Timeline of the Cold War
August 6th, 1945: America dropped the first offensive atomic bomb in history on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb killed tens of thousands of arguably innocent civilians, and launched the world into a new era of military technology and arms races as the Soviets and the Americans sought to outdo eachother.
March 5th, 1946: Winston Churchill delivered the "Iron Curtain" speech during his trip to America. His speech was appreciative of the role of the Soviets in WW2, but preached caution and steadfast, vigilant resistance in terms of dealing with the spread of Communism and Soviet spheres of influence that had been cast across Eastern Europe.
April 4, 1949: The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in America, creating an organization for the collective defense of its members, the Soviets noticeably excluded. This heightened tensions between the USSR and Western Europe/the USA.
1950: Joe McCarthy begins the era of "Red Hunting", an anticommunist crusade characterized by sensational persecutions of alleged communists and communist hatred know as McCarthyism. It turned the US popular opinion heavily against the Soviets, which reduced the majority of support for international peace.
May 11th, 1955: The Warsaw Pact Conference, a meeting of Soviet states, creates the Warsaw pact. The Warsaw Pact was an agreement of collective defense, similar to NATO, amongst Soviet influenced nations, which furthered Cold War tensions.
April 17th, 1961: Bay of Pigs invasion, a failed CIA attempt to unseat Fidel Castro from command of Cuba because of his Communist ties. Newly elected president John F. Kennedy had given permission for the operation to go through, and took responsibility for its failure. The secrecy and desperation of the Bay of Pigs Invasion is an indication of the rampant anticommunist sentiment and the fear and uncertainty in the US Government at the time.
August 1961: Construction of the Berlin Wall, which became a symbol of the separation in Europe and Soviet oppression. The wall divided East and West Berlin, and was the physical manifestation of the Iron Curtain.
October, 1961: The Cuban Missile Crisis developed upon the discovery of Soviet Nuclear weapons being installed in Cuba. After 13 days of tension at the possibility of mutual assured destruction, Khrushchev and Kennedy agreed to a resolution where Kennedy agreed to remove United States missiles from Turkey and areas of Italy near the Soviet Union, while Khrushchev agreed to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the peak of Cold War tensions; while tensions did not consistently decrease following it, they never reached the same level again.
1963-1975: The Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh, a communist, came to power in North Vietnam. Though the Southern Vietnam government was not morally or functionally superior to Ho Chi Minh's regime, Washington was extremely dedicated to the unconditional containment of communism. JFK first sent "Military Advisors" to South Vietnam in 1963, and the Gulf of Tonkin affair in 1964 gave way to the resolution that allowed Linden B. Johnson almost unchecked military power. by 1965, there were over 200,000 US Troops in Vietnam. As the War progressed, US troops achieved very little in terms of wearing down the North Vietnam forces, and public opinion turned decidedly against the war. Influential to public opinion were discoveries of atrocities (such as My Lai, Below) committed by US troops that had been covered up by Washington, and the Pentagon papers (Below), secret documents that outlined historical US involvement in Vietnam and included numerous accounts of horrific failures. When the Saigon government fell in 1975, The US finally and embarrassingly withdrew its last troops.
March 16, 1968: American soldiers entered a village suspected of harboring hostile activity. Through they encountered no resistance, the Americans torched civilian houses and food supplies, and murdered hundreds of innocent citizens in what became known as the My Lai Massacre. The the government tried to cover up events such as these, news eventually got out to the people, strongly affecting public opinion.
1971: The Pentagon papers were released to a shocked public.
1980: Reagan won the presidential election, indicating a national shift from liberal to conservative. The Reagan Era was characterized by the rise of neoconservatism and social conservatism in terms of the moral/religious majority. Reagan was firmly anti-communist, and worked to "save the people from the government". He issued many tax cuts for everyone as part of his supply side economic strategy.
March, 1983: Reagan's strategy as far as negotiating with the Soviets was to gain the upper hand by demonstrating massive economic and military dominance. His defense spending was enormous, in March 1983 he initiated a satellite laser missile defense research program, known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, which, coupled with tax cuts, ran an enormous national deficit.
March 1985: Gorbavhev came to power in the Soviet Union, and institutes policies such as Glastnost and Perestroika which helped to ease Cold War tension. Gorbachev's progressive ideas and willingness to negotiate with Reagan for a safer, less volatile future contributed heavily to the end of the Cold War.