Chapter 26: Truman and the Cold War
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57 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Servicemen's Readjustment Act | sent former veterans to school to be educated, and gave $16 billion dollars in loans to buy homes, farms and small businesses, powerfully nurtured the economic expansion; also known as the GI Bill |
| baby boom | the rapid population increase that took place between 1945 and 1960 |
| suburban growth | people moving to different areas of the city because of the construction for housing |
| the Sunbelt | a warmer climate, lower taxes, and economic opportunities in defense-related industries attracted many GI's and their families to states from Florida to California |
| Harry Truman | a moderate Democratic senator from Missouri, replaced the more liberal Henry Wallace as FDR's vice president in the 1944 election |
| Employment Act of 1946 | national health insurance, an increase in the minimum wage, and a bill to commit the U.S. government to maintaining full employment |
| Council of Economic Advisers | counseled both the president and Congress on means of promoting national economic welfare |
| inflation | southern Democrats joined with Republicans in relaxing the control of the Office of Price Administration, resulting is an inflation of almost 25% in the first year and a half of peace |
| strike | workers and unions wanted wages to catch up after years of wage controls; over 4.5 million went on ______; Truman took a tough approach to this challenge, seizing the mines and using soldiers to keep them operating |
| Committee of Civil Rights | Truman was the first modern president to use the powers of his office to challenge racial discrimination; used his executive powers to establish it in 1946 |
| Twenty-second Amendment | limit a president to a maximum of two full terms in office |
| Taft-Hartley Act | "slave-labor" bill; outlawed the union shops, permit states to pass "right to work" laws, outlawed secondary boycotts, and gave the president the power to invoke an 80-day cooling-off period before a strike endangered the national safety |
| Progressive Party | liberal Democrats who thought Truman's aggressive foreign policy threatened world peach and formed this and nominated former vice president, Henry Wallace |
| Henry Wallace | former vice president, nominated by the Progressive Party of the 1948 election |
| States-Rights party | also known as the Dixicrats; started by southern Democrats who were against Truman and his support of civil rights |
| J. Strom Thurmond | Dixiecrat candidate for president of the election of 1948 |
| Thomas E. Dewey | Republican candidate for president of the election of 1948 |
| Fair Deal | series of measures proposed by President Truman became known as this, which pushed the reform tradition into new areas, including education, housing, health care, and civil rights |
| Cold War | between the United States and Soviet Union over nuclear weapons and communism |
| Soviet Union | communist empire in eastern Europe |
| United Nations | an organization of independent states formed in 1945 to promote international peace and security |
| World Bank | a United Nations agency created to assist developing nations by loans guaranteed by member governments |
| Communist satellites | nations effectively run by USSR , used as "buffer states" |
| Iron Curtain | metaphor referring to the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe |
| Winston Churchill | British Prime Minister who gave the "iron curtain" speech |
| George Kennan | written that only "a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies" would eventually cause the Soviets to back off their Communist ideology |
| Dean Acheson | undersecretary of state |
| containment policy | policy to keep the Soviet Union's aggression contained |
| Truman Doctrine | President Truman's policy of providing economic and military aid to any country threatened by communism or totalitarian ideology |
| Marshall Plan | a United States program of economic aid for the reconstruction of Europe |
| the Berlin Airlift | United States and Great Britain organized airlifts to transport food and supplies into West Berlin |
| East Germany | half of Germany that was the German Democratic Republic and a Soviet satellite |
| West Germany | half of Germany that was the Federal Republic of Germany and an ally to the United States |
| North Atlantic Treaty Organization | 1949 alliance of nations that agreed to band together in the event of war and to support and protect each nation involved |
| National Security Act | Passed in 1947 in response to perceived threats from the Soviet Union after WWII. It established the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Council |
| arms race | a competition between nations to have the most powerful armaments |
| U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty | an agreement to surrender its claims to Korea and islands in the Pacific |
| Douglas MacArthur | United States general who served as chief of staff and commanded Allied forces in the South Pacific during World War II |
| Chinese Civil War | war between the Chiang's Nationalist and the Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong |
| Chiang Kal-shek | leader of China who used the command of the Kuomintang party to control China's central government |
| Taiwan | where Chiang and the Nationalists went when China fell under Communists |
| Mao Zedong | Chinese communist leader |
| People's Republic of China | China's name after Mao took over |
| Joseph Stalin | Soviet Union leader who signed a pact with Mao Zedong |
| Kim Il Sung | Communist dictator who ruled North Korea after the end of the Korean War |
| Syngman Rhee | Korean leader who became president of South Korea after World War II and led Korea during Korean War. |
| Korean War | a war between North and South Korea |
| U.N. police action | U.S.'s intervention during the Korean War |
| 38th Parallel | line of latitude that separated North and South Korea |
| Dennis et al. v. United States | the Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act when the leaders of the American Communist party were jailed |
| Smith Act | 1940, act which made it illegal to speak of or advocate overthrowing the U.S. government |
| McCarren Internal Security Act | made it unlawful to advocate or support the establishment of a totalitarian government, restricted employment and travel of the Communist-front organizations, and authorized the creation of dentition camps for subversives |
| House Un-American Activities Committee | investigated people of Communist influence |
| Alger Hiss | A former State Department official who was accused of being a Communist spy and was convicted of perjury |
| Whittaker Chambers | a magazine editor who volunteered to testify before HUAC |
| Rosenberg Case | Involved Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were American communists; were executed for passing nuclear weapons secrets to the USSR. |
| Joseph McCarthy | United States politician who unscrupulously accused many citizens of being Communists |
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