Cold War Study Guide 1945-1960

Events/Terms/Foreign Policy:

• Cold War: The name for the relationship that developed between the USA and the USSR
after WWII. The cold war was not an actual war but a series of political moves through
other countries enforcing the beliefs of the major powers. The United States was
connected to South Vietnam while North Vietnam was supplied by Russia and
communist China.
• Containment: The United States policy using military, economic and diplomatic
strategies to prevent the spread of communism. This policy came around after the USSR
began to expand communist influence into eastern Europe, China, Korea and Vietnam
• Truman Doctrine: Harry Truman called for immediate economic aid to Greece and
Turkey both of which were threatened by communism. Congress appointed $400 million
in aid to the two countries after Truman’s push.
• Marshall Plan: The United States offered up to $20 billion for relief -- but only if the
European nations could get together and draw up a rational plan for using the aid. For the
first time, they would have to act as a single economic unit; they would have to cooperate
with each other. Marshall also offered aid to the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern
Europe, but Stalin denounced the program as a trick and refused to participate.
• Sputnik: The name given to the rocket that the Soviets launched into space in October of
1957.
• Berlin Airlift: The name given to the plan that entailed the United States sending food
and supplies into West Berlin which was being occupied by the Soviets.
• NATO: an organization formed in Washington, D.C. (1949), comprising of the 12 nations
of the Atlantic Pact together with Greece, turkey, and the Federal Republic of Germany,
for the purpose of collective defense against aggression.
• 1949: During this year the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed and troops
were sent into Western Europe where they would be stationed for the next 20 years which
lead to the Russians retaliating with the Warsaw Pact.
• Warsaw Pact: Military alliance of the Soviet Union, Albania (until 1968), Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, formed in 1955 in
response to West Germany's entry into NATO Its terms included a unified military
command and the stationing of Soviet troops in the other member states. Warsaw Pact
troops were called into action to suppress uprisings in Poland (1956), Hungary (1956),
and Czechoslovakia (1968). The alliance was dissolved in 1991 after the collapse of the
Soviet bloc, and Soviet troops departed. Several Warsaw Pact members later joined
NATO

• ICBM: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles which are a missile with a range greater than
5500 km the use of any ICBM would result in chaos for any nations involved.
• Brinksmanship: The practice, especially in international politics, of seeking advantage by
creating the impression that one is willing and able to push a highly dangerous situation
to the limit rather than concede.
• The fall of China: Nationalists in China had been fighting the government for control for
decades. The U.S. government under Roosevelt and Truman had backed the Nationalists
with money and small arms shipments but overall had little influence on the war. Mao’s
revolutionaries, however, finally managed to defeat government forces in 1949 and took
control of mainland China.
 • Inchon Landing Korean War: an amphibious operation during the Korean War led by
Gen. Douglas MacArthur which led to the securing of Seoul on September 28. Despite
logistical challenges and hastily organized troops, a Marine battalion landed on nearby
Wolmi-do Island and was followed by two Marine regiment landings against Inchon
itself. With a five-to-one strength disadvantage, the 2, 200 North Korean troops at Inchon
were easily defeated. The march to Seoul began the following day.
• Diem Bein Phu Vietnam: This battle was the ultimate split of Vietnam. It separated the
country into North and South. This action inspired the US to enter into affairs in the
region
• Hungarian Uprising 1956: following a speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in
which he attacked the period of Joseph Stalin’s rule. Encouraged by the new freedom of
debate and criticism, a rising tide of unrest and discontent in Hungary broke out into
active fighting in October 1956. Rebels won the first phase of the revolution, and Imre
Nagy became premier, agreeing to establish a multiparty system. On Nov. 1, 1956, he
declared Hungarian neutrality and appealed to the United Nations for support, but
Western powers were reluctant to risk a global confrontation. On Nov. 4, 1956, the Soviet
Union invaded Hungary to stop the revolution, and Nagy was executed for treason in
1958
People/Foreign Policy:

• Truman: Vice president under Franklin D. Roosevelt who became president upon
Roosevelt’s death in April 1945 and successfully carried out the remainder of World War
II. Truman was instrumental in creating a new international political and economic order
after the war, helping to form the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, and the
International Monetary Fund. His Marshall Plan also helped Western Europe rebuild after
the war and surpass its prewar levels of industrial production. Determined not to let the
Soviet Union spread Communism, Truman adopted the idea of containment, announcing
his own Truman Doctrine in 1947. His characterization of the Soviet Union as a force of
“ungodly” evil helped shape the Cold War of the next four decades. He also led the
nation into the Korean War but eventually fired General Douglas MacArthur for
insubordination.

