The Great Depression to Vietnam War

Flashcards covering key vocabulary related to the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, and related historical events and figures.

Herbert Hoover

U.S. President during the start of the Great Depression.

Richard Nixon

U.S. President involved in the Watergate scandal; pursued détente with the Soviet Union and China.

Herbert Hoover

U.S. President during the start of the Great Depression.

Richard Nixon

U.S. President involved in the Watergate scandal; pursued détente with the Soviet Union and China.

Kellogg-Briand Pact

An agreement attempting to outlaw war.

Dixiecrats

Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights advancements in the mid-20th century.

Hoover-Stimson Doctrine

U.S. policy of non-recognition of international territorial changes that were executed by force.

Joseph McCarthy

U.S. Senator known for McCarthyism, a period of intense anti-communist suspicion.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

U.S. President during the Great Depression and most of World War II; implemented the New Deal.

Venona Project

A secret U.S. effort to decrypt Soviet messages.

New Deal

A series of programs and projects enacted in the United States during the Great Depression with the goal of restoring prosperity.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

U.S. President and former General; oversaw the Interstate Highway System; warned against the military-industrial complex.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

A public work relief program during the Great Depression in the United States

Sputnik

The first artificial Earth satellite, launched by the Soviet Union.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

A federally owned corporation in the United States created to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development.

Project Apollo

A U.S. human spaceflight program that resulted in landing the first humans on the Moon.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

The largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people to carry out public works projects.

Project Gemini

The second human spaceflight program by NASA.

National Industrial Recovery Act

A law passed to authorize the President to regulate industry in an attempt to raise prices after severe deflation and stimulate economic recovery.

Project Mercury

The first human spaceflight program of the United States.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

A United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost prices by paying farmers to reduce their output of crops and livestock.

NASA

The United States government agency responsible for aviation and spaceflight.

Social Security

A federal insurance program that provides benefits to retired people and those who are unemployed or disabled.

Freedom Riders

Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States.

Lend-Lease

A program by which the United States supplied Allied nations with materiel during World War II

Martin Luther King Jr.

A pivotal leader in the American civil rights movement.

Atlantic Charter

A statement of principles between the U.S. and UK, outlining goals for the post-World War II world

Malcolm X

An African American Muslim minister and human rights activist

Soviet Union

A communist state from 1922 to 1991, consisting of Russia and several other republics.

John F. Kennedy

U.S. President during the Cuban Missile Crisis; initiated the space race.

Philippines

A country in Southeast Asia which was a U.S. territory before gaining independence.

Cuba

An island nation under communist rule, site of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Hideki Tojo

Prime Minister of Japan during much of World War II.

Fidel Castro

Communist dictator of Cuba following the Cuban Revolution.

Manhattan Project

The code name for the American-led effort to develop atomic weapons during World War II.

Nikita Khrushchev

Leader of the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Dorie Miller

A U.S. Navy cook who heroically fired at Japanese aircraft during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bay of Pigs

A failed invasion of Cuba in 1961 by U.S.-backed Cuban exiles.

Normandy, France

Site of the D-Day landings during World War II.

Lyndon Johnson

U.S. President who escalated the Vietnam War and launched the Great Society programs.

D-Day

The Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.

Great Society

A set of domestic programs launched by Lyndon B. Johnson to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.

Midway

A crucial naval battle in the Pacific during World War II in which the United States defeated Japan.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Landmark legislation outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

Curtis Lemay

U.S. Air Force general known for advocating strategic bombing during World War II and the Cold War.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Legislation prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.

Hiroshima

Japanese city on which the first atomic bomb was dropped in World War II.

Brown v. Board of Education

A landmark Supreme Court case that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional.

Hirohito

Emperor of Japan during World War II.

Ho Chi Minh

Vietnamese communist revolutionary leader.

Harry Truman

U.S. President who made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan; implemented the Truman Doctrine.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

A joint resolution passed by the U.S. Congress giving President Lyndon B. Johnson broad powers to escalate the conflict in Vietnam.

Potsdam Conference

A meeting of Allied leaders to discuss the post-World War II order.

Ia Drang Valley

The first major battle between the United States Army and the North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War.

United Nations

An international organization founded to promote peace, security, and cooperation.

Tet Offensive

A series of surprise attacks by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War.

Marshall Plan

A U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following World War II.

Gen. William Westmoreland

U.S. Army general who commanded American military operations in the Vietnam War.

Thurgood Marshall

First African American Supreme Court Justice; argued Brown v. Board of Education.

Muhammad Ali

An American professional boxer, activist, and philanthropist.

Berlin Airlift

A military operation in the late 1940s that brought food and other needed goods into West Berlin by air after the government of East Germany had cut off its supply routes.

Abbie Hoffman

An American political and social activist.

NATO

A military alliance formed in 1949 by countries in North America and Europe.

George Wallace

A Governor of Alabama and a U.S. presidential candidate, known for his segregationist views.

Warsaw Pact

A collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland among the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955.

Kent State

Site of a shooting of unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War.

Monolithic Communism

The belief that all communist states act as one bloc with a unified plan; this belief informed much of US foreign policy during the cold war.

Détente

The easing of hostility or strained relations, especially between countries.

Truman Doctrine

The principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection.

War Powers Act

A federal law intended to check the president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress.

Domino Theory

A theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow.

Christmas Bombing (Linebacker II)

A series of bombing raids conducted by US. Navy and US. Air Force against targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the final period of US involvement in the Vietnam War.

Hydrogen Bomb

A thermonuclear weapon much more powerful than the atomic bombs used in World War II.

Salt Treaty

Two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union, the Cold War superpowers, on the issue of armament control.

Korean War

A war between North Korea and South Korea.

Watergate

A major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation.

Chosin Reservoir

A decisive battle in the Korean War.

M.A.D. Policy

A doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.

Massive Retaliation

A military doctrine and nuclear strategy in which a state commits itself to retaliate in much greater force in the event of an attack.

HUAC

A committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that investigated allegations of communist activity in the U.S. during the early years of the Cold War.