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Timeline: 1949

Jan 1 Japan is still under Allied (SCAP) military occupation. Japan's stock market prices have doubled in one year, and Japan's food situation has improved, but not enough for the U.S. to discontinue food aid. It is costly being both humanitarian and a conqueror. Aid to Japan is costing the United States more than $1 million per day. The U.S. wants Japan to develop foreign trade so that it can buy its own food. Many Japanese, meanwhile, are again visiting their Shinto shrines.

Jan 10 In China, morale is low among Chiang Kai-shek's troops. 300,000 of them surrender to the Communist army.

Jan 21 George C. Marshall retires. Dean Acheson replaces him as secretary of state.

Jan 22 The advancing communist army is replacing Chiang Kai-shek's authority in Beijing.

Jan 24 MacArthur does not fear a Communist takeover in Japan. Japanese communists have been allowed to run in the nation's general election. The Democratic Liberal Party candidates (conservatives) win a majority of the votes. The Communists increase their seats from 4 to 35, out of 466 seats in Japan's lower legislative house.

Feb 8 In Hungary, Cardinal Mindszenty is sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. He has "confessed" his guilt. More people are convinced of the evil nature of "communist" regimes.

Feb 12 The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Banna, now back in Cairo, is shot and left to bleed to death on the floor of a hospital. His killer is unknown but many suspect an Egyptian government agent.

Feb 24 Israel signs an armistice with Egypt, seen by the Egyptians as merely ending military hostilities. The Israelis, on the other hand, want it to represent a permanent settlement. Egypt keeps control over the Gaza Strip and is not to allow Arabs there Egyptian citizenship or to migrate to Egypt.

Mar 1 In an interview in Tokyo, General MacArthur speaks of the Pacific Ocean as having become an Anglo-Saxon lake and the U.S. line of defense running from the Philippines, through Okinawa and other Ryukyo islands, through Japan and the Aleutian Islands to Alaska. Dean Acheson is to agree with this assessment without thought of abandoning South Korea.

Mar 7 In Moscow, while talking to Stalin, North Korea's Kim Il Sung, says he believes "the situation" makes it necessary and possible to liberate South Korea. Stalin disagrees and cites the USSR-USA agreement on the 38th parallel as dividing Korea and the possibility of an American intervention against a move by Kim's forces into the south.

Mar 23 Israel signs an armistice with Lebanon.

Mar 24 The academy award for best picture in 1948 goes to "Treasure of Sierra Madre."

Mar 25 The Soviet Union is conducting a program of deportations, said to number 92,000 people, from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to remote areas of the Soviet Union.

Mar 28 United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal is mentally ill and resigns.

Apr 3 Israel signs an armistice with Syria and with Transjordan.

Apr 4 The North Atlantic Treaty is signed by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United States. It is the first peacetime military alliance for the United States.

Apr 11 The defeat of Arab forces by Israelis has shaken confidence in Syria's parliamentary democracy. A Syrian general, Husni al-Zaim seizes power in a bloodless coup and temporarily imprisons Syria's president, Shukri al-Kuwatli. The coup has been carried out, it would be said, with discrete backing from the U.S. embassy in Damascus, which did not plan the coup, or pay for it, but al-Zaim, it would be said, has promised the Americans to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Apr 22 William F. Knowland, Republican from California, is concerned about the advancing Communist army in China, and in a speech in the Senate he accuses Secretary of State Dean Acheson of having "pulled the rug out from under" Chiang Kai-shek's government and demands an investigation. Events in China, meanwhile, are being driven by the hearts and minds of the Chinese, and there is widespread dislike for Chiang kai-shek's regime - also in China's major cities. And the Communists are benefiting from it.

Apr 24 Communist troops have crossed that Yangtze River and take over what had been Chiang's capital city: Nanking. The Communists begin pushing toward Shanghai.

Apr 28 Speaking to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, former President Herbert Hoover calls for expelling communist countries from the United Nations. His speech is greeted with "thunderous, almost impassioned ovation."

Apr 29 In the United States, George F. Kennan is concerned about public opinion. A critic of Soviet policies and an architect of the U.S. policy of "containing" the Soviet Union, he draws from his experience as a diplomat in the Soviet Union and states publicly that the Russians are not an enemy of the American people, that they still believe in "decency, honesty, kindliness, and loyalty in the relations between individuals."

May 11 Israel becomes the 59th member state in the United Nations.

May 11 The Kingdom of Siam becomes the Kingdom of Thailand.

May 12 The Soviet Union responds to futility and lifts its blockade of Berlin.

May 22 James Forrestal, Secretary of Defense to March 28, is found dead on a third-floor roof below the 16th-floor kitchen across the hall from his room.

May 23 In West Germany, military occupation by the U.S., Britain and France ends. The Federal Republic of Germany is established. Austria remains under Allied occupation.

May 23 The first stored-program computer, begins operation at Cambridge University, the United Kingdom.

Jun 2 King Abdullah has dropped the name Transjordan in favor of Jordan.

Jun 3 Israel is reported to be bargaining with Egypt regarding acquisition of the Gaza Strip and its absorption of Arabs there.

Jun 5 The Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, has finished talks with the ruler of Syria, General Zaim. The Mufti's Palestinian regiment is to be attached to the Syrian Army.

