AQA A-level History Cold War dates

Feb 1945

Yalta conference

May 1945

Germany surrenders

Jul 1945

Potsdam Confrence

Aug 1945

Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Sept 1945

Japanese Surrender

Feb 1946

Kennan's long telegram

March 1946

Iron curtain speech

March 1947

Truman Doctrine begins

June 1947

Marshall plan

1948

Berlin Blockade & Airlift

Apr 1949

NATO formed

May 1949

Berlin blockade ends

May 1949

FRG created

Aug 1949

USSR successfully test atomic bomb

Oct 1949

Communist Victory in China

1949

GDR formed

June 1950

N. Korean invasion of S. Korea

1950

UN intervention in Korean War

1952

Eisenhower elected president

March 1953

Stalin dies

July 1953

Armistice signed regarding Korean War

May 1955

Warsaw Pact formed

1956

Khrushchev consolidates power in USSR

Feb 1956

Secret Speech

June-Oct 1956

Polish rising

Oct-Nov 1956

Hungarian rising

1958

Berlin Crisis

Jan 1959

Castro takes power in Cuba

May 1960

U2 affair

Nov 1960

JFK elected president

April 1961

Bay of pigs

Aug 1961

Berlin Wall extracted

Oct 1962

Cuban Missile Crisis

Aug 1963

Moscow test ban treaty

Nov 1963

Kennedy assassinated Johnson becomes president

Aug 1964

Gulf of Tonkin resolution

Oct 1964

China successfully detonates atom bomb

1964

Khrushchev resigns, replaced by Brezhnev

Jan-Feb 1968

Tet offensive

May-Aug 1968

Warsaw Pact tanks invade Czechoslovakia

Nov 1968

Nixon elected

1968

Brezhnev doctorine

1969

Arms limitations talks between USA & USSR begin & Sino-Soviet border clashes

May 1972

SALT I ratified

Jan 1973

Paris peace agreement

March 1973

US troops withdraw from Vietnam

Sept 1973

Allende overthrown in Chile replaced by Pinochet

Aug 1974

Resignation of Nixon, Ford becomes president

April 1975

Fall of Saigon, reunification of Vietnam

1975

Khmer Rouge victory in Cambodian Civil war

Nov 1976

Carter elected President

1979

Sandanista victorh in Nicaraguan revolution

Dec 1979

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

Nov 1980

Reagan elected president

Dec 1981

Martial law declared in Poland

Nov 1982

Brezhnev does succeeded by Andropov

March 1983

Reagan announces SDI

Oct 1983

US invasion of Grenada

Feb 1984

Andropov dies replaced by Chernenko

March 1985

Chernenko dies replaced by Gorbachev

Nov 1985

Geneva summit between Gorbachev and Reagan

1986

Glasnost & Perestroika introduced

April 1986

Chernobyl reactor explosion

Oct 1986

Reykjavik Summit between Gorbachev & Reagan

Dec 1987

Washington summit between Gorbachev & Reagan

May-June 1988

Moscow summit between Gorbachev & Reagan

Nov 1988

H.W Bush elected president

Feb 1989

Soviet troops withdraw from Afghanistan

June 1989

Poland holds free elections

9 Nov 1989

Berlin Wall comes down

Dec 1989

Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, Haval becomes president

Oct 1990

German reunification

Dec 1991

End of Soviet Union