iron curtain falls

• The era after World War II was a time of economic strife and political tension
• The Marshall Plan loaned billions of dollars to Western European nations to rebuild their respective economies
• The goal of the Marshall Plan was to prevent a communist takeover in Western Europe
• The Soviet Union did not allow its satellite governments in Eastern Europe to participate in the Marshall Plan
• Instead, the Soviets offered the COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) to Eastern Europe
• The Berlin Blockade and Berlin Airlift began the Cold War
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created as a military alliance between the US and other Allied nations
• The Warsaw Pact was the Soviet Union's defensive military alliance in response to NATO
• The United Nations (UN) was created as a forum where all participating countries could resolve conflict peacefully
• After World War II, the Soviet Union began to occupy Eastern European nations
• The Soviet Union wanted to spread Marxist ideology and guard itself against the United States
• In March 1946, Winston Churchill claimed that an "iron curtain" had fallen over Eastern Europe
• The Truman Doctrine provided economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey to prevent the spread of communism
• The policy of Containment aimed to prevent the spread of communism beyond the territory already controlled by the Soviet Union
• After Stalin's death, Khrushchev delivered a speech denouncing Stalin's policies and calling for peaceful coexistence
• The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961 to keep East Berlin citizens from escaping to the West
• The Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, starting the space race
• The United States launched the Apollo program and landed the first man on the moon in 1969
• The U-2 incident, where the Soviets shot down an American spy plane, ended the "thaw" in the Cold War