Origins of the War
This global conflict ended in 1945 and set the stage for U.S.-Soviet tensions.
What is World War II?
This 1962 crisis brought the U.S. and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war over Cuba.
What is the Cuban Missile Crisis?
This 1949 military alliance included the U.S. and Western European nations.
What is NATO?
This clock symbolizes the global nuclear threat and is adjusted closer or farther from midnight.
What is the Doomsday Clock?
This U.S. president gave the Truman Doctrine speech in 1947.
Who is Harry S. Truman?
After WWII, tensions rose between these two superpowers due to ideology and territorial ambition.
Who are the United States and the Soviet Union?
A failed 1961 U.S.-backed invasion attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba.
What is the Bay of Pigs Invasion?
This 1955 Soviet-led military alliance was formed in response to NATO.
What is the Warsaw Pact?
This 1980s U.S. program proposed by Reagan aimed to develop a missile defense system.
What is the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)?
This British leader warned of the “Iron Curtain” descending across Europe.
Who is Winston Churchill?
This speech by Winston Churchill in 1946 warned of the division of Europe.
What is the “Iron Curtain” speech?
This wall, built in 1961, became a symbol of the division between East and West Berlin.
What is the Berlin Wall?
This doctrine guided the U.S. approach to contain the spread of communism worldwide.
What is the Truman Doctrine?
This type of missile can deliver nuclear weapons across continents.
What is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)?
The Soviet Union was led by this man during the early Cold War and the Berlin Blockade.
Who is Joseph Stalin?
The Cold War is called “cold” because this type of conflict dominated it.
What is political and military tension without direct fighting?
This war in Asia was a direct conflict of U.S. and Soviet interests in the early Cold War.
What is the Korean War?
This policy involved the threat of total nuclear retaliation to deter Soviet aggression.
What is Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)?
The 1949 Soviet test of this weapon escalated the nuclear arms race.
What is the atomic bomb?
This U.S. president approved the Bay of Pigs invasion and faced the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Who is John F. Kennedy?
The division of this country and the blockade of its capital city in 1948 escalated East-West tensions.
What is Germany/Berlin?
In the 1970s, this U.S. policy sought to transfer combat responsibility to South Vietnamese forces.
What is Vietnamization?
The U.S. plan to rebuild Europe economically after WWII was called this.
What is the Marshall Plan?
Satellites revolutionized this type of Cold War activity, allowing global surveillance from space.
What is espionage?
Reagan famously called the USSR this during his 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall.
What is the “evil empire”?