Chapter 29: Origins of the Cold War

Atlantic Charter

~ 1941, outlined a vision in which a world would abandon their traditional beliefs in military alliances and spheres of influence and govern their relations with one another though democratic process, with an international organization serving as the arbiter of disputes and the protector of every nation's right of self determination.

Douglas MacArthur

~ A General who commanded a broad offensive against the Japanese that would move north from Australia, through New Guinea, and eventually to the Philippines.

Winston Churchill

~ A noted British statesman who led Britain throughout most of World War II and along with Roosevelt planned many allied campaigns. He predicted an iron curtain that would separate Communist Europe from the rest of the West.

Taft Hartley Act

~ Also known as the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, it made illegal the closed shop, but continued to permit the creation of union shops. Also empowered the president to call for a ten-week "cooling off" period before a strike by issuing an injunction against any work stoppage that endangered national safety or health.

NSC-68

~ Also known as the National Security Council report, it was issued in 1950 and it outlined a shift in the American position. It was the result of Truman wanting a thorough review of American foreign policy.

Dwight D Eisenhower

~ Highly popular, he ran for president in 1952, and did not speak out against McCarthy but disliked his tactics and was outraged at his attacks on General George Marshall.

Berlin Airlift

~ In 1948, in response to Stalin's blockade of Berlin, the United States carried out a more massive effort to supply the two million Berlin citizens with food, fuel, and other goods by air for more than ten months. The airlift forced the Soviets to end the now ineffective blockade in 1949.

Nationalists v. Communists

~ In China ever since 1927, the nationalist government he headed had been engaged in a prolonged and bitter rivalry with the communist armies of Mao Zedong. So successful had the communist challenge grown that Mao was in control of 1/4 of the population by 1945

Department of Defense

~ In a special message to Congress on December 19, 1945, President Harry Truman proposed creation of a unified department of state defense, citing both wasteful military spending and inter-departmental conflicts

McCarthyism

~ It is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism."

John L Lewis

~ Led CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization). Boss of United Mine Workers. Led sit-in at General Motors.

Containment

~ Rather than attempting to create a unified, "open" world, the United States and its Allies would work to "contain" the threat of further Soviet expansion. ~The idea that came from the influential American diplomat George F. Kennan, who had warned not long after the war that in the Soviet Union the U.S. face a threat of a political force that didn't like the U.S. government. He stressed that this was the only solution; to contain Russia and their expansion tendencies.

Central Intelligence Agency

~ Replaced the wartime Office of Strategic Services and would be responsible for collecting information through both open and covert methods; as the Cold War continued this agency would also engage secretly in political and military operations on behalf of American goals.

Joseph Stalin

~ Russian leader who succeeded Lenin as head of the Communist Party and created a totalitarian state by purging all opposition (1879-1953)

Dean Acheson

~ Secretary of State under Harry Truman; defined American foreign policy during the Cold War; critical in creation of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

General Assembly

~ Section of UN, all the members in the UN, discusses world issues, votes on actions, and controls the UN budget

Joseph McCarthy

~ Senator from Wisconsin who rose to infamy by accusing the State Department of employing communists, he conducted high-profile red-baiting hearings that damaged countless careers before he finally over-reached in 1954 when he went after the US Army. After that he was censured by Senate and died of alcoholism shortly thereafter

Checkers Speech

~ Television speech given by Richard Nixon on September 23, 1952, when he was the Republican candidate for the Vice Presidency. Talked about his dog, Checkers. Said to have saved his career from a campaign contributions scandal.

Warsaw Pact

~ The 1955 treaty binding the Soviet Union and countries of eastern Europe in an alliance against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Adlai E. Stevenson

~ The Democratic candidate who ran against Eisenhower in 1952. His intellectual speeches earned him and his supporters the term "eggheads". Lost to Eisenhower.

GI Bill of Rights

~ The Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944 which provided housing, education, and job training subsidies to veterans and increased spending even further.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

~ They were American citizens executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, relating to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.

Federal Bureau of Investigation

~ This was an agency meant to be the Civilian intelligence to as a response to the Espionage Act. It increased its overall police and surveillance machinery.

Fair Deal

~ Truman submitted this twenty one point domestic program to congress days after the Japanese surrender. It called for expansion of Social Security benefits, the raising of the legal minimum wage from 40 to 60 cents an hour, a program to ensure full employment through aggressive use of federal spending and investment, public housing and slum clearance, long-range environmental and public works planning, and government promotion of scientific research.

Federal Loyalty Program

~ United States Executive Order 9835, sometimes known as The Loyalty Order, was signed March 21, 1947 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman. The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States, which was designed to root out communist influence within the various departments of the U.S. federal government.

Closed Shop

~ a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to only hire union members, and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed.

