Postwar World

Nature and Americans

1945: World at War

Pacific War

Yalta,
February 1945

April 12, 1945

United Nations, April 15, 1945

 

VE Day
May 8, 1945

Potsdam, July 1945

Trinity Test
July 16, 1945

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945

Japan Surrenders, September 2, 1945

Nuremburg war trials, 1945-46

Winston Churchill, the “Iron Curtain,” 1946

“Containment”

¢  Political component

   Greece threatened, 1947

   Truman Doctrine: “scare hell out of the American people”

¢  Economic component

   Marshall Plan, 1948: $17 billion to Europe

¢  Military component

   Test: Berlin blockade, 1948-9

   North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 1949

   Soviets test an atomic bomb, 1949

 

Cold War in Asia

¢  China “lost,” 1948-49

   Mao Zedong vs. Chiang Kai-Shek

   Chiang flees to Taiwan

¢  Korean War

   North Korea attacks, 1950

   UN fights back & invades North

   300,000 Chinese attack

   Truce, 1953; 33,000 American deaths

   About 3 million Koreans die; 150,000 Chinese

¢  Fears confirmed, containment achieved

¢  Precedent: President sends troops without declaration of war