Topic: Military history/Cold War

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๐Ÿ”— Vasili Arkhipov โ€“ Soviet Navy Officer Who Prevented Nuclear Strike in 1962

๐Ÿ”— Biography ๐Ÿ”— Soviet Union ๐Ÿ”— Russia ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Military biography ๐Ÿ”— Biography/military biography ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Maritime warfare ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Russia/Russian, Soviet, and CIS military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history ๐Ÿ”— Russia/history of Russia

Vasily Arkhipov (Russian: ะ’ะฐัะธะปะธะน ะั€ั…ะธะฟะพะฒ) may refer to:

  • Vasily Arkhipov (vice admiral) (1926โ€“1998), Soviet Navy officer credited with casting the single vote that prevented a Soviet nuclear strike
  • Vasily Arkhipov (general) (1906โ€“1985), Commander of the 53rd Guards Tank Brigade of the Red Army during World War II, twice Hero of the Soviet Union


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๐Ÿ”— 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests

๐Ÿ”— Human rights ๐Ÿ”— History ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Crime ๐Ÿ”— China ๐Ÿ”— Politics ๐Ÿ”— Socialism ๐Ÿ”— Law Enforcement ๐Ÿ”— Sociology ๐Ÿ”— Sociology/social movements ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Asian military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Chinese military history

The Tiananmen Square protests or Tiananmen Square Incident, commonly known in mainland China as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: ๅ…ญๅ››ไบ‹ไปถ; pinyin: liรนsรฌ shรฌjiร n, literally six-four incident), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing during 1989. The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: ๅ…ซไนๆฐ‘้‹; pinyin: bฤjiว” mรญnyรนn). The protests started on April 15 and were forcibly suppressed on June 4 when the government declared martial law and sent the military to occupy central parts of Beijing. In what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre (Chinese: ๅคฉๅฎ‰้–€ๅคงๅฑ ๆฎบ; pinyin: tiฤn'ฤnmรฉn dร  tรบshฤ), troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.

Set off by the death of pro-reform Communist general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989, amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social changes in post-Mao China, the protests reflected anxieties about the country's future in the popular consciousness and among the political elite. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy which benefited some people but seriously disaffected others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge of legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. The students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied. At the height of the protests, about 1ย million people assembled in the Square.

As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support for the demonstrators around the country, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Ultimately, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping and other Communist Party elders believed the protests to be a political threat and resolved to use force. The State Council declared martial law on May 20 and mobilized as many as 300,000 troops to Beijing. The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city's major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of June 4, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process.

The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre. Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China. The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. More broadly, the suppression halted the policies of liberalization in the 1980s. Considered a watershed event, the protests set the limits on political expression in China up to the present day. Its memory is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of Communist Party rule and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.

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๐Ÿ”— Project A119

๐Ÿ”— Spaceflight ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/North American military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/United States military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory ๐Ÿ”— Moon ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Solar System ๐Ÿ”— Solar System/Moon

Project A119, also known as A Study of Lunar Research Flights, was a top-secret plan developed in 1958 by the United States Air Force. The aim of the project was to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, which would help in answering some of the mysteries in planetary astronomy and astrogeology. If the explosive device detonated on the surface, not in a lunar crater, the flash of explosive light would have been faintly visible to people on Earth with their naked eye, a show of force resulting in a possible boosting of domestic morale in the capabilities of the United States, a boost that was needed after the Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race and was also working on a similar project.

The project was never carried out, being cancelled primarily out of a fear of a negative public reaction, with the potential militarization of space that it would also have signified, and because a Moon landing would undoubtedly be a more popular achievement in the eyes of the American and international public alike. A similar project by the Soviet Union also never came to fruition.

The existence of the US project was revealed in 2000 by a former executive at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Leonard Reiffel, who led the project in 1958. A young Carl Sagan was part of the team responsible for predicting the effects of a nuclear explosion in vacuum and low gravity and in evaluating the scientific value of the project. The project documents remained secret for nearly 45 years, and despite Reiffel's revelations, the United States government has never officially recognized its involvement in the study.

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๐Ÿ”— Finnair Flight 915

๐Ÿ”— Aviation ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Military aviation ๐Ÿ”— Aviation/Aviation accident project ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history ๐Ÿ”— Finland

Finnair Flight 915 (AY915) was a scheduled flight by Finnair from Tokyo, Japan, over the North Pole to Helsinki, Finland, on 23 December 1987. In 2014, Finnish media reported a claim by two of the flightโ€™s pilots that the Soviet Union had fired a missile at the aircraft, which exploded less than 30 seconds before impact. The allegations came out only in September 2014, when Helsingin Sanomat, the leading Finnish daily newspaper, published an extensive article on the matter. The Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE reported on the article on the internet the same day.

When the matter came out, it caused outrage in Finland among those politicians and civil servants, to whom it should have been reported at the time, and it was widely publicised and commented upon in the Finnish media, amidst allegations of Finlandization.

