Time Period 8 APUSH flashcards

What was the basis for the Cold War?

• The Cold War was a struggle for world dominance between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union.

• At the Yalta Conference, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France agreed to split Germany into four zones of occupation after the war.

• The US ambassador in Moscow warned that the Soviet Union desired to expand throughout the world and prescribed the "containment" of communism as the chief US foreign policy strategy.

How long did The Cold War last?

1947 to 1991

What were proxy wars during the cold war?

a war fought with the support of a nation but not by that nation itself. For example, in the proxy war of Vietnam, the USSR supported the communist North Vietnamese with money, weapons and training and the US similarly supported the South Vietnamese.

What did Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill agree on at the Yalta confrence?

The Nazi’s had to be stopped

What was the goal of containment?

Stopping communism

What was the Truman Doctrine?

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman pledged that the United States would help any nation resist communism in order to prevent its spread.

Did the Truman Doctrine effectively end America’s status as an isolationist power?

Yes

What led to tensions between the Soviet Union and the US?

in 1948, when the Soviet Union blockaded Berlin and the United States led a year-long airlift to supply citizens stranded in the western zone of the city.

Why did the US join NATO?

They thought they might go to war with the Soviet Union

Berlin airlift

US sending aid to West Berlin despite the Soviet’s opposition to this.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),

promised that an attack on one of its members would provoke a response from all of its members. NATO became the major international body opposing communism in the twentieth century.\[^5\]

National Security Act,

which united the branches of the armed services under the new Department of Defense. It also created the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council to gather intelligence and advise the president on foreign policy. In addition, Congress reinstituted the Selective Service military draft for young men in 1948.

What was the first hot proxy war during The Cold War?

Korean war

What led to the red scare in the 50’s?

• Revelations that spies in the US atomic program had passed secrets to the Soviet Union set off a nationwide panic that communist spies might be infiltrating many American institutions.

House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)

investigated many actors, writers, and directors during the 1950s. Alleged communists were placed on a blacklist and barred from working in Hollywood.

Joseph McCarthy

Republican senator who led McCarthyism and took advantage of this widespread paranoia to advance himself politically by accusing State Department employees of communist leanings. McCarthy's accusations were unsubstantiated, and the Senate eventually censured him.

What led to McCaryth’s censurship?

in 1954 when he initiated hearings against the US Army. The televised Army-McCarthy hearings showcased McCarthy's increasingly erratic behavior and reliance on guilt-by-association rather than evidence. In December 1954 the US Senate voted to censure McCarthy.

When was the GI Bill enacted?

in 1944-ent more than eight million World War II veterans to school between 1945 and 1956.

• It also backed home loans, gave veterans a year of unemployment benefits, and provided for veterans' medical care.

• The bill was a huge success, propelling Americans to new heights of education and helping to fuel the economic prosperity that characterized the postwar era.

restrictive covenants

a legal agreement that applies to properties in a specified community. Covenants often arise from the control of a homeowners association (HOA), an organization in a planned community or condo complex that sets community rules.

interstate highway system.

Eisenhower continued federal government activism in the economy and supported the largest public works project in history:

What was The New Look?

administration’s national security strategy-It relied on strategic nuclear weapons and air power while scaling back conventional army and navy forces. A nuclear arsenal was cheaper to maintain than paying a standing army: "more bang for the buck," the popular slogan went.\[^8\]

brinksmanship

a willingness on the part of American leaders to take the world to the brink of a nuclear war with the hope that the Soviets would back down in the face of a potential US nuclear strike.

Whats an example of discrimination and civil rights advocacy from black veterans?

Mississippian Medgar Evers, for example, convinced a group of young black veterans to go to the courthouse and try to register to vote in 1946 (they were turned away by an mob of armed white men). Evers also tried to integrate the University of Mississippi law school, which refused to admit him on racial grounds. Instead of pursuing a career as a lawyer, Evers became the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. Along with Amzie Moore, he interviewed witnesses and aided reporters during the Emmett Till trial. One civil rights organizer noted that he specifically recruited veterans for his chapter of the NAACP because they "don't scare easy."\[^8\]

Black veterans went on to become key players in the Civil Rights Movement, from Till and Moore to Oliver Brown, the chief plaintiff in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court Case.

space race

was a Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to develop aerospace capabilities, including artificial satellites, unmanned space probes, and human spaceflight.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

was created in 1958 as the federal agency with primary responsibility for the development of civilian aerospace research.

Sputnik I

in October 1957, it set off alarm bells in the Eisenhower administration and created intense fear and anxiety among the US public that the Soviet Union had surpassed the technological achievements of the United States.

Apollo program

which pledged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

National Defense Education Act (NDEA

which envisioned public education as a key component of national security. The bill appropriated $800 million for loans to college students and for states to improve instruction in the hard sciences.\[^3\] The act was divided into ten titles, which each addressed a distinct issue.All of these measures were envisioned as enhancing public education in the interest of bolstering national security and defense.

Bay of Pigs invasion?

a failed 1961 military operation, involved Cuban exiles, trained and supported by the US, attempting to overthrow Fidel Castro's government, but they were swiftly defeated by Castro's forces. 

Paris Peace Accords

established the terms according to which the last remaining US troops in Vietnam would be withdrawn. I

What event was used to justify military intervention in Vietnam?

In August 1964, the US government received word that two North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked US destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin

e Congress for Racial Equality (CORE)

was formed in 1942 as an interracial organization committed to achieving integration through nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience.