History 2 Final Exam.

Following the 1917 communist revolution in Russia, there were calls by Western leaders to

isolate the Bolshevik government, which seemed intent on promoting worldwide revolution. In March 1919, French Premier Georges Clemenceau called for a cordon sanitaire, or ring of non-communist states, to isolate the Soviet Union.

The term "cold" is used because there was

no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides.

The "Space Race"

" was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union and the US, for supremacy in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations that occurred following WWII, aided by captured German missile technology and personnel from the Aggregat program. The technological superiority required for such supremacy was seen as necessary for national security, and symbolic of ideological superiority. It spawned pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, unmanned space probes of the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon. The competition began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The Soviet Uni on beat the US to this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. The race peaked with the July 20, 1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. The USSR tried but failed manned lunar missions, and eventually cancelled them and concentrated on Earth orbital space stations.

The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the

"*Anti-Fascist Protective Wall*" by GDR authorities, implying that the NATO countries and West Germany in particular were considered equal to "fascists" by GDR propaganda.

Lyndon B. Johnson was renowned for his domineering, sometimes abrasive, personality and the...

"Johnson treatment"—his aggressive coercion of powerful politicians to advance legislation.

George Ball would later write to President Lyndon Johnson to explain to him the predictions of the war outcome:

"The decision you face now is crucial. Once large numbers of U.S. troops are committed to direct combat, they will begin to take heavy casualties in a war they are ill equipped to fight in a noncooperative if not downright hostile countryside. Once we suffer large casualties, we will have started a well-nigh irreversible process. Our involvement will be so great that we cannot—without national humiliation—stop short of achieving our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities, I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives—even after we have paid terrible costs."

The Warren Commission

'The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy,' known unofficially as it, was established by President Johnson on November 29, 1963 to investigate and report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy that had taken place the previous week. Congress mandated the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of evidence concerning the infraction. Its 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964 and made public three days later. It concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald acted entirely alone. It also concluded that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later. It's findings have proven controversial and have been both challenged and supported by later studies. The US House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed that Oswald fired the shots that killed the president, but also concluded that Kennedy was likely assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. The majority of Americans alive at the time of the assassination (52% to 29%), and continuing through 2013 (61% to 30%), believed that there was a conspiracy and that Oswald was not the only shooter.

What dose MAD mean?

*M*utual *A*ssured *D*estruction

Who got the most money out of the marshall plan?

A larger amount was given to the major industrial powers, as the prevailing opinion was that their resuscitation was essential for general European revival. Somewhat more aid per capita was also directed towards the Allied nations, with less for those that had been part of the Axis or remained neutral. The largest recipient of Its money was the United Kingdom (receiving about 26% of the total), followed by France (18%) and West Germany (11%).

What happend after the failure of the Bay Of Pigs Battle?

According to biographer Richard Reeves, Kennedy focused primarily on the political repercussions of the plan rather than military considerations. When it failed, he was convinced that the plan was a setup to make him look bad. He took responsibility for the failure, saying: "We got a big kick in the leg and we deserved it. But maybe we'll learn something from it."

Inchon Landing

Against the rested and re-armed Pusan Perimeter defenders and their reinforcements, the KPA were undermanned and poorly supplied; and, unlike the UN Command, they lacked naval and air support. To relieve the Pusan Perimeter, General MacArthur led an amphibious landing at Inchon (now known as Incheon), near Seoul--and well over 100 miles (160 km) behind the KPA lines--that resulted in a decisive victory and strategic reversal in favor of the US/UN/ROK forces. Through a surprise amphibious assault far from Pusan, the largely undefended city of Inchon was secured after being bombed by UN forces. The initial plan was met with skepticism by the other generals because Inchon's natural and artif icial defenses were formidable. The Finally, the anchorage was small and the harbor was surrounded by tall seawalls. United States Navy Commander Arlie G. Capps noted that the harbor had "every natural and geographic handicap."The battle ended a string of victories by the invading North Korean People's Army (NKPA). The subsequent UN recapture of Seoul partially severed the NKPA's supply lines in South Korea and forced the PKA to make a mad scramble northward beyond the 38th Parallel to avoid being stranded in the south.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Allegations arose from the military that two US destroyers had been attacked by some North Vietnamese torpedo boats in international waters 40 miles (64 km) from the Vietnamese coast in the Gulf of Tonkin; naval communications and reports of the attack were contradictory. Although Johnson very much wanted to keep discussions about Vietnam out of the 1964 election campaign, he felt forced to respond to the supposed aggression by the Vietnamese, so he sought and obtained from the Congress it on August 7. Johnson, determined to embolden his image on foreign policy, also wanted to prevent criticism such as Truman had received in Korea by proceeding without congressional endorsement of military action; a response to the purported attack as well blunted presidential campaign criticism of weakness from the hawkish Goldwater camp. it gave congressional approval for use of military force by the commander-in-chief to repel future attacks and also to assist members of SEATO requesting assistance. In other words, it granted Johnson the power to use military force in Southeast Asia without having to ask for an official declaration of war. As a result of it, the number of American military personnel in Vietnam increased dramatically, from 16,000 advisors in non-combat roles in 1963, to 550,000 in early 1968, many in combat roles. American casualties soared and the peace process bogged down. Growing unease with the war stimulated a large, angry antiwar movement based especially on university campuses in the U.S. and abroad.

Supply Side Economics

Also known as «Reaganomics,» or the «trickle-down» policy was espoused by 40th U.S. President Ronald Reagan. He popularized the controversial idea that greater tax cuts for investors and entrepreneurs provide incentives to save and invest, and produce economic benefits that trickle down into the overall economy. Economist Milton Friedman famously described this situation as «too much money chasing too few goods.» For example, central banks can cause inflation by allowing excessive growth of the money supply, and the government can cause stagnation by excessive regulation of goods markets and labor markets. Excessive growth of the money supply, taken to such an extreme that it must be reversed abruptly, can be a cause. The _____ ______ theory is typically held in stark contrast to Keynesian theory which, among other facets, includes the idea that demand can falter, so if lagging consumer demand drags the economy into recession, the government should intervene with fiscal and monetary stimuli. This is the single big distinction: a pure Keynesian believes that consumers and their demand for goods and services are key economic drivers, while a ____ ______er believes that producers and their willingness to create goods and services set the pace of economic growth

Who received Marshall Plan benefits?