The alleged incident has been compared to other similar incidents involving the Soviet Union, such as the Aero Kaleva in 1940, Aeroflot Flight 902 in 1962, Korean Air Lines Flight 902 in 1978, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983. Co-captain Kaukiainen said that the Finnair pilots decided to speak out on the matter after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 had been shot down in Ukraine on 17 July 2014.

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๐Ÿ”— Operation Gladio

๐Ÿ”— United States/U.S. Government ๐Ÿ”— United States ๐Ÿ”— International relations ๐Ÿ”— Germany ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/North American military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/United States military history ๐Ÿ”— Europe ๐Ÿ”— Italy ๐Ÿ”— Sociology ๐Ÿ”— Organizations ๐Ÿ”— Military history/German military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/French military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Dutch military history ๐Ÿ”— Rome ๐Ÿ”— European history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Italian military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/European military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/British military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Post-Cold War ๐Ÿ”— NATO

Operation Gladio is the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies. The operation was designed for a potential Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest of Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and some neutral countries.

During the Cold War, some anti-communist armed groups engaged in the harassment of left-wing parties, torture, terrorist attacks, and massacres in countries such as Italy. The role of the CIA and other intelligence organisations in Gladioโ€”the extent of its activities during the Cold War era and any responsibility for terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the "Years of Lead" (late 1960sโ€“early 1980s)โ€”is the subject of debate.

In 1990, the European Parliament adopted a resolution alleging that military secret services in certain member states were involved in serious terrorism and crime, whether or not their superiors were aware. The resolution also urged investigations by the judiciaries of the countries in which those armies operated, so that their modus operandi and actual extension would be revealed. To date, only Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter.

The three inquiries reached differing conclusions as regarded different countries. Guido Salvini, a judge who worked in the Italian Massacres Commission, concluded that some right-wing terrorist organizations of the Years of Lead (La Fenice, National Vanguard and Ordine Nuovo) were the trench troops of a secret army, remotely controlled by exponents of the Italian state apparatus and linked to the CIA. Salvini said that the CIA encouraged them to commit atrocities. The Swiss inquiry found that British intelligence secretly cooperated with their army in an operation named P-26 and provided training in combat, communications, and sabotage. It also discovered that P-26 not only would organize resistance in case of a Soviet invasion, but would also become active should the left succeed in achieving a parliamentary majority. The Belgian inquiry could find no conclusive information on their army. No links between them and terrorist attacks were found, and the inquiry noted that the Belgian secret services refused to provide the identity of agents, which could have eliminated all doubts. A 2000 Italian parliamentary report from the left wing coalition Gruppo Democratici di Sinistra l'Ulivo reported that terrorist massacres and bombings had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions who were linked to American intelligence. The report also said the United States was guilty of promoting the strategy of tension. Operation Gladio is also suspected to have been activated to counter existing left-wing parliamentary majorities in Europe.

The US State Department published a communiquรฉ in January 2006 that stated claims the United States ordered, supported, or authorized terrorism by stay-behind units, and US-sponsored "false flag" operations are rehashed former Soviet disinformation based on documents that the Soviets forged.

The word gladio is the Italian form of gladius, a type of Roman shortsword.

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๐Ÿ”— Crypto AG

๐Ÿ”— United States ๐Ÿ”— Mass surveillance ๐Ÿ”— Espionage ๐Ÿ”— Companies ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/North American military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/United States military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Intelligence ๐Ÿ”— Cryptography ๐Ÿ”— Cryptography/Computer science ๐Ÿ”— Switzerland ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Sweden

Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security. It was secretly jointly owned by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1970 until about 1993, with the CIA continuing as sole owner until about 2018. With headquarters in Steinhausen, the company was a long-established manufacturer of encryption machines and a wide variety of cipher devices.

The company had about 230 employees, had offices in Abidjan, Abu Dhabi, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Selsdon and Steinhausen, and did business throughout the world. The owners of Crypto AG were unknown, supposedly even to the managers of the firm, and they held their ownership through bearer shares.

The company has been criticised for selling backdoored products to benefit the American, British and German national signals intelligence agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the BND, respectively. On 11 February 2020, The Washington Post, ZDF and SRF revealed that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence, and the spy agencies could easily break the codes used to send encrypted messages. The operation was known first by the code name "Thesaurus" and later "Rubicon".

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๐Ÿ”— Operation Northwoods

๐Ÿ”— United States/U.S. Government ๐Ÿ”— United States ๐Ÿ”— International relations ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/North American military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/United States military history ๐Ÿ”— Terrorism ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Military history/South American military history ๐Ÿ”— Cuba

Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to both stage and actually commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes to be shot down or given the appearance of being shot down, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy.

Communists led by Fidel Castro had taken power in Cuba in 1959, which aroused the concern of the U.S. military due to the Cold War. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government. To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:

The desired result from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington".

The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the U.S. government's anti-communist Cuban Project, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. According to currently released documentation, none of the operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals.