J. Edgar Hoover

~ ambitious assistant of Palmer, he helped orchestrate a series of raids on alleged radical centers throughout the country and arrested 6,000 people. (500, non- Americans were deported)., put in charge to fight against radicals during the Red Scare after World War 1

House Un-American Activities Committee

~ an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security".When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee

New Deal Coalition

~ coalition forged by the Democrats who dominated American politics from the 1930's to the 1960's. its basic elements were the urban working class, ethnic groups, Catholics and Jews, the poor, Southerners, African Americans, and intellectuals, Alliance of southern conservatives, religious, and ethnic minorities who supported the Democratic Party for 40 years

Hydrogen Bomb

~ first used by America on the South Pacific; 1,000 X more powerful than the A-bomb

George Kennan

~ foreign officer who formulated the "containment doctrine" which stated that Russia was relentlessly expansionary, cautious and the flow of the soviet power could be stemmed by firm and vigilant containment. he wrote "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which argued this containment policy

Richard M Nixon

~ member of the House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities (to investigate "subversion"). He tried to catch Alger Hiss who was accused of being a communist agent in the 1930's. This brought Nixon to the attention of the American public. In 1956 he was Eisenhower's Vice-President., When he was elected there was high inflation and economic recession from high spending in the war. His greatest success was easing cold war tensions and with foreign countries.

National Security Act

~1947 ~ This reshaped the nation's major military and diplomatic institutions, with a Department of Defense and A National Security Council, which would operate out of the White House and would govern foreign and military policy.

Alger Hiss

~1950, was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. He was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950 ~In 1948 committee member Richard M. Nixon led the chase after Alger Hiss, a prominent ex-New Dealer and a distinguished member of the "eastern establishment." accused of being a communist agent in the 1930s, hiss demanded the right to defend himself. His dramatically met his chief accuser before the Un-American Activities Committee in august but was convicted of perjury.

Robert Taft

~A Republican United States Senator and a prominent conservative statesman. As the leading opponent of the New Deal in the Senate from 1939 to 1953. ~He led the successful effort by the conservative coalition to curb the power of labor unions, and was a major proponent of the foreign policy of non-interventionism

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

~April 4, 1949. When twelve nations signed an agreement establishing this, and in it declaring that an armed attack against one member would be considered an attack against all. A military force would maintain in Europe to defend against what many believed was the threat of the Soviet invasion. The formation of this sparked the Soviet Union to create an alliance of its own with the communist governments in Europe. It was called the Warsaw Pact.

Occupation Zones

~At the war's end, Germany had been separated into four military occupation zones, each assigned to one of the Big Four powers. These were the bases for the formation of two separate countries in 1949, when the British, French, and American zones became West Germany, and the Soviet zone became East Germany.

Atomic Energy Commission

~Established in 1946, it became the supervisory body charged with overseeing all nuclear research, civilian and military alike. In 1950, Truman approved the development of the Hydrogen Bomb, a bomb far more powerful than any previous bomb used by the U.S.

Yalta Conference

~February 4-11, 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin, respectively, for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. ~The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. Within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy.

Korean War

~First "hot war" of the Cold war. The Korean War began in 1950 when the Soviet-backed North Koreans invaded South Korea before meeting a counter-offensive by UN Forces, dominated by the United States. The war ended in stalemate in 1953. 38th Parallel ~ The dividing line between North and South Korea, across which the fighting between communists and United Nations forces ebbed and flowed during the Korean War

Chiang Kai-Shek

~General and leader of Nationalist China after 1925. Although he succeeded Sun Yat-sen as head of the Guomindang, he became a military dictator whose major goal was to crush the communist movement led by Mao Zedong.

Hollywood Ten

~Group of people in the film industry who were jailed for refusing to answer congressional questions regarding Communist influence in Hollywood

Spheres of Influence

~In international affairs, the territory where a powerful state exercises the dominant control over weaker states or territories ~ The Soviet Union wanted to create a secure sphere for itself in Central and Eastern Europe as protection against possible future aggression from the West.

Security Council

~It is an important part of the United Nations; has to maintain international peace and security; takes care of the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of international sanctions, and the authorization of military action

National Security Council

~It recommended to quadruple defense spending and rapidly expand peace-time armed forces to address Cold War tensions. It reflected a new militarization of American foreign policy but the huge costs of rearmament were not expected to interfere with what seemed like the limitless possibilities of postwar prosperity.

Teheran Conference

~It was a strategy meeting held between Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943. It was held in the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran and was the first of the World War II conferences held between all of the "Big Three" Allied leaders (the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom). ~Although all three of the leaders present arrived with differing objectives, the main outcome of it was the commitment to the opening of a second front against Nazi Germany by the Western Allies. The conference also addressed relations between the Allies and Turkey and Iran, operations in Yugoslavia and against Japan as well as the envisaged post-war settlement.

Big Three

~Joseph Stalin of Russia, Franklin D. Roosevelt of the U.S and Winston Churchill of England. United Nations ~It was an international body formed to bring nations into dialogue in hopes of preventing further world wars; much like the former League of Nations in ambition, it was more realistic in recognizing the authority of the Big Five Powers in keeping peace in the world, thus guaranteeing veto power to all permanent members of its Security Council (Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States)

Potsdam Conference

~July 26, 1945 - Allied leaders Truman, Stalin and Churchill met in Germany to set up zones of control and to inform the Japanese that if they refused to surrender at once, they would face total destruction.

Truman Doctrine

~On March 12, 1947, Truman appeared before congress and used Kennan's warnings as the basis of what became known as this. "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

George C. Marshall

~Originator of a massive program for the economic relief and recovery of devastated Europe

Marshall Plan

~Secretary of State, George C. Marshall's plan to provide economic assistance to all European nations that would join in drafting a program for recovery. Sixteen western nations participated.

Mao Zedong

~The Communist leader in China. He established his regime in Beijing (the people's Republic of China) but the US refused to recognize it and continued to support the nationalist government in Taiwan.