Although most small towns and villages had not suffered as much damage, the destruction of transportation left them economically isolated. None of these problems could be easily remedied, as most nations engaged in the war had exhausted their treasuries in the process. The only major powers whose infrastructure had not been significantly harmed in World War II were the United States and Canada. They were much more prosperous than before the war but exports were a small factor in their economy. Some 18 European countries received Plan benefits. Although offered participation, the Soviet Union refused Plan benefits, and also blocked benefits to Eastern Bloc countries, such as East Germany and Poland. The US provided similar aid programs in Asia, but they were not called by its name

How did the containment policy get its name?

As a description of US foreign policy, the word originated in a report Kennan submitted to U.S. Defense Secretary James Forrestal in 1947, a report that was later used in a magazine article. It is a translation of the French cordon sanitaire, used to describe Western policy toward the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Translating this phrase, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called for a "quarantine." Both phrases rightfully compare communism to a contagious disease. The US initially refused to recognize the Soviet Union, but President Franklin Roosevelt reversed the policy in 1933, hoping to expand American export markets.

Nuclear Escalation

At once a part of nuclear deterrence theory, game theory, and military tactics & strategy, policy analysts in the US in the 1950s assumed that any conventional war (using troops, guns, tanks, artillery, etc) between the US and the Soviet Union, which by then had nuclear weapons as well (thanks largely to the espionage of traitors like the Rosenbergs, and others) would quickly escalate into a nuclear exchange. Until then, both superpowers were limited to delivering their payloads via aircraft, which did provide some window of opportunity for preparation, defense, and response. Briefly, the US worked on developing long-range bombers like the magnificent Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (which debuted in 1952) for just such a scenario. The unacceptability of MAD led military analysts to develop various workaround solutions in the late Eisenhower years between 1957-60 in order to keep any conflict as conventional, contained, and surgically low-key as possible, and for as long as necessary, until military goals had been met.

In September and October, 1960, Kennedy appeared with the current vice president and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the first televised U.S. presidential debates in U.S. history. *What happend next?*

During these programs, Nixon, with a sore, injured leg and his "five o'clock shadow", was perspiring and looked tense and uncomfortable, while Kennedy, choosing to avail himself of makeup services, appeared relaxed, leading the huge television audience to favor him as the winner. Radio listeners, however, either thought that Nixon had won or that the debates were a draw. The debates are now considered a milestone in American political history—the point at which the medium of television began to play a dominant role in politics.

The Marshall Plan is also officially known as

European Recovery Program, ERP

Yalu River

Following the Inchon Landing, UN forces swiveled northward and began a drive northward towards It which separates North Korea from Manchurian China. The push was so successful that the bulk of KPA forces fled across the river to keep from getting captured. MacArthur argued strenuously for permission to pursue the retreating KPA forces into Chinese territory in order to crush the North's fighting resolve once and for all. Truman, however, refused to allow it. With the entire UN front collapsing, the race to it was ended with the communist forces of China recapturing much of North Korea. The Korean War would drag on for another two and a half years before the armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty has been signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war. Periodic clashes, many of which are deadly, have continued to the present, frequently accompanied by much saber rattling and inflammatory rhetoric by North Korea's current dictator, Kim Jong-un, grandson of Kim Il-sung.

Direct defense

In case of a conventional Soviet attack (meaning non-nuclear or this would be considered a first strike) initial efforts would be to try and stop the Soviet advance with conventional weapons. This meant that the foreseen Soviet attack on West Germany would be tried to be forced to a halt by NATO's European forces, Allied Command Europe.

Guantanamo Bay

Is a bay located in a Province at the southeastern end of Cuba. It is the largest harbor on the south side of the island and it is surrounded by steep hills which create an enclave that is cut off from its immediate hinterland. The US assumed territorial control over the southern portion of it under the 1903 Cuban-American Treaty of Relations. The US exercises complete jurisdiction and control over this territory, while recognizing that Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty. The current government of Cuba regards the US presence in it as illegal and insists the Cuban-American Treaty was obtained by threat of force and is in violation of international law. Some legal scholars judge that the lease may be voidable. It is the home of the G B Naval Base and the G B detention camp located within the base, which are both governed by the United States

Mikhail Gorbachev

Is a former Soviet statesman. He was the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, when the party was dissolved. He was the country's head of state from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. his primary goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy after the stagnant Brezhnev years. He called for fast-paced technological modernization and increased industrial and agricultural productivity, and tried to reform the Soviet bureaucracy to be more efficient and prosperous. He soon came to believe that fixing the Soviet economy would be nearly impossible without reforming the political and social structure of the Communist nation. He also initiated the concept of gospriyomka during his time as leader, which represented quality control. In a speech in May 1985 in Leningrad , he advocated widespread reforms. The need to modernize and relax the totalitarian controls of state and society were forced upon the Soviet Union by the US under Reagan when he announced the SDI together with increases in military spending. In order to maintain parity, the Soviet Union was forced to follow suit with its own defense budget increases, which it could not afford. In addition, the Soviet system maintained such paranoiacally rigorous controls on technology and who was authorized to use it, that it required a KGB background check and security clearance just to use an adding machine, let alone a fax or copier! Most bank employees were doing calculations on abacuses at the time he took power.

Lech Walesa

Is a retired Polish politician and labor activist. He co-founded and headed Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. he (pronounced 'Lek Valensa') was an electrician by trade. Soon after beginning work at Lenin Shipyard (now Gdańsk Shipyard), he became a trade union activist, for which he was persecuted by the Communist authorities, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980 he was instrumental in political negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government. He became a co- founder of the Solidarity trade union movement. After martial law was imposed in Poland and Solidarity was outlawed, he was arrested again. Upon his release from custody he continued his activism and was prominent in the establishment of the 1989 Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989, and to a Solidarity-led government. In the Polish general election of 1990, he successfully ran for the newly re-established office of President of Poland. He presided over Poland's transition from communism to a post-communist state, but his popularity waned and his role in Polish politics diminished after he narrowly lost the 1995 presidential election. As of 2016, he continues to speak and lecture on history and politics in Poland and abroad. [Prof. Pappas' note] He has twice been brough to Sam Houston State University as a wildly popular guest lecturer, and both times, he presented to a packed audience.