Jun 5 The General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, Matyas Rokosi, has denounced "chauvinism" and "cosmopolitanism" among Hungarian Communists and has begun a purge of people within the Party.

Jun 15 In Hungary, it is officially declared that the high ranking Communists, Laszlo Rajk and Tibor Szonyi, have been expelled from the Party because they are "spies and Trotskyist agents of foreign and imperialist powers." Rokosi has seen Rajk as a rival and as insufficiently Stalinist.

Jun 29 The last U.S. troops withdraw from South Korea.

Jul 4 In the U.S. the Department of Classroom Teachers, representing 350,000 teachers, unanimously opposes loyalty oaths.

Jul 15 President Truman establishes a national housing policy, providing federal aid to slum clearance programs and low-cost housing projects.

Jul 20 Iraq has withdrawn its troops from Palestine and leaves Jordan in possession of much on the west bank of the Jordan River - the West Bank. Israel controls western Jerusalem and Jordan controls the rest of Jerusalem.

Jul 29 Under economic and diplomatic pressure from the United States, the Netherlands government agrees with Indonesian leaders to a cease fire.

Aug 5 An earthquake of only 6.75 on the Richter scale destroys 50 towns and kills about 6,000 people.

Aug 5 In the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson proclaims that the failures of the Chinese National Government "...do not stem from any inadequacy of American aid. Our military observers on the spot have reported that the Nationalist armies did not lose a single battle during the crucial year of 1948 through lack of arms or ammunition."

Aug 6 In Damascus, Syria, a synagogue is bombed and six or seven persons killed and twenty-seven injured. the bombing is believed to be a demonstration against peace negotiations with Israel conducted by the United Nations.

Aug 8 For the last two years India has been handling Bhutan's foreign affairs, a task it was given by the British. Today, Bhutan becomes completely independent.

Aug 14 Syria's new ruler, Husni al-Zaim has made enemies by proposing giving women the vote and allowing them freedom from wearing the veil, by raising taxes, signing a cease-fire with Israel and by associating with U.S. oil companies in the building of a Trans-Arabian pipeline. He is overthrown by his military collegues, and he and his prime minister, Muhsen al-Barazi, are shot dead.

Aug 28 The last significant area held by Greece's communist guerrillas is taken by the government in Athens.

Aug 29 The Soviet Union tests an atomic bomb.

Sep 11 Stalin orders his embassy in North Korea to examine the military, political and international aspects of a possible invasion by North Korea into South Korea.

Sep 13 The Soviet Union vetoes United Nations membership for Ceylon, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Jordan and Portugal.

Sep 15 The Yugoslav government has denounced the coming trial of Laszlo Rajk in Hungary as a hoax aimed against Yugoslavia, and it accuses the Soviet Union of spurring the trial.

Sep 16 The trial against Rajk and sevens other defendants opens. Rajk names Cardinal Mindszenty, now in prison, as the leader of a Vatican scheme to help him take over the Hungarian Government by inciting anti-government riots to coincide with a coup. In the Soviet Union, The Soviet press describes Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia as on trial in Hungary as well as Laszlo Rajk.

Sep 17 In the treason trial in Hungary, Winston Churchill is named as one of the plotters, among Americans and the Yugoslavs in a scheme to seize power in the Balkans.

Sep 22 In court, all eight defendants in the Hungarian treason trial confess their guilt.

Sep 23 President Truman tells the people of the United States of the Soviet Union having tested an atom bomb.

Sep 24 Laszlo Rajk and co-defendants are sentenced to death.

Sep 29 The Soviet Union announces that it has formally denounced its treaty of friendship, mutual assistance and post-war cooperation with Yugoslavia.

Sep 30 Hungary renounces its 1947 treaty of treaty of friendship and mutual assistance with Yugoslavia.

Oct 1 At Tiananmen Square, standing before 300,000 people, Mao Zedong, in a high-pitched voice, declares the founding of the People's Republic of China. In the United Nations, a representative of Chiang Kai-shek's "nationalist" Chinese complains that if the Communists in China win a "full victory," they will send men and arms and imperil a half-dozen neighboring states.

Oct 7 The Soviet Union's zone of occupation in East Germany is officially proclaimed as an independent state: Democratic Republic of Germany.

Oct 15 Laszlo Rajk is hanged.

Nov 2 The Netherlands officially recognizes the end of its colonialism in Indonesia. "Unconditionally and irrevocably" it recognizes Indonesia as a federation of autonomous states. The Dutch did not recognize, however, Indonesia's claim to the western half of New Guinea, known also as West Irian.

Dec 8 From China, anti-communist forces have finished their evacuation to Taiwan. Most Taiwanese consider themselves Taiwanese rather than Chinese and they resent the invasion, dictatorial impositions, bullying and thievery of the invading Chinese.

Dec 14 Stalin has been putting pressure on the Bulgarian Communist Party, and other East European Communist parties, to adhere to the Soviet way of looking at things. Traicho Kostov, who helped lead the Communist Party in Bulgaria in 1944, has not followed the Stalin line closely enough. He has been forced from power by Bulgarian Stalinists, and on this day he is shot.

Dec 16 Sukarno is elected President of the Republic of Indonesia.

Dec 17 Burma recognizes the People's Republic of China.

Dec 30 India recognizes the People's Republic of China.