• Ike: A World War II hero and former supreme commander of NATO who became U.S.
president in 1953 after easily defeating Democratic opponent Adlai E. Stevenson.
Eisenhower expanded New Deal–era social welfare programs such as Social Security and
passed the landmark Federal Highway Act to improve national transportation. However,
he cut back funding to other domestic programs to halt what he called
“creeping socialism.” His New Look at foreign policy, meanwhile, emphasized nuclear
weapons and the threat of massive retaliation against the Soviet Union in order to cut
costs and deter the USSR from spreading Communism abroad. Eisenhower committed
federal dollars to fighting Communists in Vietnam, resolved the Suez crisis, and
authorized CIA-sponsored coups in Iran and Guatemala.

• Stalin: Stalin sought to expand Communist rule, Soviet influence, and his own control in
those places and under circumstances where it was possible. Unlike Adolf Hitler,
 however, he was not driven to advance where it was inexpedient, much less to court or
initiate war. This was true of even the most apparent exception—the Korean War.
Archival documents released in the 1990s showed that the principal impetus for a North
Korean military attack on South Korea came from Kim Il Sung, although Stalin (and
Chinese leader Mao Zedong) was led to approve and provide support for the attack and
thus bear responsibility. Initially, however, Stalin refused to approve Kim's plans, and did
so only when he mistakenly concluded that the United States would not intervene. The
Korean attack was neither Stalin's test of Western resolve nor precursor to a possible
Soviet attack in Western Europe, as was widely feared at the time.

• Khruschev: The head of the Soviet Communist Party and leader of the USSR from 1958
until the early 1960s. Initially, many Americans hoped Khrushchev’s rise to power would
lead to a reduction in Cold War tensions. Khrushchev toured the United States in 1959
and visited personally with President Eisenhower at Camp David, Maryland. The U-2
incident and 1962 Cuban missile crisis, however, ended what little amity existed between
the two nations and depolarized the Cold War. Party leaders, upset with Khrushchev for
having backed down from the Cuban missile crisis, removed him from power in 1964.

• Chiang Kai-Shek: With Soviet help he consolidated KMT control over southern China
and led the Northern Campaign (1926-7). This involved the defeat of Chinese
communists and hence a break with the USSR. Making himself effective head of the
KMT in 1928, he captured Beijing. There followed the extensive military operations
known as the five Bandit Suppression Campaigns (December 1930-September 1934),
directed against the communists in southern China. Only the last of these was reasonably
successful, driving Mao Tse-tung on the Long March. The threat of Japanese invasion,
which became actual in July 1937, forced him to ally with the communists. Chiang was
unable to hold the Japanese advances until after the USA entered the war in 1941.

• George Kennan: His concept of containment was presented in a highly influential article,
signed "X," that appeared in Foreign Affairs magazine in July 1947. Kennan questioned
the wisdom of conciliatory U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union, which he considered
appeasement, and advocated instead U.S. counter pressure wherever the Soviets
threatened to expand; this approach became the basis of U.S. policy toward the Soviet
Union during the first decades of the Cold War
• Ho Chi Min: The nationalist, Communist leader of the Viet Minh movement, which
sought to liberate Vietnam from French colonial rule throughout the 1950s. After being
rebuffed by the United States, Ho received aid from the USSR and won a major victory
over French forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. This French defeat forced the Geneva
Conference of 1954, which split Vietnam into Communist-dominated North Vietnam and
French-backed South Vietnam.
• Mao Tse Tung: (Chairman Mao) Mao is credited with commanding the Long March and
leading the Communist Party of China (CPC) to victory against Chiang Kai-shek's
Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War, defeating an assortment of powerful
regional warlords, and helping repel a Japanese invasion. Mao also enacted sweeping
land reform, by overthrowing the feudal landlords and seizing their large estates, before
 dividing the land up among the people who worked it.[1] Later, through his policies, he
laid the economic, technological and cultural foundations of modern China, transforming
the country from an underdeveloped peasant-based agrarian society into a major
industrialized world power. However, he remains a controversial figure to this day, with a
contentious legacy that is subject to continuing revision and fierce debate.
• Latin American Relations: The Cold War led to a revival of the Monroe Doctrine and the
Roosevelt Corollary (and the effective end of the Good Neighbor Policy). The US used
the Monroe Doctrine as a justification for resisting Soviet influence in Latin America --
and relied on the Roosevelt Corollary to justify intervention designed to prevent the
spread of communism in the region. The Cold War also found the US supporting Latin
American dictatorships with economic and military aid as part of their attempts to
contains Soviet (and, after 1959, Cuban) influence