Jimmy Carter

Is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the US from 1977 to 1981. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Carter Center. he, a Democrat raised in rural Georgia, was a peanut farmer who served two terms as a Georgia State Senator, from 1963 to 1967, and one as the Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975. He was elected President in 1976, defeating incumbent Gerald Ford in a relatively close election. On his second day in office, he pardoned all of the Vietnam War draft-dodgers. During his term as a resident, two new cabinet-level departments, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education were established. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. In foreign affairs, hepursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), and the return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama. On the economic front he confronted persistent "stagflation", a combination of high inflation, high unemployment, and slow growth. The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the Soviet move, he ended détente, escalated the Cold War, and led the international boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. By 1980, his popularity had eroded such that, running for re-election that year, he lost in an electoral landslide to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, who won 44 of 50 states.

Sputnik

It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. This surprise success precipitated the American S. crisis and triggered the Space Race, a part of the larger Cold War. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. In Britain the media and population initially reacted with a mixture of fear for the future, but also amazement about humankind's progress. Many newspapers and magazines heralded the arrival of the Space Age. The launch of Sputnik surprised the American public and shattered the perception, furthered by American propaganda, of the US as the technological superpower and the Soviet Union as a backward country. Privately, however, the CIA and President Eisenhower were aware of progress being made by the Soviets on Sputnik from secret spy plane imagery. Together with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , the Army Ballistic Missile Agency built Explorer 1, and launched it on 31 January 1958. Before work was completed, however, the Soviet Union launched a second satellite, Sputnik 2, on 3 November 1957. Meanwhile, the televised failure of Vanguard TV3 on 6 December 1957 deepened American dismay over the country's position in the Space Race. The Americans took a more aggressive stance in the emerging space race, resulting in an emphasis on science and technological research and reforms in many areas from the military to education systems. The federal government began investing in science, engineering and mathematics at all levels of education. An advanced research group was assembled for military purposes. These research groups developed weapons such as ICBMs and missile defense systems, as well as spy satellites for the U.S. .

Great Society Program

Johnson designed it legislation upholding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his "War on Poverty". Assisted in part by a growing economy, the War on Poverty helped millions of Americans rise above the poverty line during Johnson's presidency. Civil rights bills signed by Johnson banned racial discrimination in public facilities, interstate commerce, the workplace, and housing; and the Voting Rights Act banned certain requirements in southern states used to disenfranchise African Americans. With the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the country's immigration system was reformed and all racial origin quotas were removed (replaced by national origin quotas). In late 1963 Johnson also launched the initial offensive of his War on Poverty, recruiting Kennedy relative Sargent Shriver (father-in-law of Arnold Schwartzenegger), then head of the Peace Corps, to spearhead the effort. In March 1964, LBJ sent to Congress the Economic Opportunity Act, which created the Job Corps and the Community Action Program, designed to attack poverty locally. The act also created VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America, a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps.

U-2 Incident

Occurred during the Cold War on 1 May 1960, during the Eisenhower Administration and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down while in Soviet airspace. The aircraft, flown by Central Intelligence Agency pilot Francis Gary Powers, was performing photographic aerial reconnaissance when it was hit by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk. Powers parachuted safely and was captured. Initially the US government tried to cover up the plane's purpose and mission, but was forced to admit its military nature when the Soviet government came forward with the captured pilot and remains of the U-2 including spying technology that had survived the crash as well as photos of military bases in the Soviet Union taken by the aircraft. Coming roughly two weeks before the scheduled opening of an east-west summit in Paris, the incident was a great embarrassment to the US and prompted a marked deterioration in its relations with the Soviet Union. Powers was convicted of espionage and sentenced to three years of imprisonment plus seven years of hard labor but would be released two years later on 10 February 1962 during a prisoner exchange for Soviet officer Rudolf Abel.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Often referred to as LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th President of the US from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President under John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. He ran for a full term in the 1964 election, winning by a landslide over Republican opponent Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. He is one of only four people who have served as President, Vice President, Senator, and Representative. he escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. Republican Richard Nixon was elected to succeed him, as the New Deal coalition that had dominated presidential politics for 36 years collapsed. Historians argue that his presidency marked the peak of modern liberalism in the US after the New Deal era. he is ranked favorably by some historians because of his domestic policies and the passage of many major laws, affecting civil rights, gun control, wilderness preservation, and Social Security.

How was the turm MAD coined?

Once ballistic missile technology provided the means for long range nuclear strikes, it was assumed that, following the outbreak of hostilities, side 'A' would quickly launch to gain a strategic advantage, then side 'B' would respond so as to ensure that side 'A' didn't come away scot-free, and thus volley after volley of missiles would pass one another in the skies overhead until all weaponry had been deployed. The insanity of this plan was rightfully called *M*utual *A*ssured *D*estruction.

The code name for the Inchon Landing was

Operation Chromite.

Perestroika

Proceeding hand in hand with glasnost was the policy of __________, which was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during the 1980s. Perestroika is sometimes argued to be a cause of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, and the end of the Cold War. The goal of the perestroika, however, was not to end the command economy but rather to make socialism work more efficiently to better meet the needs of Soviet consumers. The process of implementing perestroika arguably exacerbated already existing political, social, and economic tensions within the Soviet Union and no doubt helped to further nationalism in the constituent republics

Counterculture

Refers to an anti-status quo and increasingly aggressively revolutionary cultural phenomenon that developed in the UK and the US, and then spread throughout much of the Western world, with London, New York City, and San Francisco being hotbeds of countercultural activity. Because of their influence, the earlier movement melded into the later one and became more politically radical and revolutionary. « Never had a generation of humans been so thoroughly traumatized by the specter of jobless, 'Dust Bowl» starvation at one end of the era and nuclear annihilation at the other, as Americans were then. Communism and nuclear war both posed an equally unthinkable existential threat to the majority of Americans who felt compelled to view the issue in stark, unyielding, 'good vs evil' terms. It was imperative to believe, with absolute moral certitude, that the Constitution, free-market capitalism and individual liberty represented the path of righteousness and that the US government was its torchbearer. To the extent that young people got involved in first wave counterculture, it was largely limited to music, dancing, and to a lesser extent, fashions. Unfortunately, the mischief-mongering perversity of the perpetually bored found its way into academia and the media, where they promoted Marxist communism as a utopian panacaea and advocated for relativism and moral equivalency. Apart from a small minority of tenured left wing radicals in academia, the US was rather quiescent about the Vietnam War until 1968. That changed in 1968, when the Nixon Administration rescinded the deferments and went to a lottery-based draft. Almost immediately, demonstrations, riots, protests, sit-ins, teach-ins, 'non-violent non-cooperation', confrontations with the police, etc., began on campuses across the nation. Today's blatantly politicized news outlets like CNN and FOX NEWS represent the culmination of the trend Cronkite started. The 'post-Tet' second wave counterculture was deeply political, radically left wing, and increasingly ugly in its revolutionary ideations. « Even so, many liberal and leftist historians find constructive elements in it, while those on the right tend not to.»«.

