Cold War Timeline: 10 Important Dates that shaped the World

Cold War Timeline: 10 Important Dates that shaped the World

Cold War is the period of struggle that began after the end of World War II. The struggle had the United States of America and the Soviet Union with their allies engage in decades of supremacy battles and proxy wars.

The main adversaries in this war were the Americans and the Soviets who antagonized each other through political manoeuvres, military coalitions, espionage, propaganda, arms build-ups, economic aid, and various proxy wars between other nations especially in Africa and Asia.

Initially, World War II allies USA and Soviet Union fell apart when they couldn’t agree on sharing the spoils of the war, specifically Nazi German Control.

The United States, Britain and France had pushed for a common Allied Council to manage postwar Germany in what is referred to Potsdam Conference; however, Joseph Stalin the Soviet Leader felt the council would be more anticommunism and would ideally be used to spread democracy and capitalism. In earnest, the United States shortchanged allies and wanted to control the entire of Germany.

Joseph Stalin the Secretary General of the council was not agreeable to this and went ahead to create a buffer zone between itself and western Europe.

The USA allies controlled the western part of Germany while the Soviets controlled the better part of East Germany. While Berlin was divided into two parts

Below is a list of dates and respective activities that shaped the world;

1.Yalta Conference 4^th to 11^th February 1945

The three World Leaders at Negotiating During the Yalta Conference. Photo by By Mil.ru. Wikimedia.

The conference codenamed Argonaut during the time was held in Crimea, Russia where three heads of government President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the United States, Winston Churchill for the United Kingdom, and Joseph Stalin for the Soviet Union met to discuss post-war peace mainly focusing on the re-organization of the European Countries that had been ravaged by decades of war.

This conference is believed to have conceived the Cold War as we know it today. While the meeting agreed on major issues especially concerning the planned surrender of Germany, Soviet Support for the United Nations and subsequently how the Soviets would join the Japanese war among other issues, they could not agree on the political leadership in Poland and it was slackly agreed that it(Poland) would hold democratic elections sometimes later.

2.The Potsdam Conference 17th  July to 2nd  August 1945

Cecilienhof Palace at Potsdam Where the Conference was Held. Photo By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra. Wikimedia.

The Three Power Conference also referred to as the Berlin Conference (1884 – 1885) was held at Cecilienhof Palace, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany.

The conference deliberated on world peace and build on the previous Yalta Conference held earlier in the year however there were notable differences among them the replacement of  Winston Churchill who had lost in an Election to Atlee and  Presence of United Stated Vice president S. Truman who had replaced Roosevelt upon his death.

There were also notable political changes especially on what was know as the European War Theatre which included mainly Poland. The Soviet red army had established a pro-communism regime in Poland and had carried evictions of ethnic Germans.

The conference came up with an operational agreement on twenty one issues among them the  institutionalized and organized control and management of Germany and the formation of United states. While this agreement by the three powers was not an international treaty it shaped Europe and the entire world as it is today.

The conference saw the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union divided defeated Germany into four occupation zones, however Berlin, though located deeply within the already Soviet-occupied zone, was divided with the western part of the city being controlled by the Allied  forces  while the east  was taken under the Soviet control.

Major omissions and loopholes mainly fueled by the western allied powers fear of a Soviet-Japan re-unification  and the spread of communism led to various oversights which gave  the Soviets (Joseph Stalin) an upper hand in the control of Poland and other eastern European countries.

3.The Red Army Liberation of Occupied Eastern Europe Cities

In the year 1944 the red Army Liberated four eastern Europe countries that that had been occupied by the Germans the operation took place between July 1944 to May 1945 when the Soviets embarked rigorous liberation campaign across Eastern Europe. The city by city efforts included Lithuania that liberated between June to August 1944 with Minsk its capital city being liberated between June 1944 to 3^rd July 1944 and then the capital of Soviet Lithuania Vilnius from 9^th to 15 July 1944 this win offered the much-needed access route to East Prussia and would proof to be a major red Army Milestone. Another Lithuanian city of Kaunas was Liberated on 29^th July to 1^st August 1944.

The liberation by the Soviets in these cities led to either voluntary or forced establishment of pro-communism regimes in these countries.

4.The Truman Doctrine and The Marshall Plan 1947-1948

General George C. Marshall. Photo by By U.S. Department of State. Wikimedia.

Between 1947 and 1948 the United States  aid provided under the Marshall Plan to western Europe had brought those countries under American influence and the Soviets had installed openly communist regimes in eastern Europe.

The Truman Doctrine is named after United State 35th President ,President  S Truman  the 35th President of the united states in what is referred as the Truman Doctrine  reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from the President Roosevelt usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in faraway conflicts. Truman doctrine was aimed controlling the expansion of communism which had taken root in Eastern Europe.

This doctrine let to the establishment of  a budgetary intervention by the 50th U.S. Secretary of State General C. Marshall who developed a raft of measures which documented together were known as The Marshall Plan  which was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe.

