APUSH Time Period 8

Cold War

Diplomatically fought war and competition between the two major superpowers after WWII, U.S. and Soviet Union.

Baby Boom

Explosion in births during the postwar era.

Suburbs - Levittown

A high demand for housing war resulted in a construction boom in which the development of postwar suburbia and a project of 17,000 mass-produced, low priced family homes in New York became available.

The “Sunbelt”

States from Florida to California with a warmer climate, lower taxes, and economic opportunities in defense-related industries attracted GI’s and family’s here.

Harry Truman

After FDR dies, this short-term vice president becomes the president. He is the president during the second Red Scare and the stalemate in Korea. He also appealed to average citizens by attempting to continue the New Deal tradition of his predecessor.

Potsdam Conference

Final wartime conference in Germany where Truman first meets with Stalin. Both countries have realized their polar opposite approaches in government.

The Iron Curtain

Declared by former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, this metaphor was used throughout the Cold War to refer to the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe.

Berlin Airlift

Soviet blockade of West Berlin. American and British officials fly food and supplies to W. Berlin to break the blockade.

Containment

Formulated by secretary of state, General George Marshall, this policy would prevent Soviet aggression from expanding

Truman Doctrine

The president’s first implementation of the containment policy. U.S. will provide economic and military aid to free nations (Turkey and Greece) threatened by internal or external components (communism).

Marshall Plan

Aid the economic recovery of war-torn Europe that is offered to Soviet Union and the Eastern European satellites.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

a military alliance with the United States, Canada, and Western Europe for defending all members from outside attack.

NSC - 68

classified document that provided blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to early 1990s

Chinese Civil War

Stalemate war between Communist leader Mao Zedong and Nationalists under the leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek in China. The US supports the Nationalists while the Soviet Union supports the Communists

Korean War

Japanese control is released after WWII and the North of this area surrenders to the Soviet Union while the South surrenders to the United States. They are divided by the 38th Parallel.

38th Parallel

Line that divides Korea and 38 degrees north latitude

General Douglas MacArthur

Most significant military general during WWII, Commander of UN forces in the Korean War, takes charge of the reconstruction of Japan

Second Red Scare

Follows U.S. victory in WWII with a common belief that Communist conspirators and spies had infiltrated American society and government.

House Un-American Activities (HUAC)

Developed by congress to search out disloyalty before WWII and to find Communists postwar.

Alger Hiss

A prominent official in the State Department who had assisted Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference. He denied the accusations that he was a Communist but was convicted of perjury and sent to prison.

Julius & Ethel Rosenberg

After the Soviet Union acquires their first atomic bomb, Americans were convinced that spies had helped them to steal the technology from the United States. An FBI investigation traced a spy ring to this couple in New York who were members of the American Communist Party. Convicted of giving American atomic secrets to the Soviets and executed for espionage.

Joseph McCarthy (McCarthyism)

Republican senator who needed a “winning” issue to be reelected, so he claimed 205 communists worked for the government and never produced one name. He later accused the U.S. army of sympathizing with communists. The practice to hunt communists.

GI Bill of Rights (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944)

Powerful support during the transition of WWII veterans to a peacetime economy by providing them with tuition for education, low-interest homes/business loans, and unemployment insurance

Employment Act of 1946

A series of progressive measures enacted by President Truman to commit the U.S. government to maintaining full employment. As a result of this bill, the Council of Economic Advisers was created for the president and Congress.

Committee on Civil Rights, racial integration of the military, Fair Employment Practices Commission

Truman was the first modern president to use the powers of his office to challenge racial discrimination, and these were three examples.

22nd Amendment

Limits a president to a maximum of two full terms in office.

Dixiecrats

Southern Democrats party in the Election of 1948 which ran against Harry S. Truman.

Fair Deal

Reform program launched by Truman which increased minimum wage and included more workers under Social Security

Soviet Union

Communist superpower competing against Western democracy and capitalism during the Cold War

Baruch Plan

Plan proposed by Bernard Baruch to regulate nuclear energy and eliminate atomic weapons which was rejected.

Nuremberg trials

22 top Nazi leaders tried for war crimes and violations of human rights

Soviet Satellite (buffer) States

Nations under the control of a great power which serves as a protection against another Hitler-like invasion from the west

National Security Act (1947)

Provided: (1) a centralized Department of Defense to coordinate the operations of the army, navy, and air force (2) creation of the National Security Council to coordinate the making of foreign policy in the Cold War (3) the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to employ spies to gather information on foreign governments

Arms Race

Scientists in both the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in this to develop superior weapons systems

Loyalty Review Board

The Truman administration set this up to investigate the background of federal employees

Hollywood Blacklist

Those who refused to testify were tried for contempt of Congress and they were unable to work in the industry.

Dwight Eisenhower

a five-star Army General who commanded Allied forces in Europe during WWII, and a moderate Republican ("Ike") known for presiding over a period of 1950s peace and prosperity. His administration focused on "Modern Republicanism," which balanced the budget, maintained New Deal programs, and authorized massive infrastructure projects.

Richard Nixon

Young California senator who did most of the campaigning as Vice President of Eisenhower

Checkers speech

Nixon saves his political future by effectively defending himself using the new medium of television.

