| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Marshall Plan | A program by the United States that gave aid to Europe so they could rebuild after World War II |
| Berlin Airlift | US and BRITAIN fly suppiles and food to the capital of Germany after Soviets blocked off ALL routes to the city |
| Truman Doctrine | United States use economic aid to help foreign countries contain communism |
| Nuremberg Trials | war trials of high-ranking Nazis after WWII |
| Yalta Conference | meeting of the three ally powers that tried to divide the land near the end of WWII |
| Potsdam Conference | US, British, and the Soviet Union divided Germany into 4 zones of occupation |
| United Nations | organization in 1945 used to resolve conflicts |
| Warsaw Pact | A military alliance in eastern Europe formed by The Soviet Union in 1955 as a reaction to NATO |
| NATO | Military Alliance formed in 1949 by the United States and 11 other countries to defend each other in case of attack |
| North Atlantic Treaty Organization | what NATO stands for |
| Communism | economic system used in USSR, government runs / controls everything |
| Second Red Scare | a widespread fear of Communism in the US, 1950s |
| First Red Scare | widespread fear of Communism in the US during the 1920s after the revolution in Russia |
| Eisenhower | President of the US during most of the 1950s |
| Truman | President at the end of WWII |
| Stalin | leader of USSR until his death in 1953, originally part of the Big Three |
| Kennedy | President of the US from 1961 to 1963; during Cuban Missile Crisis |
| Lee Harvey Oswald | man who assassinated JFK |
| Dallas | place where JFK was assassinated |
| Johnson | man who became president after JFK was assassinated |
| Silent Majority | nickname for the average American voters who didn't shout or protest |
| OPEC | abbreviation for the group of countries in the Middle East who came together to charge a set price for OIL |
| Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries | what OPEC stands for |
| Watergate | the scandal which forced NIXON to RESIGN |
| Nixon | President at END of Vietnam War |
| Ford | President who took over after Nixon's resignation, never was on the ballot |
| Carter | President who was a "peanut farmer"; served during Iran Hostage Crisis and the Camp David Accords |
| detente | easing of tension between two countries |
| embargo | banning trade with another country |
| Camp David Accords | peace agreement between Arab countries and Israel in the 70s; Carter president |
| Iran Hostage Crisis | US citizens taken hostage, rescue attempt failed; Carter president |
| Reagan | President during most of the 1980s |
| Reaganomics | nickname for the economic platform used by the President in the 1980s |
| Gorbachev | leader of the USSR in the 1980s; last leader of the Soviet Union |
| Perestrokia | used by Gorbachev, restructured the economy of the USSR |
| Glasnost | used by Gorbachev, promoted openness and freedoms in the USSR |
| 1989 | Year of the Fall of the Berlin Wall |
| 1991 | the year the USSR fell apart |
| HUAC | group formed by US Congress to investigate the spread of Communism in the US during the 1950s |
| China | this country became Communist in 1949 and fueled the fear that Communism would take over the world |
| Mao Zedong | leader of Communist Revolution in China |
| blacklist | when a company refuses to hire someone because they have been called a Communist |
| Hollywood Ten | group of movie writers who were accused of being Communists during the Second Red Scare |
| The Crucible | a play by Arthur Miller that linked the fear of the Second Red Scare with the Salem Witch Trials |
| Rosenbergs | Married nuclear physicists who were convicted of helping the Soviets; were executed |
| McCarthy | Senator from Wisconsin who accused people of being Communists |
| Murrow | journalist who investigated whether McCarthy was lying; "Good Night and Good Luck" |
| Dewey | man who supposedly won the election in 1948, _________ DEFEATS TRUMAN |
| MacArthur | leader of American forces in Korea until he was fired by Truman |
| Forgotten War | nickname for the Korean War because it was between WWII and Vietnam |
| 38th parallel | line of latitude that splits North and South Korea |
| China | country that helped North Korea during the Korean War |
| Interstate Highway | the first 8 miles of this were built outside Topeka in the 1950s |
| Khrushchev | leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death in 1953 |
| Hydrogen Bomb | new more powerful atomic bomb developed in the 1950s, chemical element #1Union |
| Fallout Shelter | bunkers designed to protect people should there be a nuclear attack |
| Duck and Cover! | strategy taught to school students to protect themselves from nuclear attack; like a TURTLE |
| rollback | to make Communist countries Democracies; to revert back to a prior stage |
| Massive Retaliation | used by Eisenhower; threatened to use nukes to stop spread of Communism |
| covert operations | secret missions undertaken by the CIA during the Cold War |
| CIA | organization in charge of covert operations in the USA; created after WWII |
| KGB | organization in charge of covert operations in the Soviet Union |
| MI6 | organization in charge of covert operations in the United Kingdom; JAMES BOND |
| Suez Crisis | Egypt shut down the canal to Britain, France and Israel; people feared the start of WWIII |
| Nassar | leader of Egypt during the Suez Crisis |
| U2 Spyplane | this was shot down over the Soviet Union and increased tensions of the Cold War in the late 1950s |
| suburbs | during the 1950s a lot of the middle class moved to these; OUTSIDE of cities |
| Brown v. Board of Education | Supreme Court case that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson; made segregation illegal in SCHOOLS |
| Plessy v. Ferguson | Supreme Court case that LEGALIZED segregation in the US; 1893 |
| NAACP | Group that helped support the Brown v. Board of Education case through the system |
| Peace Corps | group created by JFK to support humanitarian causes in developing countries |
| New Frontier | name for JFK's plan for economic development; spend money on military, the poor, and NASA |
| Sputnik | name of the first artifical satellite in space; launched by USSR |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | ten days in Oct 1962 where there world was the closest it has ever been to total nuclear war |
| Castro | Communist leader in Cuba |
| Bay of Pigs | failed CIA mission of using Cuban rebels to overthrow Castro |
| blockade | stopping supplies from entering a nation or port |
| Warren Commission | offical investigation into the Kennedy assassination; 888 page book that sparked conspiracy theories |
| Jack Ruby | man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald on while he was being escorted to another prison |
| Great Society | name for LBJ's plan to make America good for everyone, including women, minorities and the poor |
| Apollo Program | name for group at NASA who was in charge of putting a man on the moon |
| 1969 | year the US put a man on the moon |
| Ho Chi Minh | leader of Communist Vietnam (North) |
| draft | forced males age 18-35 to join the military |
| counter culture | a group that is different from the majority; the Hippie Movement during the 1960s was the largest every |
| Capitalism | economic system used in the USA; market decides how much to charge for a good or service, Survival of the Fittest |
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