• Douglas MacArthur: Five-star American general who commanded Allied forces in the
Pacific during World War II. After the war, MacArthur led the American occupation in
Japan, helped establish a democratic government there, and in large part rewrote the
country’s new constitution outlawing militarism. He later commanded United Nations
forces in Korea, driving North Korean forces back north of the 38th parallel after making
the brilliant Inchon landing. He ignored Chinese warnings not to approach the North
Korean–Chinese border at the Yalu River, however, and was subsequently driven back
down to the 38th parallel by more than a million Chinese troops. President Harry S
Truman later rejected MacArthur’s request to bomb North Korea and China with nuclear
weapons. MacArthur’s public criticism of the president’s decision prompted Truman to
remove him from command in 1951.

• Fidel Castro: The crisis that occurred when Cuban leader Fidel Castro sought economic
and military assistance from the Soviet Union after the United States’ failed 1961 Bay of
Pigs invasion. The Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, capitalized on the failed invasion,
allied with Castro, and secured from Castro the right to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Upon learning of the missiles, President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of the
island in 1962 and demanded that Khrushchev remove them. Nuclear war seemed
imminent until Khrushchev finally backed down, promising to remove the missiles if
Kennedy ended the blockade. The United States complied and also agreed to remove
from Turkey nuclear missiles aimed at the USSR. The Communist Party leadership in the
USSR removed Khrushchev from power in 1964 for having backed down in the standoff.

• Francis Gray Powers/U2: The crisis that arose after the USSR shot down an American U-
2 spy plane flying over the USSR on a reconnaissance mission in 1960. President Dwight
D. Eisenhower initially denied that the incident occurred until Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev presented the captured American pilot. The president’s refusal to apologize
or halt future spy missions caused the collapse of a joint summit among Great Britain,
France, the United States, and the USSR in May 1960.

• John Foster Dulles: Secretary of state under Eisenhower (and brother of Allen Dulles)
who helped devise Eisenhower’s New Look foreign policy. Dulles’s policy emphasized
 massive retaliation with nuclear weapons. In particular, Dulles advocated the use of
nuclear weapons against Ho Chi Minh’s Communist forces in Vietnam.

• Suez Canal Crisis: The crisis that erupted after Egypt’s nationalization of the British-
controlled Suez Canal, which took place in 1956 after negotiations over international aid
among the United States, Great Britain, and Egypt collapsed. Egyptian president Gamal
Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal, which links the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
Although Eisenhower protested the move, he also condemned the joint British, French,
and Israeli invasion of Egypt to retake the canal. The three nations eventually halted their
attack and withdrew, under heavy diplomatic and economic pressure from the United
States.

Events/Domestic Policy:

• G.I. Bill: bill passed in 1944 that provided federal grants for education to returning World
War II veterans. Also known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, the bill also
awarded federal loans to vets to purchase new homes, farms, and businesses. Millions of
veterans took advantage of these grants and loans to go back to school and purchase new
suburban homes, making the act one of the most significant pieces of postwar legislation.