Kitchen debate

Nixon and Khrushchev meet to argue communism and capitalism which serves as a respite for the Cold War tensions.

Interstate Highway System (Act)

Authorized the construction of 42,000 miles that link all the nation’s major cities and becomes a model for the rest of the world.

Massive Retaliation & M.A.D.

The threat of one leads to the shared belief of Mutual Assured Destruction.

“duck and cover”

a civil defense safety drill and educational campaign introduced in the United States during the 1950s to prepare schoolchildren for a potential nuclear attack

Warsaw Pact

Communist security organization

Brinksmanship

The willingness to go to the brink or edge of war. Policy based on threats and retaliation. Presented by John Dulles, Eisenhower prevents Dulles from carrying his ideas to an extreme.

CIA covert actions

Growing in Eisenhower’s foreign policy is the use of undercover intervention in the internal politics of other nations. Used to overthrow governments like Iran and Guatemala.

Suez Crisis

The United States refuses to donate funds to Egypt. Egypt turns to the Soviet Union and the Soviets agree to provide financing. Egypt precipitates an international contingency by seizing and nationalizing the British and French owned Suez canal and in response to this threat, Britain, France, and Israel carried out a surprise attack against Egypt and retook the canal. Eisenhower, furious about this secret, sponsors a UN resolution condemning the invasion of Egypt.

Eisenhower Doctrine

A policy pronouncement in which the United States pledges economic and military aid to any Middle Eastern country threatened by communism.

Open Skies

Policy proposed by Eisenhower to Soviet premier, Nikolai Bulganin, over each other’s territory-open to aerial photography by the opposing nation-in order to eliminate the chance of a surprise nuclear attack

Nikita Krushchev

Soviet leader who denounced the crimes of Joseph Stalin and supported “peaceful coexistence” with the West

Sputnik

First satellites launched by the Soviet Union.

U-2 Incident

Russians shoot down a high-altitude U.S. spy plane over the Soviet Union. Exposed a secret U.S. tactic for gaining information.

Military Industrial Complex

Part of Eisenhower’s farewell address in which he speaks out against the negative impact of the Cold War on U.S. society.

Dr. Benjamin Spock

He wrote a best-selling self-help book Baby and Child Care which reaffirmed the traditional view of a woman’s role as caring for home and children.

The Catcher in the Rye

J.D. Salinger provided a classic commentary on “phoniness” and an individual’s struggle against conformity as viewed by a troubled teenager.

Beatniks - Jack Kerouac

A group of rebellious writers and intellectuals led by the man who wrote On the Road. They advocated spontaneity, use of drugs, and rebellion against societal standards. Model for youth rebellion of the 1960s.

Jackie Robinson

Fully breaks the color line by being hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first African American to play on a major league team since the 1880s.

Brown v. Board of Education

One of the great landmark cases in Supreme Court history was argued by Thurgood Marshall and NAACP lawyers. They argued that segregation of Black children in the public schools was unconstitutional because it violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws”. The supreme Court Chief Justice, Earl Warren, rules that (1) “separate facilities are inherently unequal” and unconstitutional (2) school segregation should end with speed

Little Rock 9

Governor of Arkansas used the state’s national Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering their high school. To uphold his constitutional duty, Eisenhower ordered federal troops to stand guard in Little Rock and protect Black students.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

A Montgomery, Alabama bus took on more White passengers, and the driver orders a middle-aged Black woman to give up her seat to one of them. Rosa Parks refused and is arrested for violating the segregation law and this sparked massive African American protests against using the city buses.

Rosa Parks

Civil rights activist who took part in the Montgomery bus boycott

Martin Luther King Jr.

Civil rights activist, minister of the Baptist church where the boycott started, inspirational leader of a nonviolent movement to end segregation.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Organized ministers and churches in the South to get behind the civil rights struggle.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Formed a few months after the sit-in movement to keep everything organized.

“sit-ins”

To call attention to the injustice of segregated facilities, students would deliberately invite arrest by staying in restricted areas. This tactic would be used to integrate restaurants, hotels, buildings, libraries, pools, and transportation.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

the nation's oldest civil rights organization, established to combat racial discrimination, lynching, and segregation. Works to overturn Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson

Operation Wetback

forced millions of people to return to Mexico

Southern Manifesto

In opposition to the Brown decision, 101 members of Congress sign this document condemning the Supreme Court for a “clear abuse of judicial power”. States fought this by closing public schools and setting up private schools. The KKK made a comeback and violence against Black Americans increased.

Freedom Summer 1964

Register African American Voters across the south and elect pro civil rights politicians to the government

Cuban Missile Crisis

a 13-day Cold War standoff between the US and USSR sparked by Soviet installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. It is the closest the world came to nuclear war.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

Failed attempt by the US to infiltrate Cuba with the CIA. CIA trains Cuban exiles

Fidel Castro

Communist leader in Cuba

“little boxes”

Song by Malvina Reynolds which served as criticism of increased suburbanization in the US during 1950s and beyond

Elvis Presley

King of Rock and Roll

National Defense Education Act

a landmark federal law passed in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik