WWII to Early Cold War Timeline: Key Events 1939–1955

Key Events: 1939–1955

1. In 1945, at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, the Allies decided how to end WWII.
2. In August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan.
3. In March 1946 Winston Churchill made a speech about the Iron Curtain, describing a divided Europe.
4. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman developed the Truman Doctrine to contain Communism.
5. In 1948 the Czechoslovakian coup d’état gave power to the Communists.
6. In June 1948, U.S. General George C. Marshall launched the Marshall Plan, named after him, to provide economic help to Europe.
7. In 1948–1949 Berlin was blockaded by the USSR; Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift.
8. In 1949, NATO was set up by the United States and Western countries as a military pact against the Soviet (Communist) threat.
9. In 1949 the USSR detonated its first atomic bomb; it became the second country with nuclear weapons.
10. In 1955 the Warsaw Pact was formed between the Soviet Union and its allies.

Key Organizations and Terms

United Nations: Founded in 1945 to help ensure peace between countries.

Iron Curtain: The division between democratic, capitalist Western nations of Europe and communist Eastern Europe under Soviet control.

Marshall Plan: A program to give economic help to Europe.

Truman Doctrine: President Truman developed this policy to contain Communism.

NATO: A military pact formed by Western countries to deter Soviet threats.

Warsaw Pact: Formed by the Soviet Union and its allies in response to NATO.

Lebensraum: Bizitzeko lekua. The German government / Nazism claimed they needed more territory to become great again and to create a large empire. Linked with imperialism.

Munich Agreement: France and Britain agreed to give Hitler the Sudetenland. Chamberlain waved "a piece of paper" with Hitler's statement that he did not want to go to war. German troops marched into the Sudetenland and were welcomed as heroes.

Non-Aggression Pact: This pact was between Hitler and Stalin. On August 23, 1939, shortly before World War II (1939–45) broke out in Europe, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union surprised the world by signing the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, in which the two countries agreed to take no military action against each other for the next ten years.

Harakiri and the end of the war.

Operation Barbarossa: German invasion of the Soviet Union (1941).

Appeasement: In a political context, appeasement is a diplomatic policy of making political or material concessions to an enemy power in order to avoid conflict.