| 1940 |
Roosevelt makes destroyers-for-bases deal with the British
Fall of France
First peacetime draft |
| 1941 |
Lend-Lease, Battle of Britain, Hitler attacks USSR
Atlantic Charter
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor |
| 1942 |
Allied year of disaster
U. S. interns Japanese
U. S. halts Japanese at Coral Sea and Midway |
| 1943 |
Tide turns against Axis
Russia wins at Stalingrad, unconditional surrender demanded
Italy invaded |
| 1944 |
France invaded
Bombing of Japan begins
Russia sweeps through Eastern Europe
Philippines liberated |
| 1945 |
Yalta
FDR dies
Germany surrenders
Atom bombs
End of WW 2 |
| 1946 |
U. S. - USSR relations worsen
"Iron Curtain" speech |
| 1947 |
Cold War begins
Marshall Plan
Containment |
| 1948-1949 |
Berlin Airlift
Taft-Hartley
Military integrated |
| 1949 |
NATO
Russia explodes the bomb
Communists control China |
| 1950 |
Korean War
Joseph McCarthy |
| 1951 |
Twenty-second Amendment limits the President to two terms |
| 1952 |
Dwight Eisenhower elected President |
| 1953 |
Industries agree on guaranteed annual wage |
| 1954 |
Brown v. Board of Education, Supreme Court strikes down
"separate but equal."
Vietnam divided |
| 1955 |
Montgomery Bus Boycott, emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. |
| 1957 |
Sputnik
Eisenhower Doctrine
Little rock Crisis
Civil Rights Act |
| 1958 |
First U. S. satellite and ICBM
NASA
U. S. occupies Lebanon |
| 1960 |
U-2 shot down over Russia
Soviet and Chinese split
John F. Kennedy elected President
non-violent protests against segregation |
|