APUSH 36 Simple IDs

GI Bill

Popular name for the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act that provided education and economic assistance to former soldiers

Sunbelt

Shorthand name for the southern and western regions of the United States that experienced the highest rates of growth after World War II

Levittown

New York suburb where postwar builders pioneered the techniques of mass home construction

Baby Boom

Term for the dramatic rise in U.S. births that began immediately after World War II

Yalta Conference

Big Three wartime conference that later became the focus of charges that Roosevelt had sold out Eastern Europe to the Soviet communists

Cold War

The extended post–World War II confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that stopped just short of a shooting war

Bretton Woods Conference

Meeting of Western Allies during World War II that established the economic structures to promote recovery and enhance FDR’s vision of an open world

United Nations

New international organization that experienced some early successes in diplomatic and cultural areas but failed in areas like atomic arms control

Nuremberg Trials

Allied-organized judicial tribunal that convicted and executed top Nazi leaders for war crimes

Marshall Plan

American-sponsored effort that provided substantial funds for the economic relief and recovery of Western Europe

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

The new anti-Soviet organization of Western nations that ended the long-time American tradition of not joining permanent military alliances

Chinese Nationalists

Jiang Jieshi’s (Chiang Kai-shek’s) pro-American forces, which lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s (Mao Tse-tung’s) communists in 1949

NSC-68

Key U.S. government memorandum that militarized American foreign policy and indicated national faith in the economy’s capacity to sustain large military expenditures

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

U.S. House of Representatives committee that took the lead in investigating alleged pro-communist agents such as Alger Hiss

38th parallel

The dividing line between North and South Korea, across which the fighting between communists and United Nations forces ebbed and flowed during the Korean War

Benjamin Spock

Physician who provided advice on child rearing to baby boomers’ parents after World War II

Hermann Goering

Top Nazi official who committed suicide after being convicted in war crimes trials

Joseph Stalin

The tough leader whose violation of agreements in Eastern Europe and Germany helped launch the Cold War

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Americans convicted and executed for spying and passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union

Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek)

Chinese Nationalist leader whose corrupt and ineffective government fell to communist rebels in 1949

George F. Kennan

Brilliant U.S. specialist on the Soviet Union and originator of the theory that U.S. policy should be to contain the Soviet Union

Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung)

Leader of the Chinese Communists whose revolutionary army seized power in China in 1949

George C. Marshall

Originator of a massive program for the economic relief and recovery of devastated Europe

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Former scientific director of the Manhattan Project who joined Albert Einstein in opposing development of the hydrogen bomb

Reinhold Niebuhr

Leading American theologian who advocated Christian realism and the use of force if necessary to maintain justice against Nazi or Stalinist evil

Richard Nixon

Young California congressman whose investigation of Alger Hiss spurred fears of communist influence in America

Joseph McCarthy

Wisconsin senator whose charges of communist infiltration of the U.S. government deepened the anti-red atmosphere of the early 1950s

Henry A. Wallace

Former vice president of the United States whose 1948 campaign as a pro-Soviet liberal split the Democratic Party

Strom Thurmond

Southern segregationist who led Dixiecrat presidential campaign against Truman in 1948

Douglas MacArthur

American military commander in Korea fired by President Harry Truman