In this plan the United States transferred over US Dollar 13 billion in economic  recovery programs to Western European economies after the end of World War II.

This  program was timely as it  solidified Americas’ leadership of the Western alliance and resolved their makert crisis that had been dilapidated by decades of was it enhanced infrastructure and other factors of production. The political objective of the plan was to contain the  Soviets westward march of communism.

The program has been cited as the beginning of the Cold War as it helped America to take control of much of central and eastern Europe which the Soviets had already established satellite communist nations.

5.The 1948 Berlin Blockade

In retaliation to the Marshalls Plan the Soviet planned a blockade  in Berlin which prevented allied forces from accessing their controlled territories which lay in East Germany.

Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, imposed the Berlin Blockade from 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949, cutting off all land and river transit between West Berlin and West Germany.

The Western Allies responded with a massive airlift to come to West Berlin’s aid this was a  defeat to the Soviet as they ended the blockade.

6. United States joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

In 1949, the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the first mutual security and military alliance in American history.

This was a great leap of faith for the Americans as it strained the countries already not so good relationship with the Soviets.

7.The Warsaw Pact 

The Warsaw Pact popularly referred to as the Treaty of Warsaw was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955.

The treaty led to formation of a defensive alliance military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon); a regional economic organization for the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe.

It was a retaliation to the integration of West Germany into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1955.

The was no direct military engagements between NATO and Warsaw Pact however they sponsored conflicts on ideological basis and through proxy wars over the decades. The pact collapsed at the fall of the Berlin wall and withdrawal by the participating states.

8.The Indo China Wars 

In 1949, the communists triumphed in the Chinese civil war, and the world’s most populous nation joined the Soviet Union as a Cold War adversary this led to china influencing the spread of communism in the continent.

Less than an year in 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and the United Nations and the United States sent troops and military aid. Communist China intervened to support North Korea, and bloody campaigns stretched on for three years until a truce was signed in 1953

The United States supported a military government in South Vietnam and worked to prevent free elections that might have unified the country under the control of communist North Vietnam.

In response to the threat, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was formed in 1955 to prevent communist expansion, and President Eisenhower sent some 700 military personnel as well as military and economic aid to the government of South Vietnam

9.The Cuban Missile Crisis

The crisis of October 1962 is believed to be one of the major confrontations that has ever brought the two cold war factions; United States and the Soviet Union close to nuclear war. Their contention being the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.
After the successful takeover in Cuba in 1959 by a communist regime the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev had promised in May 1960 that the Soviet would defend Cuba.
The soviets did not anticipate that the United States would be unsettled by the planned installation of Soviet medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba.
The United States Spy Agency learned in July 1962 that the Soviet Union had begun missile shipments to Cuba. By August 29 new military construction and the presence of Soviet technicians had been reported spy planes flying over the island, and on October 14 the presence of a ballistic missile on a launching site was reported. Such missiles could hit much of the eastern United States within a few minutes if launched from Cuba.
The united states on 22nd October 1962 placed a naval blockade on the island which was widely referred to a naval “quarantine,” that was intended to prevent further Soviet shipments of missiles.

The two countries on November agreed on a disengagement plan with the Soviets agreeing to halt the construction and returning all the missiles back to Moscow, while the United Sates also promised to withdraw the nuclear-armed missiles that the it had secretly stationed in Turkey.

 10.The Fall of the Berlin War

At the end of World War II, the main Allied powers—the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—divided Germany into two zones.

The Soviet Union occupied East Germany and installed a rigidly controlled communist state. The other three Allies shared the occupation of West Germany and helped rebuild the country as a capitalist democracy. The City of Berlin, located 200 miles inside East Germany, was also divided. Half of the city—West Berlin—was actually part of West Germany.

Many East Germans did not want to live in a communist country and crossed into West Berlin, where they could either settle or find transportation to West Germany and beyond. By 1961, four million East Germans had moved west. This exodus illustrated East Germans’ dissatisfaction with their way of life, and posed an economic threat as well, since East Germany was losing its workers.

In the early morning hours of August 13, 1961, the people of East Berlin were awakened by the rumbling of heavy machinery barreling down their streets toward the line that divided the eastern and western parts of the city.

Groggy citizens looked on as work details began digging holes and jackhammering sidewalks, clearing the way for the barbed wire that would eventually be strung across the dividing line. Armed troops manned the crossing points between the two sides and, by morning, a ring of Soviet troops surrounded the city. Overnight, the freedom to pass between the two sections of Berlin ended.

Running across cemeteries and along canals, zigzagging through the city streets, the Berlin Wall was a chilling symbol of the Iron Curtain that divided all of Europe between communism and democracy. Berlin was at the heart of the Cold War.

In 1962, the Soviets and East Germans added a second barrier, about 100 yards behind the original wall, creating a tightly policed no man’s land between the walls. After the wall went up, more than 260 people died attempting to flee to the West.