Final Examination (history 2112)

Mien Kampf

An autobiography written by Hitler in 1925. It showcases his beliefs, ideology, and his future plans for Germany.

Appeasement

A 1930 policy by Britain. Britain decided to let Germany take over the land in order to not let war happen.

The Popular Front

The rapid rise of Facism in Italy and Germany. It is any coalition of working-class and middle-class parties united for the defense of democratic forms against a presumed Fascist assault.

Nazi-Soviet Pact

Called the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, it is a non-agression pact by USSR and Nazi Germany. (1939-1941) It’s to cut Poland in half.

Neutrality Act

Enacted by the US in 1935 in response to the threat of WW2. People didn’t like it because it wouldn’t distinguish villain and victim. It was repealed in 1941 for the Lend-Lease Act.

Cash and Carry

A 1939 policy made by FDR for by which belligerents could purchase only nonmilitary goods from the United States as long as the recipients paid immediately in cash and assumed all risk in transportation using their own ships.

Fall of France

Nazi Germany took over France in May-June 1940 using the Blitzkrieg strategy. Also called the “Phony War.”

Battle of Britain

A Military campaign for WW2 in which the Air Force defended the UK from Nazi Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe in 1940.

Burke-Wadsworth Act

Also called the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 enacted in September 16, 1940 was the first peacetime conscription in United States history. This Selective Service Act required that men who had reached their 21st birthday but had not yet reached their 36th birthday register with local draft boards.

Destroyer Deal

An agreement between US and UK in 1940, US decided to send the UK 50 military boats. In return, the United States got access to British naval bases and the ships would be returned the United States at the end of the conflict. This was a precursor what would be Lend-Lease.

Lend-Lease

Enacted on 1941, it was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, the Republic of China, and other Allied nations of the Second World War with food, oil, and materiel from 1941 to 1945

Atlantic Conference and Charter

Issued on August 1941, FDR and Churchill that set out American and British goals for the world after the end of World War II:

1) No Territorial Gains

2) Democracy

3) Free Trade

4) Global Economic Cooperation

5) Collective Security and General Disarmament

Grand Alliance

The group of US, UK, and Soviet Russia for WW2. France and China.

Pearl Harbor

(1941)Japan ambushed Hawaii and that caused the US to join WW2 on the Allie’s side.

Casablanca Conference

Held in 1943, to plan for the next phase in WW2. Key decisions included a commitment to demand Axis powers' unconditional surrender; plans for an invasion of Sicily and Italy before the main invasion of France; an intensified strategic bombing campaign against Germany; and approval of a US Navy plan to advance on Japan through the central Pacific and the Philippines.

Yalta Conference

Held 4–11 February 1945, the grand Alliance discuss what to do with Germany and the rest of Europe postwar. They decided to make Germany surrender unconditionally.

Potsdam Conference

Held at Potsdam in the Soviet occupation zone from 17 July to 2 August 1945, to allow the three leading Allies to plan the postwar peace, while avoiding the mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In 1945, America decided to nuke Japan 2 times to make sure that japan surrenders. It worked.

Truman Doctrine

(1947) the primary goal of countering the growth of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It was known as the start of the Cold War.

National Security Act

Enacted July 26, 1947, was a law enacting major restructuring of the United States government's military and intelligence agencies following World War II.

Marshall Plan

An American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred $13.3 billion.

Berlin Airlift

An organization by Western Allies to carry supplies to West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city and the population. (1948)

NATO

Formed after WW2, its an intergovernmental military alliance between 32 member states, 30 in Europe and 2 in North America. (1949)

Fair Deal

A set of progressive proposals by Harry Truman to Congress in 1945. It covers minimum wage, employment, Farmers aid, etc.

To Secure These Rights

Truman proposed comprehensive civil rights legislation to Congress, and ordered anti-discrimination and desegregation throughout the government and armed forces. (1947)

Civil Rights Bill

(1957) The first federal civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education brought the issue of school desegregation to the fore of public attention, as Southern Democratic leaders began a campaign of "massive resistance" against desegregation.

Dixiecrats

A short-lived segregationist, States' Rights, and old southern democratic political party in the United States, active primarily in the South. (1948)

Communist China

(1927-1949) There were Communist uprisings in the country led by Mao Zedong. Also known as the Chinese civil war.

NSC-68

a 66-page top secret U.S. National Security Council (NSC) policy paper drafted by the Department of State and Department of Defense and presented to President Harry S. Truman on 7 April 1950. It provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s.

Korean War

An Armed conflict from 1950-3 on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea and South Korea. Its on pause to this day.

Federal Employee Loyalty Program

(1947)The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government. Truman aimed to rally public opinion behind his Cold War policies with investigations conducted under its authority.