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. After the Soviet launch of the world's first artificial satellite (Sputnik 1) on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts. The US Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to national security and technological leadership (known as the "Sputnik Crisis"), urged immediate action; President Eisenhower established it in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958. Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have been led by it, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, it is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Space Launch System and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned they're launches.

Berlin Wall

The Second Berlin Crisis was the last major politico-military European incident of the Cold War about the occupation status of the German capital city, and of post-WWII Germany. The USSR provoked the Berlin Crisis with an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Western armed forces from West Berlin—culminating in the city's de facto partition with East Germany's erection of the it. itself was a barrier that divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, it completely cut off (by land) West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches and, later on, other defenses. In practice, Pink Floyd served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that had marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB), which demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it came to symbolize a physical marker of the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Before its erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin; from which they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, it prevented almost all such emigration. During this period, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the it, with an estimated death toll ranging from 136 to more than 200 in and around Berlin.

How much food was sent over seas with the Marshall plan?

The United States shipped 16.5 million tons of food, primarily wheat, *spam, peanut butter, and corn* to Europe and Japan. It amounted to one-sixth of the American food supply, and provided 35 trillion calories, enough to provide 400 calories a day for one year to 300 million people.

Bay of Pigs

The prior Eisenhower administration had created a plan to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. The plan, led by the CIA, with help from the U.S. military, was for an invasion of Cuba by a counter-revolutionary insurgency composed of U.S.-trained, anti-Castro Cuban exiles led by CIA paramilitary officers. The intention was to invade Cuba and instigate an uprising among the Cuban people in hopes of removing Castro from power. 1,500 U.S.-trained Cubans, called Brigade 2506, landed on the island. No U.S. air support was provided.. By April 19, 1961, the Cuban government had captured or killed the invading exiles, and Kennedy was forced to negotiate for the release of the 1,189 survivors. After twenty months, Cuba released the captured exiles in exchange for $53 million worth of food and medicine. In late 1961, the White House formed the Special Group (Augmented), headed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and including Defense Intellitgence advisor Edward Lansdale, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and others. The group's objective—to overthrow Castro via espionage, sabotage, and other covert tactics—was never pursued.

Viet Cong

The term Việt cộng appeared in Saigon newspapers beginning in 1956. It is a contraction of Việt Nam Cộng-sản (Vietnamese communist), or alternatively Việt gian cộng sản ("Communist Traitor to Vietnam"). Was the name given by Western sources to the communist National Liberation Front during the Vietnam War (1955-1975). The National Liberation Front was a political organization with its own army - People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF) - in South Vietnam and Cambodia, that fought the US and South Vietnamese governments, eventually emerging on the winning side. It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. Many soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam, but others were attached to the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), the regular North Vietnamese arm y. During the war, communists and anti-war spokesmen insisted it was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the US and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of Hanoi. Although the terminology distinguishes northerners from the southerners, communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958. North Vietnam established the National Liberation Front on December 20, 1960 to foment insurgency in the South. The earliest citation for Việt Cộng in English is from 1957. American soldiers referred to it as Victor Charlie or V-C. "Victor" and "Charlie" are both letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet. Thus the nickname "Charlie" referred to communist forces in general, both it and North Vietnamese.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Omar Bradley concurred, saying famously, that the passage of the Yalu river would be

The wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy"

Deliberate Escalation

This phase would be entered when conventional NATO forces were succumbing under the Soviet attack. This was actually expected as intelligence indicated Soviet divisions outnumbered NATO divisions by far. In this phase NATO forces would switch to a limited use of nuclear weapons, such as recently developed tactical nuclear weapons (like nuclear artillery).

General Nuclear Response

This was the last phase or stage which more or less corresponded to the mutual assured destruction scenario, meaning the total nuclear attack on the Communist world. If the Soviets had not already done so, this would make them switch to all-out attack as well.

Side Note of the Warren Commission

Three other U.S. government investigations have agreed with the Warren Commission's conclusion that two shots struck JFK from the rear: the 1968 panel set by Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the 1975 Rockefeller Commission, and the 1978-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations , which reexamined the evidence with the help of the largest forensics panel. The HSCA concluded that Oswald fired shots number one, two, and four, and that an unknown assassin fired shot number three from near the corner of a picket fence that was above and to President Kennedy's right front on the Dealey Plaza grassy knoll. The words «grassy knoll» to describe this area were first used by reporter Albert Merriman Smith of UPI, in his second dispatch from the radio-telephone in the press car: «Some of the Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the president's car, probably from a grassy knoll to which police rushed.» These words were then repeated on national television by Walter Cronkite in his second CBS News bulletin. Of the 104 Dealey Plaza earwitness reports published by the Commission and elsewhere, 56 recorded testimony that they remembered hearing at least one shot fired from the direction of the Depository or from near its Houston and Elm Streets intersection that was to the rear of the President, 35 witnesses recorded testimony of at least one shot fired from the direction of the grassy knoll or the triple underpass located to the right and front of the President, eight witnesses gave statements of shots fired from elsewhere, and five earwitnesses testified that the shots were fired from two different directions.

Fidel Castro

Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state communist reforms implemented throughout society. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother Raúl Castro and fellow-communist Che Guevara. He also lead the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces. The US economic embargo against Cuba, however, was to continue in varying forms and is still in operation today. The US unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic blockade, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961. In response to US nuclear missiles in Turkey, and perceived US threats against Cuba, Castro allowed the Soviets to place nuclear weapons on Cuba, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which became a defining incident of the Cold War.

Tet Offensive

Viet Cong forces entered the cities concealed among civilians returning home for Tet, the Vietnamese new year celebration. The US and South Vietnamese expected that an announced seven-day truce would be observed during Vietnam's main holiday.At this point, there were about 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, as well as 900,000 allied forces. General William Westmoreland, the US commander, received reports of massive troop movements and understood that an offensive was being planned, but his attention was focused on Khe Sanh, a remote U.S. base near the demilitarized zone (DMZ). In January and February 1968, some 80,000 Viet Cong struck more than 100 towns with orders to "crack the sky" and "shake the Earth." It included a commando raid on the US Embassy in Saigon and a massacre at Huế of about 3,500 residentsAn infamous photo by Eddie Adams showing the summary execution of a Viet Cong in Saigon on February 1 became a symbol of the brutality of the war. In an influential broadcast on February 27, news anchor Walter Cronkite stated that the war was a "stalemate" and could be ended only by negotiation. Cronkite's erroneous opinion had the effect of demoralizing the American public. Earle G. Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that it resulted in 40,000 communist dead (compared to about 10,600 US and South Vietnamese dead). it had a profound psychological impact because South Vietnamese cities were otherwise safe areas during the war. President Lyndon Johnson and Westmoreland argued that panicky news coverage gave the public the unfair perception that America had been defeated.

