Timeline of the Cold War Era
The Cold War was a long period of international tension between the United States and Soviet Union. Both superpowers had allies, with most Western democratic nations supporting the US and communist nations supporting the Soviet Union.
It is called a "cold" war because there was never any large-scale fighting between the two superpowers. However, proxy wars were fought where each side supported an ally in the fight.
Here are some of the major events from a timeline of the Cold War:
The Yalta Conference
As World War 2 was coming to an end, three Allied leaders (President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the US, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union) met at the Yalta Conference in February of 1945. The leaders knew that the war in Europe would result in an Allied victory, but each leader had different goals for the meeting.
The US wanted the Soviet Union to participate in the Pacific War and be a part of the United Nations. Great Britain wanted to ensure the establishment of democratic governments with free elections in Eastern and Central Europe. The Soviet Union wanted greater control over Eastern Europe.
Following the conference, the meeting was hailed as a success. Despite their differences, the Allied leaders had compromised on many things. The Soviet Union would keep part of Poland that they annexed, but Poland would gain its independence and have a free, democratic government.
The Soviet Union also agreed to become a member of the United Nations. The allies also agreed to demilitarize and partition Germany and its capital, Berlin, into four occupation zones.
The Korean War
In June 1950, communist North Korea (supported by China and the Soviet Union) invaded across the 38th parallel into South Korea. In accordance with the Truman Doctrine to stop the spread of communism, the US joined the war against communist North Korea.
After strong advances and subsequent retreats by both sides, the war came to a stalemate at the 38th parallel.
President Truman did not want to go to war with China, who was supporting North Korea and the two sides agreed to an armistice in 1953.
The armistice ending the Korean War maintained Korea’s division at the 38th parallel and created a demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two sides.
Within the larger picture of the Cold War, the Korean War was a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union because they fought each other indirectly by supporting opposing sides in the war.
Army-McCarthy Hearings
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a Wisconsin Republican senator who rose to public attention in 1950 when he began accusing people in the Truman administration, federal agencies, Congress, and other public figures of being Communist.
McCarthy conducted an excessive number of hearings and aggressively grilled witnesses and suspects. Most felt that he had no evidence and was making up the accusations to boost his political career.
In 1954, Sen. McCarthy turned his accusations towards the US Army. In nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings, McCarthy tried to accuse the army lawyer, Joseph Welch, of having Communist ties. In response, Welch asked him, “Have you no decency?”
With this famous question, Sen. McCarthy’s popularity and political career disappeared. On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure McCarthy, which is a formal statement of disapproval. Though his witch-hunting came to an end, anticommunist crusading didn’t end with him.
The Berlin Wall
On August 13, 1961, East Germany erected the Berlin Wall, dividing the city in half. The massive concrete wall they called the “Antifascistischer Schutzwall,” or “antifascist bulwark" was nearly impenetrable.
Though East Germany claimed that the wall was to prevent West Germans from entering East Germany, the actual purpose was to prevent East Germans from defecting to the democratic west.
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
After Fidel Castro led a successful revolution in Cuba and established a communist dictatorship in 1959, the Eisenhower administration began planning a covert operation to overthrow the regime.
The plan was for a group of CIA-trained Cuban exiles, armed with American weapons, to rally the Cuban citizenry and together overthrow Castro.
After taking office, President Kennedy approved the plan and the invasion took place in April 1961 at the Bahía de Cochinos or Bay of Pigs.
The invasion failed nearly immediately because Kennedy did not want to provide American air support. Castro gained popularity and grew closer to the Soviet Union.
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War began slowly in 1954 but dragged on and grew more intense for 20 years before finally coming to an end in 1975.
Similar to the Korean War, the conflict saw the US supporting the pro-Western, anticommunist South Vietnam against communist North Vietnam. American politicians were fearful that Vietnam falling to communism would trigger a domino effect in which other Southeast Asian countries would follow.
The war was difficult for the American troops, whose training and resources were suited for a conventional war. Most of the Vietnam War was fought as a guerilla war in dense jungles.
This meant that North Vietnamese forces, the Viet Cong, used tactics such as underground tunnels, deadly booby traps, ambushes of American forces, and taking full advantage of their knowledge of the terrain.
Meanwhile, American forces found it difficult to navigate the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam and also to distinguish who was their enemy and who were civilians.
On January 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese began the Tet Offensive, a series of coordinated surprise attacks against major South Vietnamese cities and military camps.
Even though the operation was eventually a defeat for the North, the highly publicized attacks greatly undermined American morale, especially because the attacks came after President Johnson had informed the American public that the war was ending soon.
Johnson had hoped the Paris Peace talks opened that year would end the war. However, Richard Nixon, running for president on a campaign against the war had an aide convince the South Vietnamese to abandon the peace talks.
It would not be until 1973 that the Paris Peace Accords were signed ending the war. Then-President Nixon's policy of Vietnamization promoted South Vietnam taking over responsibility for its defense.
Nixon Visits China
On February 21, 1972, President Nixon visited the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which was a first for a US president. Since the communist revolution in China in 1949, the US had not acknowledged the PRC.
However, Nixon felt that building better relations with the PRC might help with resolving the Vietnam War and would allow the US to leverage that relationship when dealing with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
This decision came at a strategic time when the relationship between the Soviet Union and the PRC were also deteriorating due to rising tensions and border disputes.
Glasnost and Perestroika
In 1986, President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union announced that he would be implementing two new major policies: perestroika and glasnost.
Perestroika, meaning “restructuring”, allowed some free market and independent economic activity for the first time. It was meant to transform the economy by increasing economic productivity and growth. It loosened the central command on the economy and moved towards a free market.
Glasnost, meaning “openness”, was part of Gorbachev’s plan to allow more free speech, freedom of the press, and transparency in political elections.
Though perestroika and glasnost were introduced to transform and strengthen the Soviet Union, it did the opposite. Because the government suddenly stopped setting prices and subsidizing production, prices skyrocketed.
Moreover, because many of the reforms were neither fully communist or fully free market, Gorbachev faced criticism from both camps, who were newly empowered to criticize the government. Many historians agree that both perestroika and glasnost hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Fall of the Berlin Wall
On November 9, 1989, East Berlin’s Communist Party announced that travel restrictions would be eased between East and West Berlin. Thousands of Germans took to the streets to celebrate and began taking sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall.
Confused guards at the wall were unsure what to do and let the crowd overtake the wall, which had symbolized the ideological divide of the Cold War for so long.
That weekend, more than 2 million people crossed into West Berlin to celebrate the news.
Collapse of the Soviet Union
Soviet leader Gorbachev's reforms inspired many of the Soviet Union's satellite states to push for their own independence.
Protests began in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Each had been under Soviet rule since the end of World War 2.
Estonia declared its sovereignty in 1988, followed by Lithuania in 1990. In 1991, the rest of the Soviet republics broke away and declared independence, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and others.
A coup was attempted within the Soviet Union along with mass protests. In December 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, and was replaced by Boris Yeltsin, the first President of Russia.