apush- - cold war vocab

george kennan

state department official, author of the long telegram, and the father of containment

The Long Telegram

A state department memorandum sent by George Kennan, who was in the Soviet Union, and who argued that the Soviets planned on spreading communism throughout the world if the United States did not move to contain them.

Containment

The U.S. policy of containing communism where it stood, as opposed to rolling it back.

Dean Acheson

State Department official who spoke of a Domino Theory occurring regarding the spread of communism, leading to the Truman Doctrine.

Domino Theory

The idea that if communism were allowed to take hold in Greece it would spread like dominos falling across the middle east and into Europe.

Truman Doctrine

The 1949 Truman foreign policy statement coming in the wake of the Soviet's atomic bomb and the fall of China to the communist, asserting that where communism looked to expand the United States would be there to prevent it. Called for massive defense spending to contain communism.

Marshall Plan

The Post WWII European Recovery and Relief Plan led by General George Marshall. Created a great deal of concern for the Soviets, who believed it overtly attempted to bring eastern Europe into the western block.

Berlin Airlift or Operation Vittles

In response to the Marshall Plan, the Soviets closed all roads into East Germany meaning that food and supplies could not be delivered to Americans in West Berlin. Truman, in a provocative move, opted to fly goods and supplies over the blocked roads into Berlin. The Soviets did nothing, ultimately reopening the roads.

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created through the North Atlantic Treaty, the first peacetime defensive alliance in United States history. Viewed very much as a threat to the Soviets.

Mao Zedong

The leader of Red China

NSC 68

National Security Council policy paper #68 calling for a massive military buildup for the United States, including military, financial and technical assistance to our allies. Another historic peace time move. It provided the ideological justification for the Cold War.

Korean War

Prompted when North Korea moved across the 38th parallel into South Korea resulting in a United Nations response (mostly the United States). The U.S. initially had great success, followed by the Chinese pushing them back into South Korea, resulting in a prolonged war ending in a tie.

Strom Thurmond, Dixiecrats, 1948 Election

Southerners who balked at supporting Truman because he had desegregated the military. Thurmond was their candidate for President in 1948. The rebel flag was their symbol as they united behind segregation. They lost, Truman won.

John Foster Dulles

Eisenhower's Secretary of State and the man thought to have authored the controversial Massive Retaliation/Brinkmanship defense strategy.

Brinksmanship

Name given to the Eisenhower administration's defensive strategy in light of a reduced defense budget.

New Look

The name give by the media to Eisenhower's reduced Defense budget.

House UnAmerican Activities Committee

Agent of provocation during the Second Red Scare, calling many to testify against neighbors, co-workers an others, as communists. Ruined lives.

Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthy Hearings

Wisconsin Senator who did the same in the Senate as the House unAmerican Activities Committee. Was exposed as a fraud and blowhard, but only after hurting many innocent people.

Second Red Scare

Era when the fear of communism led many to point fingers amid the mistrust propagated by the Congress.

Hollywood Ten

Film industry citizens that fought back against the allegations being made.

Alger Hiss

An American government official who was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before he was tried and convicted, he was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department official and as a U.N. official.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Married couple tried, convicted and executed for delivering secrets involving atomic weaponry to the Soviet Union.

Interstate Highway System

Implemented by Eisenhower because he thought such a highway system would better serve the country in a time of war. Had been influenced by the Autobahn in Germany during WWII.

Sputnik

The first artificial satellite shot into orbit. Shocked and frightened Americans that the Russians could do this.

The Best Years of Our Lives

1946 film showed the dreams of family life that had sustained soldiers through years of fighting now somehow felt alien; their place in the household had become insecure.

David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd, (1950)

The most comprehensive analysis of the docile new post WWII corporate character.

C. Wright Mills, White Collar Society (1956)

Attacked the attributes and influence of modern corporate life, arguing that white collar employees sell not only their time and energy, but their personalities as well.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949)

Tells of a man who centered his life and that of his family on the notion that material success is secured through personal popularity, only to be abruptly told by his boss that he is in fact a failure.

Beats/Beatniks

Avant guard writers and poets speaking to the freedom that people can achieve by letting themselves go, or just hitting the open road. They sought personal rather than social solutions to their own post WWII anxieties.

Jack Kerouac

On the Road

Allen Ginsberg

Howl

William Burroughs

Naked Lunch

John F. Kennedy

Elected President in 1960, murdered in 1963. President during Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis. Escalated involvement in Vietnam even though he personally thought U.S. could not win there.

Robert F. Kennedy

Attorney General under his brother, JFK. On the front lines in the fight for civil rights. Murdered in 1968 just after having won the California primary as a Democratic candidate for President.

Fidel Castro

Leader of the Cuban Revolution. "I am not a Red," but then accepted Soviet/Russian support after the U.S. decline to provide him any.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

Attempt by Cuban expatriates to overthrow Castro. It went terribly wrong with "promised" air cover was not provided by the U.S. Was planned during the Eisenhower administration, but was blamed on Kennedy.

Berlin Wall

Construct by Soviet backed East Germany to prevent citizens of East Berlin from crossing over to democratic West Berlin. A major symbol of the Cold War.

Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962

After satellite imagery finds construction of missile silos going up on Cuba, JFK demands that the Soviets tear it down and not place missiles there. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev refuses to do it. The U.S. places a naval quarantine on Cuba, nothing goes in or out. Soviet ships are on the way. The world holds its breath. On the brink of nuclear war. The two sides are eyeball to eyeball, but then the Soviets blink and turn their ships around. War is averted.

Lyndon B. Johnson

LBJ, former Senate President, and VP under JFK, becomes President upon JFK's murder.

Great Society

LBJ's program to elevate the status of the working poor in this country. Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid are passed in Congress. Further, the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are passed.

Vietnam

Vietnamese Civil War that the U.S. involved itself in supposedly to contain communism. None of the U.S. war aims were met. 58,000 American lives were lost, as were millions of Vietnamese. The war cost the U.S. over $140 billion. It was all lies!

JFK

Kennedy used military advisors and special forces in Vietnam almost exclusively. In early 1962, Kennedy formally authorized escalated involvement when he signed the National Security Action Memorandum - "Subversive Insurgency (War of Liberation)." Recorded meetings later revealed that JFK did not believe that the U.S. could win in Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh

Communist leader of North Vietnam, cultural icon.

Ngo Dinh Diem

Leader of South Vietnam.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

An alleged attack that took place in the Gulf of Tonkin that led LBJ to escalating troop involvement in Vietnam. (Similar to the use of WMD in Iraq) Like Kennedy before him, LBJ did not think Americans could win in Vietnam, but felt that it had gone to far to turn back. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a military supply route running from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia to South Vietnam. The route sent weapons, manpower, ammunition and other supplies from communist led North Vietnam to their supporters in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

TET Offensive

In the early hours of January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese launch the TET Offensive, a massive military strike against American bases thirty-six provincial capitals, 64 district capitals, and five cities. Though American forces ultimately pushed the North Vietnamese back, General Westmorland claiming victory, it demonstrated that North Vietnam was better equipped, better trained, and more determined to win the war than the American public had been told to believe. As LBJ had put, "there is light at the end of the tunnel." TET made a mockery of such claims, compelling the United States to step up involvement in Vietnam.

Peace Movement

Leaders opposed the war on moral and economic grounds. The North Vietnamese, they argued, were fighting a patriotic war to rid themselves of foreign aggressors. Innocent Vietnamese peasants were being killed in the crossfire. American planes wrought environmental damage by dropping their defoliating chemicals like Napalm.

Draft Deferments

Because Draft Deferments were granted to college students, the less affluent and less educated made up a disproportionate percentage of combat troops. Once drafted, Americans with higher levels of education were often given military office jobs. About 80 percent of American ground troops in Vietnam came from the lower classes. Latino and African American males were assigned to combat more regularly than drafted white Americans.

Radical Peace Movement

The late 1960s became increasingly radical as the activists felt their demands were ignored. Peaceful demonstrations turned violent. When the police arrived to arrest protesters, the crowds often retaliated. Students occupied buildings across college campuses forcing many schools to cancel classes. Roads were blocked and ROTC buildings were burned. In 1968, antiwar demonstrators flocked to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to prevent the nomination of a prowar candidate. As Americans watched on live television, Chicago turned into a battleground as police clubbed and arrested protesters. The Chicago 7 emerged as a show trial following the convention in which Protest leaders Abbie Hoffman, Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Dave Dellinger, Rennie Davis, John Froines, Lee Weiner and Bobby Seale (Seale's case was later separated from the others) were charged with conspiracy. (This in spite of the fact that LBJ's Attorney General Ramsey Clark had found that it was a police riot and nothing else.) Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger, Hayden, and Davis were charged with and convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. Froines and Weiner were charged with teaching demonstrators how to construct incendiary devices and acquitted of those charges. The seven men were acquitted on the conspiracy charges, while all of the convictions were later reversed on appeal.

Woodstock

(Context) In 1969, the country was deep into the Vietnam War, a conflict that many young people vehemently opposed. It was also the era of the civil rights movement, a period of great unrest and protest. Woodstock was an opportunity for people to escape into music and spread a message of unity and peace. The festival was held August 15-18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 40 miles southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Woodstock Rock Festival, it attracted an audience of more than 400,000. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite sporadic rain. The festival has become widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history as well as a defining event for the counterculture generation.

Kent State

Days of unrest at Kent State University in Ohio culminated in a violent encounter on May 4, 1970. Ohio National Guardsmen fired on student protesters, killing four young people. The Kent State killings brought tensions in a divided America to a new level. Students at campuses across the nation went on strike in solidarity with the dead of Kent State. Others claimed the killings had been justified.

Hard Hat Riot

Days after the shooting at Kent State, on May 8, 1970, college students gathered to protest on Wall Street in the heart of New York City's financial district. The protest was attacked by a violent mob of constructions workers swinging clubs and other weapons, while office workers directed them to the protesters from their windows above.

Richard Nixon

LBJ's successor, and in response to stalemated peace talks and continuing Communist advances south, ordered the resumption of heavy air attacks and widened the war with an illegal "incursion" into Cambodia so as to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines. The war also spread into Laos. At the end of 1972 North Vietnam was subjected to even heavier "carpet" bombing. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State, encouraged the bombings and military pressure while at the same time holding secret talks with North Vietnamese representatives which finally brought about a ceasefire agreement in January, 1973. The agreement ended direct military involvement for the U.S., concluding the longest war - like Korea, an Executive one - the country had fought to that point.