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๐Ÿ”— 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

๐Ÿ”— Human rights ๐Ÿ”— History ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Crime ๐Ÿ”— China ๐Ÿ”— Politics ๐Ÿ”— Socialism ๐Ÿ”— Law Enforcement ๐Ÿ”— Sociology ๐Ÿ”— Guild of Copy Editors ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Asian military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Chinese military history

The Tiananmen Square protests, also known as the June Fourth Incident (Chinese: ๅ…ญๅ››ไบ‹ไปถ; pinyin: liรนsรฌ shรฌjiร n) in China, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre (Chinese: ๅคฉๅฎ‰้—จๅคงๅฑ ๆ€; pinyin: Tiฤn'ฤnmรฉn dร  tรบshฤ), troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government declared martial law and sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded. The popular national movement inspired by the Beijing protests is sometimes called the '89 Democracy Movement (Chinese: ๅ…ซไนๆฐ‘่ฟ; pinyin: Bฤjiว” mรญnyรนn) or the Tiananmen Square Incident (Chinese: ๅคฉๅฎ‰้—จไบ‹ไปถ; pinyin: Tiฤn'ฤnmรฉn shรฌjiร n).

The protests were precipitated by the death of pro-reform Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Hu Yaobang in April 1989 amid the backdrop of rapid economic development and social change in post-Mao China, reflecting anxieties among the people and political elite about the country's future. The reforms of the 1980s had led to a nascent market economy that benefited some people but seriously disadvantaged others, and the one-party political system also faced a challenge to its legitimacy. Common grievances at the time included inflation, corruption, limited preparedness of graduates for the new economy, and restrictions on political participation. Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. At the height of the protests, about oneย million people assembled in the Square.

As the protests developed, the authorities responded with both conciliatory and hardline tactics, exposing deep divisions within the party leadership. By May, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. Among the CCP's top leadership, Premier Li Peng and Party Elders Li Xiannian and Wang Zhen called for decisive action through violent suppression of the protesters, and ultimately managed to win over Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and President Yang Shangkun to their side. On 20 May, the State Council declared martial law. They mobilized as many as ~300,000 troops to Beijing. The troops advanced into central parts of Beijing on the city's major thoroughfares in the early morning hours of 4 June, killing both demonstrators and bystanders in the process. The military operations were under the overall command of General Yang Baibing, half-brother of President Yang Shangkun.

The international community, human rights organizations, and political analysts condemned the Chinese government for the massacre. Western countries imposed arms embargoes on China. The Chinese government made widespread arrests of protesters and their supporters, suppressed other protests around China, expelled foreign journalists, strictly controlled coverage of the events in the domestic press, strengthened the police and internal security forces, and demoted or purged officials it deemed sympathetic to the protests. More broadly, the suppression ended the political reforms begun in 1986 and halted the policies of liberalization of the 1980s, which were only partly resumed after Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. Considered a watershed event, reaction to the protests set limits on political expression in China that have lasted up to the present day. Remembering the protests is widely associated with questioning the legitimacy of CCP rule and remains one of the most sensitive and most widely censored topics in China.

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๐Ÿ”— Davy Crockett (nuclear device)

๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/North American military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/United States military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Weaponry ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Pritzker Military Library ๐Ÿ”— Firearms

The M-28 or M-29 Davy Crockett Weapon System was the tactical nuclear recoilless gun (smoothbore) for firing the M-388 nuclear projectile that was deployed by the United States during the Cold War. It was one of the smallest nuclear weapon systems ever built, with a yield between 10 and 20 tons TNT equivalent (40โ€“80 gigajoules). It is named after American folk hero, soldier, and congressman Davy Crockett.

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๐Ÿ”— Spaceflight Before 1951

๐Ÿ”— Aviation ๐Ÿ”— History ๐Ÿ”— Spaceflight ๐Ÿ”— Military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory ๐Ÿ”— Spaceflight/Timeline of spaceflight working group ๐Ÿ”— Physics ๐Ÿ”— Lists ๐Ÿ”— Military history/World War II ๐Ÿ”— Military history/Cold War ๐Ÿ”— Rocketry ๐Ÿ”— Military history/European military history ๐Ÿ”— Military history/British military history

Spaceflight as a practical endeavor began during World War II with the development of operational liquid-fueled rockets. Beginning life as a weapon, the V-2 was pressed into peaceful service after the war at the United States' White Sands Missile Range as well as the Soviet Union's Kapustin Yar. This led to a flourishing of missile designs setting the stage for the exploration of space. The small American WAC Corporal rocket was evolved into the Aerobee, a much more powerful sounding rocket. Exploration of space began in earnest in 1947 with the flight of the first Aerobee, 46 of which had flown by the end of 1950. These and other rockets, both Soviet and American, returned the first direct data on air density, temperature, charged particles and magnetic fields in the Earth's upper atmosphere.

By 1948, the United States Navy had evolved the V-2 design into the Viking capable of more than 100 miles (160ย km) in altitude. The first Viking to accomplish this feat, number four, did so 10 May 1950. The Soviet Union developed a virtual copy of the V-2 called the R-1, which first flew in 1948. Its longer-ranged successor, the R-2, entered military service in 1950. This event marked the entry of both superpowers into the post-V-2 rocketry era.

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