Cuban Missile Crisis

Was a 13-day confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. Along with being televised worldwide, it was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. In response to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, and the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter future harassment of Cuba. These missile preparations were confirmed when an Air Force U-2 spy plane produced clear photographic evidence of medium-range (SS-4) and intermediate- range (R-14) ballistic missile facilities. The US established a military blockade to prevent further missiles from entering Cuba. It announced that they would not permit offensive weapons to be delivered to Cuba and demanded that the weapons already in Cuba be dismantled and returned to the USSR. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to UN verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement never to invade Cuba again without direct provocation. Secretly, the United States also agreed that it would dismantle all US-built Jupiter MRBMs, which were deployed in Turkey and Italy against the Soviet Union but were not known to the public. When all offensive missiles and Ilyushin Il-28 light bombers had been withdrawn from Cuba, the blockade was formally ended on November 20, 1962. As a result, the Moscow-Washington hotline (the so-called "Red Phone" on the president's desk) was established. A series of agreements sharply reduced US-Soviet tensions during the following years.

Joseph R. McCarthy

Was a US Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, He became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the US federal government (especially in the State Department) and elsewhere. Ultimately, the controversy he generated led him to be censured by the US Senate. He remains a very controversial figure. In the view of a few conservative latter-day authors H-is place in history should be reevaluated. Some scholars assert that new evidence—in the form of Venona-decrypted Soviet messages, Soviet espionage data now opened to the West, and newly released transcripts of closed hearings before hissubcommittee—has partially vindicated him by showing that many of his identifications of Communists were correct and that the scale of Soviet espionage activity in the US during the 1940s and 1950s was larger than many scholars suspected. The previous cautious assessments had to be revised. Not a few "but hundreds of American Communists abetted Soviet espionage in the United States" in the 1930s and 1940s. No modern government had been more thoroughly penetrated. Plus, only a tiny fraction of the Venona intercepts have been decrypted (about 3%), so no one knows the entire extent of the penetration. All anyone can know for sure is that the Soviet penetration into the US government was massive.

Warsaw Pact

Was a collective defense treaty among the Soviet Union and seven other Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. it was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. it was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 per the Paris Pacts of 1954 but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe. The Pact began to unravel in its entirety with the spread of the Revolutions of 1989 through Eastern Europe, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland and its electoral success in June 1989.. On 25 February 1991, the Pact was declared at an end at a meeting of defense and foreign ministers from the five remaining member states meeting in Hungary.

Flexible Response

Was a defense strategy implemented by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to address his administration's skepticism of Eisenhower's policy of massive retaliation. In the event of an attack from an aggressor, a state would massively retaliate by using a force disproportionate to the size of the attack. The aim of massive retaliation is to deter another state from initially attacking. For such a strategy to work, it must be made public knowledge to all possible aggressors. The aggressor also must believe that the state announcing the policy has the ability to maintain second-strike capability in the event of an attack. It must also believe that the defending state is willing to go through with the deterrent threat, which would likely involve the use of nuclear weapons on a massive scale. Massive retaliation works on the same principles as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), with the important caveat that even a minor conventional attack on a nuclear state could conceivably result in all-out nuclear retaliation. However, at the time when massive retaliation became policy, there was no MAD, because the Soviet Union lacked a second-strike capability throughout the 1950s. In contrast, Kennedy's plan calls for mutual deterrence at strategic, tactical, and conventional levels, thus giving the US the capability to respond to aggression across the spectrum of warfare, not limited only to nuclear arms. In other words, the administration aimed to 'fit the military response to the aggression.

Iran Hostage Crisis

Was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the US. 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days after a group of Iranian students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. It stands as the longest hostage crisis in recorded history, and cast a pall over the Carter administration, which was seen as increasingly ineffectual and weak the longer the crisis dragged on. For his part, Carter called the hostages «victims of terrorism and anarchy» and said, «The United States will not yield to blackmail.» In Iran, it was widely seen as a blow against the US and its influence in Iran, including its perceived attempts to undermine the Iranian Revolution and its longstanding support of the recently overt hrown Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had led an autocratic regime. Iran demanded that he be returned to stand trial for crimes he was accused of committing during his reign. Specifically, Pahlavi was accused of committing crimes against Iranian citizens with the help of his secret police, the SAVAK. Iranians saw the decision to grant him asylum as American complicity in those atrocities. The Americans saw the hostage-taking as an egregious violation of the principles of international law, which granted diplomats immunity from arrest and made diplomatic compounds inviolable.The crisis reached a climax when, after failed efforts to negotiate the hostages' release, the United States military attempted a rescue operation using ships, including the USS Nimitz and USS Coral Sea, that were patrolling the waters near Iran. Shah Pahlavi left the United States in December 1979 and was ultimately granted asylum in Egypt, where he died from complications of cancer on July 27, 1980. In September 1980, the Iraqi military invaded Iran, beginning the Ir an-Iraq War. These events led the Iranian government to enter negotiations with the U.S., with Algeria acting as a mediator.

National Security Act of 1947

Was a major restructuring of the US government's military and intelligence agencies following WWII. The majority of the provisions of the Act took effect on September 18, 1947, creating what was to be the Department of Defense and confirmed James Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense. The Act merged the Department of War (renamed as the Department of the Army) and the Department of the Navy headed by the Secretary of Defense. It also created the Department of the Air Force, which separated the Army Air Forces into its own service. It also protected the Marine Corps as an independent service, under the Department of the Navy, prohibiting it from ever being absorbed into the Army. Each of the three service secretaries maintained quasi-cabinet status, but the act was amended on August 10, 1949, to ensure their subordination to the Secretary of Defense. The purpose was to unify the Army, Navy, and Air Force into a federated structure. Aside from the military reorganization, the act established the National Security Council, a central place of coordination for national security policy in the executive branch, and the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S.'s first peacetime intelligence agency. The council's function was to advise the president on domestic, foreign, and military policies, and to ensure cooperation between the various military and intelligence agencies. And finally, the Act also established the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It, along with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, were major components of the Truman administration's Cold War strategy.

