The Cold War: 1945–1963
Timeline Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin discuss the
postwar world at the Yalta Conference.
1945
The Potsdam Conference ends with an
ultimatum for Japan to unconditionally
surrender.
The United Nations is formed.
1947
Truman announces his Truman Doctrine.
Congress sends $400 million to Greece and
Turkey.
The United States gives Europe aid under
the Marshall Plan.
Congress passes the Taft-Hartley Act.
Congress passes the National Security Act.
House Un-American Committee hunts for
communists.
1948
Israel is founded.
Truman orders the Berlin Airlift.
Truman is elected.
1949
North Atlantic Treaty Organization is
created.
1950
Senator McCarthy begins hunting for
communists.
NSC-68 is put into effect.
The Korean War begins.
Congress passes the McCarran Act.
1951
Truman fires General MacArthur.
1952
Dwight D. Eisenhower is elected president.
1953
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed.
1954
The Army-McCarthy Hearings are aired on
national television.
Segregated education is struck down in
Brown v. Board of Education.
1955
The Warsaw Pact is created.
Montgomery Bus Boycott begins.
1956
Eisenhower is reelected.
1957
U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik.
Southern Christian Leadership Coalition
(SCLC) forms.
1960
The U-2 Incident angers the Soviets.
John F. Kennedy is elected president.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) forms.
1961
Bay of Pigs Invasion tarnishes Kennedy’s
image.
Freedom Rides occur throughout the South.
1962
The Cuban Missile Crisis brings the Cold War
powers close to war.
1963
The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed.
Martin Luther King, Jr., leads the March on
Washington.
Kennedy is assassinated.