Chapter 27: The Cold War

• Yalta Conference


  Peace conference between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin in February 1945 at Yalta. Successfully reached some agreements and set loose principles but side stepped difficult questions
• Chiang Kai-Shek


  Chinese nationalists
• Mao Zedong


  The leader of a communist army in China and opposed Chiang Kai-shek's republic of China. Truman continued to support Chiang in the prolonged civil war by sending supplies and money.
• Containment


  American policy which, rather than attempting to create a unified world, the United States and its allies would work to contain the threat of further Soviet expansion
• George F. Kennan


  Influential American diplomat who had warned not long after the war that the only appropriate diplomatic approach to dealing with the Soviet Union was containment
• Truman Doctrine


  Doctrine stating that America must take the initiative in attacking communism, and requested $400 million to aid Turkey and Greece who were facing communist threats
• John Birch Society


  An extreme anticommunist group led by Robert Welch
• John Foster Dulles


  Would soon be Secretary of State under Eisenhower, wrote in the Republican Platform in 1952 against containment
• Rollback


  Instead of containing communism, the US should be pushing back the borders of communism
• The Marshall Plan


  Plan created by George C Marshall that channeled $13B of American aid to Europe, helping to spark an economic revival & strengthen the shaky pro-American governments in Western Europe so they didn't fall under the control of growing communist parties
• Economic Cooperation Administration


  approved by Congress to administer the Marshall Plan
• Atomic Energy Commission


  the supervisory body charged w/ overseeing all nuclear research, civilian & military alike
• National Security Act of 1947


  Created the Department of Defense (to oversee all branches of the armed services), CIA (to replace office of strategic services & would be responsible for collecting information), and the National Security Council (NSC)

  • an act that increased the powers of the president
• Berlin Blockade (1948)


  Stalin cut off all roads/ trains to Berlin (located in East Germany), the US provided food, goods, etc. to the citizens of Berlin
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)


  A peacetime alliance between the US and the countries of western Europe. Declared that an armed attack against a member would be considered an attack against everyone in the group.
• Warsaw Pact


  A military alliance, formed in 1955, of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite nations.
• China Lobby


  advocacy groups that included members of Congress, high-level military figures, & powerful journalists who believed the US had not done enough to prevent communists from taking over the mainland of China
• NSC-68

  Urged for a more aggressive foreign policy and an increase in defense spending
• The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill)

  provided housing, education, and job training subsidies to veterans
• Taft-Hartley Act

  The Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947. It made the closed shop (a workplace where no one will be hired without first joining a labor union) illegal, although continued to permit union shops, and permitted states to pass "right-to-work" laws.
• National Housing Act of 1949

  provided for the construction of 810,000 units of low-income housing accompanied by long-term rent subsidies
• Executive Order 9981


  desegregated US military
• Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)

  courts could not be used to enforce private "covenants" meant to bar blacks from residential neighborhoodsCourts
• Syngman Rhee


  anticommunist government of South Korea
• Office of Defense Mobilization

  to fight inflation by holding down prices and discouraging high union demand wages
• House Un-American Activities Committee

  held widely publicized investigations to prove that, under Democratic rule, the government encouraged communist subversion

  • prominent member: Richard Nixon
• Alger Hiss

  State department official accused of providing soviets classified State Department documents. He was accused by Whittaker Chambers. He was later convicted of perjury and served several years in prision because of Richard Nixon's persistance.
• Whittaker Chambers

  Accused Alger Hiss of being a soviet spy. He produced "pumpkin papers" as evidence against Hiss.
• Hollywood Ten

  10 screenwriters that refused to testify before the HUAC: sentenced to jail
• Federal Loyalty Program

  helped launch an assault on subversion within government
• J. Edgar Hoover

  FBI director that investigated alleged radicals
• McCarran Internal Security Act

  required that all communist organizations register with the government and publish their records
• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

  Members of the communist party accused of being soviet spys and passing along theoretical atomic bomb information. The federal government claimed they were the mastermind of the operation and were sentenced to death, despite Greenback claiming to have provided the information and claimed he was a previous soviet spy.
• McCarthyism

  The act of accusing people of disloyalty and communism. It was created by McCarthy and he mainly accused democrats. This created a fear of communisms and spurred the Red Scare.
• Joseph McCarthy

  US senator who claimed at a rally that he had a list of 205 names of known Communists in the States. He became the most prominent leader against communism and further expanded the accusations.
• Tehran Conference

  meeting of the Big Three to discuss the final attack on Germany
• Potsdam Conference

  January 1943 conference between FDR and Churchill that produces Unconditional Surrender doctrine
• Dwight Eisenhower

  Elected president in 1952, pledging to bring the Korean War to an end.
• Thomas E. Dewey

  Nominated by the republicans and went against Truman in the election of 1948.
• Truman's Fair Deal

  21 point domestic program following VE day. It called for the expansion of social security benefits, raising of minimum wage from 40 to 65 cents, and a program to ensure full employment through federal spending.