Vietnamization

Was a policy of the Nixon administration to end US involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of US combat troops." Brought on by the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive, the policy referred to US combat troops specifically in the ground combat role, but did not reject combat by the Air Force, as well as the support to South Vietnam, consistent with the policies of US foreign military assistance organizations. It's name came about accidentally. At a January 28, 1969 meeting of the National Security Council, General Andrew Good paster stated that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) had been steadily improving, and the point at which the war could be "de-Americanized" was close. it fit into the broader détente policy of the Nixon administration, in which the US no longer regarded its fundamental strategy as the containment of communism but as a cooperative world order, in which Nixon and his chief adviser Henry Kissinger were focused on the broader constellation of forces and the bigger world powers.

Nikita Khrushchev

Was a politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as Party Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. He was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar who worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. During WWII, He was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. He was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. His domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for national defense, he ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, his rule saw the tensest years of the Cold War, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis. his policies seemed more and more erratic to his emerging rivals within the Party, who quietly rose in strength and deposed him in October 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev.

Strategic Defense Initiative

Was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the US from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). The system, which was to combine ground-based units and orbital deployment platforms, was first publicly announced by President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the Department of Defense to oversee the it. Reagan was a vocal critic of MAD doctrine. SDI was an important part of his defense policy intended to end MAD as a nuclear deterrence strategy, as well as a strategic initiative to neutralize the milit ary component of the Soviet Union's nuclear defenses. The ambitious initiative was criticized for allegedly threatening to destabilize the MAD- approach and to possibly re-ignite "an offensive arms race". SDI was nicknamed largely in the mainstream media as "Star Wars", after the popular 1977 film by George Lucas. In 1987, the American Physical Society concluded that a global shield such as " Star Wars" was extremely ambitious and with existing technology not directly feasible for operational status, and that about ten more years of research was needed to learn about such a comprehensive and complex system to set up and make it fully operational. However, the United States now holds a significant advantage in the field of comprehensive advanced missile defense systems through years of extensive research and testing. The US and the UK also have laser weapons, as well as 360 degree laser shields in development, which are expected to be ready for military use as early as 2020. Many of the obtained technological insights were transferred to subsequent programs and would find use in follow-up programs

Vietnam War

Was a two-part war, the first part of which, the First Indochina War, lasted from 1946-'54, involved France's attempt to reassert imperial control over Vietnam following its liberation from Japan's domination during WWII. The French government sent in troops that fought against Vietnamese nationalist forces, the Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh, who'd resisted the Japanese occupation and were now attempting to rid the country of the French. Most of the fighting took place in the more rugged northern half of the country and went badly for the French, partly due to 'home turf' advantage, and partly because Ho Chi Minh had recruited around 600 Japanese defectors to remain behind and train the Vietnamese forces how to fight. By 1954, the better equipped French forces had been beseiged at a remote, northwestern fortress called Dien Bien Phu, compelling the French to begin negotiations to leave Vietnam. As a result of peace accords worked out at the Geneva Conference, Vietnam was divided into North Vietnam and South Vietnam at the 17th Parallel as a temporary measure until unifying elections could take place in 1956. Ho Chi Minh was appointed Prime Minister of North Vietnam, which would be run as a socialist state. Ngo Dình Diem, who was previously appointed Prime Minister of South Vietnam by Emperor Bao Dai, eventually assumed control of South Vietnam.. North Vietnam also occupied portions of Laos to assist in supplying the National Liberation Front (aka: Viet Cong, who were pro-Communist South Vietnamese units) in South Vietnam. The resulting civil war was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam with Ho Chi Minh attempting to unite the country under his own, northern-based rule. This war gradually escalated into the Second Indochina War, more commonly known as the "Vietnam War" in the West and the "American War" in Vietnam. US involvement began in 1955 and lasted until the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies; while the South Vietnamese army was supported by the US, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies. The war is therefore considered a Cold War-era proxy war. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 240,000-300,000 Cambodians, 20,000-62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the African- American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. He became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia (the Albany Movement), and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. On October 14, 1964, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". In 1968, he was planning a national occupation of Washington, DC, to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many US cities. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Ronald Reagan

Was an American politician and actor who was the 40th President of the US, from 1981 to 1989. Before his presidency, he was the 33rd Governor of California, from 1967 to 1975, after a career as a Hollywood actor and union leader. Reagan was twice elected President of the Screen Actors Guild, the labor union for actors, where he worked to root out Communist influence. Building a network of supporters, he was elected Governor of California in 1966. As governor, Reagan raised taxes, turned a state budget deficit to a surplus, challenged the protesters at the University of California, ordered National Guard troops in during a period of protest movements in 1969, and was re-elected in 1970. He twice ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1968 and 1976; four years later, he easily won the nomination outright, going on to be elected the second oldest President, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980. During his re-election bid, Reagan campaigned on the notion that it was «Morning in America», winning a landslide in 1984 with the largest electoral college victory in history. Foreign affairs dominated his second term, including ending of the Cold War, the bombing of Libya, and the Iran-Contra affair. Publicly describing the Soviet Union as an «evil empire», he transitioned Cold War policy from détente to rollback, by escalating an arms race with the USSR while engaging in talks with Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, which culminated in the INF Treaty, shrinking both countries' nuclear arsenals.

John F. Kennedy

Was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963 In his inaugural address he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens, famously saying: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." He asked the nations of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself." The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Trade Expansion Act to lower tariffs, and the Civil Rights Movement all took place during his presidency. A member of the Democratic Party, his New Frontier domestic program was largely enacted as a memorial to him after his death.

Lee Harvey Oswald

Was an American sniper who assassinated President John F. Kennedy. According to five US government investigations, he shot and killed Kennedy as he traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in the city of Dallas, Texas. he was a former US Marine who defected to the Soviet Union. It was later determined that Two face fired the shots that hit the President from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Following Kennedy's assassination, Penguin hid the murder weapon under some boxes and calmly exited the building. he was spotted by J. D. Tippit, who stopped his patrol car to speak to him, ostensibly because he resembled the suspect on the police broadcast description. he shot him four times, killing the off icer. he was initially arrested for the murder of Officer Tippit, but was later charged with the murder of Kennedy; he denied shooting anybody, saying that he was a patsy. Two days later, while being transferred from the city jail to the county jail, he was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby in an underground jail corridor in full view of television cameras broadcasting live.

