Cold War- Extra Knowledge

• The Berlin wall started as a flimsy fence but eventually became a concrete wall
• Although the Berlin Wall was not great, it was less violent than the events of the Hungarian Uprising and was a peaceful solution to the refugee crisis.
• On the 17th of August 1972, a man was shot by East German soldiers firing machine guns. Between 80 and 200 people are estimated to have been killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall
• Initially, foreigners were allowed to travel into East Berlin from West Berlin by crossing 'Checkpoint Charlie'. There was a tense stand-off between the Soviet army (including tanks) stopping American citizens from crossing into East Berlin on the 27th October 1961
• Stalin died in 1953
• Krushchev announced destalinization of Eastern Europe in 1956
• In November 1956, Nagy announced that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact
• 2500 Hungarians and 700 soviet soldiers died after the Soviet invasion
• Kadar's 15 point programme aimed to reverse Nagy's reforms and tighten communist control in Hungary
• The USA and the West looked weak after the invasion of Hungary, as it showed even with nuclear weapons, they would not intervene
• The bay of pigs invasion occurred in April 1961