WWII and Cold War Vocab.

Appeasement

Making concessions to an aggressor in order to avoid war.

Atlantic Charter

World War II alliance agreement between the United States and Britain; included a clause that recognized the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they live; indicated sympathy for decolonization.

Berlin Wall

Built in 1961 to halt the flow of immigration from East Berlin to West Berlin; immigration was in response to lack of consumer goods and close Soviet control of economy and politics; torn down at the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Cold War

The state of diplomatic hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union in the decades following World War II; based on the creation of political spheres of influence and a nuclear arms race rather than actual warfare.

Containment

Attempting to stop the spread of communism.

Détente

A policy of reducing Cold War tensions that was adopted by the United States during the presidency of Richard Nixon.

Domino Theory

The idea that if a nation falls under Communist control, nearby nations will also fall under Communist control.

Iron Curtain

Phase coined by Winston Churchill to describe the division between free and communist societies taking shape in Europe after 1946.

Island Hopping

The U.S strategy of capturing Japanese held islands by “hopping” from one island to another.

Glasnost

Policy of “openness” or political liberation in Soviet Union put forward by Mikhali Gorbachev in the late 1980s.

Kamikazes

During World War II, Japanese suicide pilots trained to sink Allied ships by crashing bomb-filled planes into them.

Marshall Plan

A U.S. program of economic aid to European countries to help them rebuild after World War II.

Munich Conference

A 1938 meeting of representatives from Britain, France, Italy, and Germany, at which Britain and France agreed to allow Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia in return for Adolf Hitler’s pledge to respect Czechoslovakia’s new boarders.

National Socialist Party

Also known as the Nazi Party; led by Adolf Hitler in Germany; picked up political support during the economic chaos of the Great Depression; advocated authoritarian state under a single leader, aggressive foreign policy to reverse humiliation of the Versailles treaty; took power in Germany in 1933.

NATO

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Created in 1949 under U.S. leadership to group most of the western European powers plus Canada in a defensive alliance against possible Soviet aggression.

Non-aggression Pact

A pre-WWII agreement between Stalin and Hitler, where both sides agreed not to attack one another.

Perestroika

A “restructuring” of the Soviet economy to permit more local decision-making, begun by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985; more leeway for private ownership and decentralized control in industry and agriculture.

Potsdam Conference

Meeting among leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union just before the end of World War II in 1945; Allies agreed upon Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, Germany, and Austria to be divided among victorious Allies.

S.A.L.T

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks- a series of meetings in the 1970s, in which leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to limit their nation’ stocks of nuclear weapons.

Tehran Conference

Meeting among leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union in 1943; agreed to the opening of a new front in France.

Solidarity

A Polish labor movement formed in the 1970s under Lech Walesa; challenged U.S.S.R. -dominated government of Poland.

Truman Doctrine

Announced by President Harry Truman in 1947, a U.S. policy of giving economic and military aid to free nations threatened by internal or external opponents.

Warsaw Pact

Alliance organized by Soviet Union with its eastern European satellites to balance formation of NATO by Western powers in 1949.

Vichy France

French collaboration government established in 1940 in southern France following defeat of French armies by the Germans; Nazi puppet regime.