925
Hitler comes to power in Germany
January 1933
Hitler and Stalin sign Nazi-Soviet Pact
1939
Hitler invades Poland, WW2 starts
September 1939
Hitler invades Russia, Russia sides with Allies
1941
Japan attacks Pearl Harbour, US joins Allies
December 1941
Yalta Conference
February 1945
WW2 ends
March 1945
Potsdam Conference
July 1945
France starts war in Vietnam
1945
Romania became communist
1946
Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech
March 1946
Poland became communist
January 1947
Truman Doctrine speech
March 1947
The Marshall Plan announced
June 1947
Hungary became communist
August 1947
Cominform introduced by the USSR
September 1947
Czechoslovakia became communist
1948
Stalin blockaded West Berlin
June 1948
Berlin Airlift began
1948
China became communist
1949
Stalin called off the Berlin Blockade
May 1949
The USSR tested its first atomic bomb
1949
NATO formed as a defensive alliance
April 1949
Korean war began
1950
Stalin died
1953
France loses to the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh at the battle of Dien Bien Phu
1954
Treaty of Geneva
Summer 1954
North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh set up a communist army in South Vietnam called the Vietcong
1960
US President Kennedy sent weapons, money and 12 000 military advisers to support the South Vietnamese army in fighting the Vietcong
1962
American U2 spy-planes took photos of ICBM launch pads in Cuba
14th October 1962
Kennedy informed of the missile on Cuba, given copies of the spy-plan photographs
15th October 1962
Kennedy sets up ExComm
16th October 1962
Kennedy publicly announced the set-up of a naval blockade around Cuba
22nd October 1962
12 Soviet ships heading for Cuba turned back
23rd October 1962
Khrushchev publicly accused America of ‘piracy’, saying they had no right to put up a blockade
24th October 1962
Kennedy received a personal letter from Khrushchev offering to dismantle the bases if he promised to leave Cuba alone
26th October 1962
Khrushchev sent a second letter demanding that Kennedy also dismantle the US bases in Turkey. Kennedy agreed as long as this part remained in secret. An American spy plane is shot down Cuba, war seems imminent but JFK ignored the pressure to retaliate
27th October 1962
Khrushchev agreed to remove the Cuban missile within 30 days, end of the Cuban Missile Crisis
28th October 1962
A Buddhist Monk, Thick Quang Duc, burned himself to death to protest the cruelty of the South Vietnamese government.
October 1963
Most of South Vietnam was under Vietcong control. Kennedy secretly supported a coup attempt against Diem, which resulted in his murder and the establishment of a military government in South Vietnam. Kennedy himself was assassinated two weeks alter Diem. Lyndon B Johnson becomes US President.
November 1963
Gulf of Tonkin incident. The US Congress gave Johnson the power to order military action.
August 1964
The beginning of Operation Rolling Thunder
February 1965
The first 3500 American soldiers arrive in South Vietnam.
March 1965
The Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive
January 1968
My Lai Massacre
March 1968
Beginning of Operation Phoenix
1968
Beginning of the policy of “Vietnamisation” under US President Nixon
1969
US began attacking Cambodia and Laos, through which North Vietnam was sending slippers and support to the Vietcong. Students in the US begin to protest against the war.
1970
A student protest at Kent State University in Ohio gets out of hand when nervous US national guardsmen fired into a group of unarmed students. Four students were killed and eleven others were injured.
1970
The Paris Peace Agreement, negotiated by American Henry Kissinger, was signed
1973
South Vietnam fell to North Vietnam, becoming under the Communist North Vietnamese government.
1975
USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev removed from power and the Soviet Union dissolved. The end of the Cold War
1991