• Interstate Highway: A federally funded American highway system resulting from the
Highway Revenue Act of 1956. By the 1940s, heightened use of automobiles and success
of smaller highways made it clear that the road system needed to be improved and
expanded by a network of national roads. The interstate highway system was first
approved by Congress in 1944, but because of World War II it was delayed until 1956. A
large-scale construction project, the highway system has had a profound impact on the
economy, national defense, and lifestyle of Americans. The Act's expiration date of 1972
has been extended many times by Congress (EISENHOWER)
• Brown V. Board of education: U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court ruled
unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution
• McCarthyism: The intense and popular fear that communists were in America hiding in
our government and our neighborhoods. McCarthy is credited with the “Red Scare”
• Military Desegregation: In 1948 Truman officially declared that the armed forces could
not longer be segregated and everyone must be integrated
• Plessey Vs. Ferguson: Supreme Court decision that established the legality of racial
segregation so long as facilities were "separate but equal." The case involved a challenge
to Louisiana laws requiring separate railcars for African Americans and whites. Though
the laws were upheld by a majority of 8 to 1, a famous dissent by John Marshall Harlan
advanced the idea that the U.S. Constitution is "color-blind." The Plessey decision was
overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education.
• 80th Congress policies: The 80th Congress was nicknamed the "Do Nothing Congress" by
President Harry Truman. The Congress opposed many of the bills passed during the
Franklin Roosevelt administration. They also opposed most of Truman's Fair Deal bills.
Yet they passed many pro-business bills. During the 1948 election Truman campaigned
as much against the "Do Nothing Congress" as against his formal opponent, Thomas
Dewey.
 • De facto Segregation: Racial segregation, especially in public schools, that happens “by
fact” rather than by legal requirement. For example, often the concentration of African-
Americans in certain neighborhoods produces neighborhood schools that are
predominantly black, or segregated in fact (de facto), although not by law (de jure).
• Military Industrial Complex: military contractors hire retired military officers military
bases in congressional districts have a great political influence in keeping the arms race
going.
• Elections of 1948 1952 1956: Truman was the major upset in the 48 election when he
decided not to run for office again it was IKE who took the country by storm and won the
next elections.
• Truman’s Fair Deal: the 21-point program that he presented to Congress on September 5,
1945, to convert the economy from wartime to peacetime status. The message to
Congress emphasized passage of the Full Employment Act to provide jobs for U.S.
servicemen and servicewomen

• Taft-Hartley Act: federal law protecting public welfare during labor disputes by allowing
president power of injunction to halt certain strikes
• Polio Cure: Invented by Jonas Salk the polio vaccine was a simple cure to a horrifying
disease which shockingly has still not been eradicated today. The cure prevented the
deadly paralyzing disease

People/Domestic Policy:

• Jackie Robinson: The first black major league baseball player

• Elvis Presley: A musical icon in the time period Elvis was the object of every young girls
desire and many of his songs were bestsellers
• The Rosenberg’s: American communists who were executed for acts of espionage during
war time.
• Algeir Hiss: A successful lawyer in his time Hiss was accused of being a soviet spy and
convicted of perjury in 1950
• Baby boom: 78.3 million births that took place after WWII was enough to be considered
a boom.
• Martin L. King: A civil rights activist King was a leader of black people everywhere in
the North and South. His peaceful approach to the matter was considered revolutionary in
the south.
• Rosa Parks: A little old woman who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in
Montgomery Alabama.
• William Levitt: A credited developer he was credited as being the father of modern
suburbia.
• Adlai Stevenson: The Illinois democrat who ran against Ike in the 1952 election
• Checkers Speech: A speech given by Richard Nixon denying that he accepted gifts from
supporters of “special interests” he claimed he did nothing wrong other than accepting
the family dog checkers
• Jack Kerouac: A novelist during the time period he wrote novels such as On the Road
which detailed his life which was full of alcohol and women (subjects previously
considered taboo to write about)
• Joseph McCarthy: Republican senator from Wisconsin who capitalized on Cold War
fears of Communism in the early 1950s by accusing hundreds of government employees
 of being Communists and Soviet agents. Although McCarthy failed to offer any concrete
evidence to prove these claims, many Americans fully supported him. He ruined his own
reputation in 1954 after humiliating himself during the televised Army-McCarthy
hearings. Disgraced, he received an official censure from the Senate and died an
alcoholic in 1957.
• Little Rock Nine: Nine black students who were the first step towards desegregation in
the south these nine students faced massive amounts of adversity when attempting to
enroll in Central High School
• Teenage Girls Job: Many teenage girls in the era chose to babysit for a little extra cash.
The baby boomers provided plenty of opportunity.