1960s Timeline

July 9, 1961 - President Kennedy has ordered an urgent review to determine whether the U.S. should increase its military strength to meet Soviet threats on Berlin. The re-examination of the nation's military strength and budget was decided on Saturday in a conference at Hyannis Port between President Kennedy and his principal military and diplomatic advisors. The President conferred with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, the White House military advisor, a

July 8, 1961 - Premier Khrushchev announced today that he is suspending reductions in the Soviet armed forces. Mr. Khrushchev said he had been "compelled" to act because of the Western military buildup resulting from the Berlin crisis. Mr. Khrushchev also gave a firm indication that he intended to keep Soviet troops in East Germany after he had signed a peace treaty with the Communist regime there. Premier Khrushchev said the Soviet armed forces would be on hand to "giv

July 6, 1961 - Secretary of State Dean Rusk warned today that any cuts in the Administration's foreign aid program would be "a great mistake" in view of "our present relations with the Communist world." The Secretary spent three hours before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reviewing the increasingly menacing posture of world communism in Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam, and other Asian countries. He said there had been no change in the Soviet demand that the future of Berlin be

July 6, 1961 - The John Birch Society, the ultra-right organization founded by Robert W. Welch Jr. (pictured) in 1958, is asking its members to help it build "the most complete and accurate files in America on the leading ‘Comsymps,’ Socialists and liberals." The organization defined such individuals as "those who are trying to change the economic and political structure of this country so that it could be comfortably merged with Soviet Russia in a one-world Socialist governm

July 6, 1961 - The Soviet Union signed a ten-year military aid treaty with North Korea today. Moscow pledged to support the Korean Communist regime of Premier Kim Il Sung (right) against possible attack "with all forces and by every means." There is speculation among Western diplomats that the treaty is part of an intensified effort by Premier Khrushchev to outdo China in the struggle for leadership and influence in the international Communist movement. #communism #communist

July 5, 1961 - General Douglas MacArthur told the Philippine Congress today that the United States' failure to see the Korean war through to victory was "a major disaster for the free world." General MacArthur asserted that the consequences of this Korean war policy were now being felt in Communist China's rise to a military colossus. The former commander of U.N. forces in Korea said that the U.S. could have destroyed China's capability of waging war "for generations to