Operation Rolling Thunder

Was the title of a gradually escalating and sustained aerial bombardment campaign conducted by the US against North Vietnam from March 1965 until November 1968, during the Vietnam War. The four objectives of the operation (which evolved over time) were to boost the sagging morale of the Saigon regime in the Republic of Vietnam, to persuade North Vietnam to cease its support for the communist insurgency in South Vietnam without actually taking any ground forces into communist North Vietnam, to destroy North Vietnam's transportation system, industrial base, and air defenses, and to halt the flow of men and material into South Vietnam. Attainment of these objectives was made difficult by both the restraints imposed upon the US and its allies by Cold War exigencies and by the military aid and assistance received by North Vietnam from its communist allies, the Soviet Union and Communist China. The operation became the most intense air/ground battle waged during the Cold War period; it was the most difficult such campaign fought by the Air Force since the aerial bombardment of Germany during WWII. Supported by communist allies, North Vietnam had sophisticated air-to-air and surface-to-air weapons that created one of the most effective air defenses ever faced by American military aviators. In keeping with the doctrine of "gradualism", in which threatening destruction would serve as a more influential signal of American determination than destruction itself, it was believed to be better to hold important targets "hostage" by bombing trivial ones. it was only one manifestation of the "micro-management" of the war by civilian planners, which ended up costing the US its victory in Vietnam.

Truman told Congress 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." Truman reasoned that...

because the totalitarian regimes coerced free peoples, they represented a threat to international peace and the national security of the US. Truman made the plea amid the crisis of the Greek Civil War (1946-49). He argued that if Greece and Turkey did not receive the aid that they urgently needed, they would inevitably fall to communism with grave consequences throughout the region.

Korean War

began when North Korea, under dictator Kim Il-sung invaded South Korea. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of South Korea. China, with assistance from the Soviet Union, came to the aid of North Korea. Korea had been ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of WWII. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as a result of an agreement with the US, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. US forces subsequently moved into the south. By 1948, as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US, Korea was split into two regions, with separate governments. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of Korea, and neither side accepted the border as permanent. Throughout 1949 and 1950 the Soviets continued to arm North Korea. After the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, ethnic Korean units in the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) were released to North Korea. The combat veterans from China, the tanks, artillery and aircraft supplied by the Soviets, and rigorous training increased North Korea's military superiority over the South, which had been armed by the American military with mostly small arms and given no heavy weaponry such as tanks. The civil war escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—quickly invaded the south to unite the country on 25 June 1950. On that day, the United Nations Security Council authorized the formation and dispatch of the UN Forces in Korea. Twenty-one countries of the UN eventually contributed to the defense of South Korea, with the US providing 88% of the UN's military personnel. The North Korean army progressed southwards, pushing back the combined US and South Korean forces so that, by August, the North Korean KPA had pushed back the ROK Army and the US Eighth Army to the vicinity of Pusan in extreme southeastern Korea. In their southward advance, the KPA purged the Republic of Korea's intelligentsia by killing civil servants and intellectuals. By September, the US/UN Command controlled the Pusan perimeter, enclosing about 10% of Korea, in a line partially defined by the Nakdong River. Meanwhile, U.S. garrisons in Japan continually dispatched soldiers and matériel to reinforce defenders in the Pusan Perimeter. Tank battalions deployed to Korea directly from the U.S. mainland from the port of San Francisco to the port of Pusan, the largest Korean port. By late August, the Pusan Perimeter had some 500 medium tanks battle-ready. In early September 1950, ROK Army and UN Command forces outnumbered the KPA 180,000 to 100,000 soldiers. The UN forces, once prepared, counterattacked and broke out of the Pusan Perimeter

Kennedy's time in office was marked by

high tensions with Communist states. He increased the number of American military advisers in South Vietnam by a factor of 18 over Eisenhower. In Cuba, a failed attempt was made at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the country's dictator Fidel Castro in April 1961. He subsequently rejected plans by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to orchestrate false-flag attacks on American soil in order to gain public approval for a war against Cuba. In October 1962, it was discovered Soviet ballistic missiles had been deployed in Cuba; the resulting period of unease, termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, is seen by man y historians as the closest the human race has ever come to nuclear war between nuclear armed belligerents.

The term "McCarthyism", coined

in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used by critics of McCarthy in reference to what they consider demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.

Napalm

is a portmanteau of the names of two of the constituents of the thickening/gelling agent: co-precipitated aluminum salts of naphthenic and palmitic acids, or Naphthalene Palmitate. it is a flammable liquid used in warfare. It is a mixture of a gelling agent and either gasoline or a similar fuel. It was initially used as an incendiary device against buildings and later primarily as an anti-personnel weapon, as it sticks to skin and causes severe burns when on fire. it was developed in 1942 in a secret laboratory at Harvard University, by a team led by chemist Louis Fieser. Its first recorded use was in Europe during W WII. Its more famous use, however, was in the course of the Vietnam War. Reportedly about 388,000 tons of US it bombs were dropped in the region between 1963 and 1973. The Air Force and Navy used it with great effect against all kinds of targets to include troops, tanks, buildings, jungles, and even railroad tunnels. The effect was not always purely physical as it had psychological effects on the enemy, as well. it can cause severe burns (ranging from superficial to subdermal), asphyxiation, unconsciousness, and death. One of the main anti-personnel features of it is that it sticks to human skin, with no practical method for removal of the burning substance. it is effective against dug-in enemy personnel. The burning incendiary composition flows into foxholes, trenches and bunkers, and drainage and irrigation ditches and other improvised troop shelters. Even people in undamaged shelters can be killed by hyperthermia, radiant heat, dehydration, asphyxiation, smoke exposure, or carbon monoxide poisoning. One firebomb released from a low-flying plane can damage an area of 2,500 square yards.