Alger Hiss

He got accused of being a communist spy in 1948. Before the trial, Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a U.S. State Department official and as a UN official. In later life, he worked as a lecturer and author.

House Un-American Activities Committee

An investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties.

Julius & Ethel Rosenberg

An American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. They were executed in 1953.

Joe McCarthy

A paranoid US senator who became the face of the Red Panic in 1950. He alleged that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere.

Brown V. Board of Education

(1954) A landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and hence are unconstitutional, even if the segregated facilities are presumed to be equal.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

(1955) Rosa Parks decided to boycott the busses by refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. It was successful

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fought for civil rights and equality at 1955, and gave out the famous “I had a dream” speech. Caused the civil rights bill to happen. Got assassinated at 1968.

Satyagraha and SCLC

(1957) King’s organization for equal rights, anti-segregation and they performed a specific type on nonviolent protest such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Southern Christian Leadership Conference is a human rights organization by MLK.

Little Rock

A group of African American Girls who enrolled in _____ High School in 1957. Of course, this caused an uproar causing the girls to not be allowed in there. The Brown v. Board of Education covered this.

Nikita Khrushchev

As leader of the Soviet Union, he stunned the communist world by denouncing his predecessor Joseph Stalin in 1958, embarking on a campaign of de-Stalinization, and presiding over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Open Skies

A program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants. The treaty is designed to enhance mutual understanding and confidence by giving all participants, regardless of size, a direct role in gathering information about military forces and activities of concern to them.

Sputnik

The 1st earth satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957. It triggered the Space Race.

Missile Gap

The perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with those of the U.S., causing a lack of military parity. The gap did not exist but it did cause tension. The term was invented in 1958.

Francis Gary Powers

Known for his involvement in the 1960 U-2 incident, when he was shot down while flying a secret CIA spying mission over the Soviet Union. He was then captured in the USSR for 10 years for espionage. 

John F. Kennedy

A president who served from 1961-63 due to assassination. Served during the height of the Cold War .

Bay of Pigs

A failed invasion by the US in order to topple the Cuban Government of Fidel Castro. (1961)

Freedom Rides

Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.

Vienna Summit Meeting

Held in 1961 and between JFK and Nikita Khrushchev, the leaders of the two superpowers of the Cold War era discussed many issues in the relationship between their countries.

Berlin Wall

Also called the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart, was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989.

Missile Crisis

(1962) a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union about nuclear missiles. It was the closest to a nuclear war but luckily, it didn’t happen.

Test Ban Treaty

Known as the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water. It prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground.

Civil Rights Act

A Labor law in 1964 that outlaws race, sex, color, religion, and origin discrimination. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools and public accommodations, and employment discrimination. Enforces the 14th admendment.

Voting Rights Act

A landmark U.S. federal statute that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965. Enforces the 15th admendment

Franco-Vietminh War

Also called the First Indochina War. Fought in Indochina between France and the Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 1 August 1954. In 1951, US began providing direct economic aid to the State of Vietnam. It started up the Geneva accords.

Geneva Accords

Intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War and involved several nations. It took place in Switzerland, from 1954. It went over the dismantling and stopping the fighting of French Indochina, neither was happy.

National Liberation Front (Vietcong)

Formed in 1960, the communist driven south division of Vietnam. They’re the bad guys that kicked off the Vietnam War.

Tet Offensive

A major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. Vietcong launched a surprise attack on 30 and 31 January 1968 against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States Armed Forces and their allies.

Richard Nixon

President from 1969 til 1974 when he resigned from the Watergate Scandal. He saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Vietnamization

(1969) A failed foreign policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops"

Paris Peace Accords

(1973) Also called the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam, it was a peace agreement to end the Vietnam War. It included a main treaty and accompanying annexes. Both Vietnam sides and the US signed it.

Watergate Scandal

1972, Nixon’s group was caught burglarizing and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex. This caused Nixon’s impeachment and resignation.

Plumbers

The investigation unit for the Watergate scandal. Its task was to stop and/or respond to the leaking of classified information, such as the Pentagon Papers, to the news media. Also known as Nixon’s fixers.

White House Tapes

Audio recordings of conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Nixon administration officials, Nixon family members, and White House staff surfaced during the Watergate scandal in 1973 and 1974, leading to Nixon's resignation.

U.S. v. Nixon

(1974) A court decision that ordered President Richard Nixon to deliver tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials related to the Watergate scandal to a federal district court. It is a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president to claim executive privilege.

Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement

(1972) They were two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union to limit their nuclear weapons.

Helsinki Accords

A 1975 agreement signed by 35 countries to improve relations between the Soviet bloc and the West during the Cold War. However, were not binding as they did not have treaty status that would have to be ratified by parliaments.