Cold War Quiz

Key Dates

• 3rd July, 1945

  • United States, France, Britain, and the Soviet Union occupy zones of Berlin.

• 17th July, 1945

  • Potsdam Conference begins in Germany.

• 6th August, 1945

  • United States Army Air Force drops an atom bomb on Hiroshima.

• 12th August, 1945

  • United States Army Air Force drops an atom bomb on Nagasaki.

• 12th March, 1947

  • Harry Truman announces Truman Doctrine and the provision of aid to Greece.

• 5th June, 1947

  • General George C. Marshall announces the Marshall Plan.

• 1st April, 1948

  • The start of the Berlin Airlift.

• 24th June, 1948

  • The Soviet Union blockades road and rail traffic between Berlin and the West.

• 4th April, 1949

  • North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) is founded to provide opposition to the Soviet Union.

• 23rd May, 1949

  • Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) comes into being.

• 7th October, 1949

  • German Democratic Republic (East Germany) comes into being.

• 31st January, 1950

  • Harry Truman orders the development of the hydrogen bomb.

• 5th March, 1953

  • Joseph Stalin dies.

• 15th June, 1953

  • Soviet troops crush workers' rebellion in East Germany.

• 4th September, 1974

  • The United States and East Germany establish diplomatic relations.

Nikita Khrushchev Era

• 12th September, 1953

  • Nikita Khrushchev is appointed first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

• 25th February, 1956

  • Nikita Khrushchev denounces former leader Joseph Stalin.

• 17th April, 1956

  • The Soviet Union abolishes the Cominform.

• 19th May, 1960

  • Nikita Khrushchev walks out of a summit meeting in Paris because of the U-2 incident.

• 7th May, 1960

  • Leonid Brezhnev becomes president of the Soviet Union.

Events in Hungary and Cuba

• 23rd October, 1956

  • Demonstrators in Hungary call for a democratic government.

• 9th January, 1959

  • Fidel Castro and his troops overthrow the US-backed government in Havana.

• 17th June, 1958

  • Imre Nagy, former prime minister of Hungary, is executed after a secret trial.

• 17th April, 1961

  • Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

• 13th August, 1961

  • Berlin Wall is built by the USSR.

Other Significant Events

• 5th August, 1963

  • Soviet Union, United States, and Britain sign a nuclear test-ban treaty.

• 20th August, 1968

  • Warsaw Pact forces invade Czechoslovakia and arrest Alexander Dubcek.