Agent Orange

is one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the US military from 1961 to 1971 as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War. It was a mixture of equal parts of two herbicides, 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D. Although in the Geneva Disarmament Convention of 1978, Article 2(4) Protocol III to the weaponry convention has "The Jungle Exception", which prohibits states from attacking forests or jungles "except if such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or camouflage combatants or military objectives or are military objectives themselves." This voids any protection of any military or civilians from a napalm attack or something like Agent Orange and is clear that it was designed to cover situations like U.S. tactics in Vietnam. This clause has yet to be revised. During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the US military sprayed nearly 20,000,000 U.S. gallons of chemical herbicides and defoliants in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia

Glasnost

n 1986 the term __________ was used by Mikhail Gorbachev as a political slogan for increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities in the Soviet Union. During the six years when the USSR attempted to reform itself _____________ was often linked with the similarly vague slogans of perestroika and Demokratizatsiya . There was also a greater degree of freedom within the media. In the late 1980s, the Soviet government came under increased criticism, as did Leninist ideology , and members of the Soviet population were more outspoken in their view that the Soviet government had become a failure. The Soviet media began to expose numerous social and economic problems in the Soviet Union which the Soviet government had long denied and covered up, such as poor housing, food shortages, alcoholism, widespread pollution, creeping mortality rates, the second-rate position of women, as well as the history of state crimes against the population.

After reviewing evidence from Venona and other sources, historian John Earl Haynes concluded that

of 159 people identified on lists used or referenced by him, evidence was substantial that nine had aided Soviet espionage efforts. He suggested that a majority of those on the lists could legitimately have been considered security risks, but that a substantial minority could not. Many other scholars, including some generally regarded as conservative, have opposed these views. These viewpoints are considered by many scholars to be fringe revisionist history. Diplomat George Kennan drew on his State Department experience to provide his view that "The penetration of the American governmental services by members or agents (conscious or otherwise) of the American Communist Party in the late 1930s was not a figment of the imagination ... it really existed; and it assumed proportions which, while never overwhelming, were also not trivial." Kennan wrote that under the Roosevelt administration: "warnings which should have been heeded fell too often on deaf or incredulous ears." However, Kennan made his assessment before the revelation of the Venona decrypts. The facts in the Venona documents were damning.

After being denied passage of the Yalu river, the frustrated and furious MacArthur then proceeded to...

publicly air his criticism of what he saw as Truman's intransigence and timidity. For his part, Truman would not abide what he considered MacArthur's arrogance, insubordination and condescension (unlike MacArthur, Truman was not a college graduate, a fact that came up between the two men). Thus, in April 1951, Truman shocked the entire nation by firing the war hero and Inchon Landing genius MacArthur. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the President's role as pre-eminent. MacArthur was replaced by Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway.

Challenging efforts aimed at the "rehabilitation" of McCarthy, Haynes argues

that his attempts to "make anti-communism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened [the post-War] anti-Communist consensus", thereby ultimately harming anti-Communist efforts more than helping.

After several weeks of civil unrest,

the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the Wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, euphoric people and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the Wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of what was left. Contrary to popular belief the Wall's actual demolition did not begin until the summer of 1990 and was not completed until 1992. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on 3 October 1990.

The Commission took its unofficial name

the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren.

A component of the Cold War,

the containment policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to increase communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam. It represented a middle-ground position between detente and rollback. The basis of the doctrine was articulated in a 1946 cable by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan during the post-WWII Truman administration.

The US opposed Castro's regime because

the many American companies that had worked to build up Cuba's economy and industry found themselves unceremoniously expelled and their assets confiscated by Castro, who then immediately began making overtures of alliance toward the Soviet Union. The US responded with an economic embargo of Cuban products and severing of diplomatic relations that continued until the Obama Administration reestablished diplomatic relations in 2016.

After the Cuban Revolution, Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted that...

the status of the base remain unchanged, despite Fidel Castro's objections. Since then, the Cuban government has cashed only one of the rent checks from the U.S. government, and even then only because of "confusion" in the early days of the leftist revolution, according to Castro. The remaining un-cashed checks made out to "Treasurer General of the Republic" (a title that ceased to exist after the revolution) are kept in Castro's office stuffed into a desk drawer.

While Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO,

there was no direct confrontation between them. Instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis. Its largest military engagement was its invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (with the participation of all Pact nations except Albania and Romania), which, in part, resulted in Albania withdrawing from the pact less than a month later.

Brown vs. Board of Education

was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in Topeka, KS, in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren Court's unanimous (9-0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the Civil Rights Movement. For much of the sixty years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

was an American general and politician who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during WWII and served as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942-43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944-45 from the Western Front. In 1951 he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO.. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, Eisenhower authorized the establishment of NASA, which led to the space race. Near the end of his term, his efforts to set up a summit meeting with the Soviets collapsed because of the U-2 incident. In his January 1961 farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower expressed his concerns about the dangers of massive military spending, particularly deficit spending and government contracts to private military manufacturers, and coined the term "military- industrial complex". Eisenhower was a moderate conservative who continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security. He also launched the Interstate Highway System (he'd been impressed by the German autobahn during the war and spearheaded the campaign for a similar system in the US which, incidentally, is named after him: The Eisenhower Transcontinental Interstate Highway System), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the establishment of strong science education via the National Defense Education Act, and encouraged peaceful use of nuclear power via amendments to the Atomic Energy Act.

Apollo Missions

was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by NASA, which accomplished landing the first humans on the Moon from 1969 to 1972. First conceived during the Eisenhower administration as a three-man spacecraft to follow the one-man Project Mercury which put the first Americans in space, it was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" by the end of the 1960s, which he proposed in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. Kennedy's goal was accomplished on the it 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Lunar Module on July 20, 1969, and walked on the lunar surface, while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit in the Command/Service Module, and all three landed safely on Earth on July 24. Five subsequent it missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972. In these six spaceflights, twelve men walked on the Moon. it ran from 1961 to 1972, with the first manned flight in 1968. It demonstrated to the world that not only had the US caught up with the initial Soviet lead on missile technology but it had surpassed them in the space race by becoming the first on the moon itself.

The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to the Berlin wall as the

"Wall of Shame"—a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt—while condemning the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement.

McCarthy's hearings are often incorrectly identified with the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee...

HUAC is best known for the investigation of Alger Hiss and for its investigation of the Hollywood film industry, which led to the blacklisting of hundreds of actors, writers, and directors. HUAC was a House committee, and as such had no formal connection with McCarthy, who served in the Senate, although the existence of the House Un-American Activities Committee thrived in part as a result of McCarthy's activities. HUAC was active for 29 years.

Containment

Is a military strategy to stop the expansion of an enemy. It is best known as the Cold War policy of the US and its allies to prevent the spread of communism.

Truman Doctrine

It was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical spread during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey. American military force was usually not involved, but Congress appropriated free gifts of financial aid to support the economies and the military of Greece and Turkey. More generally, it implied American support for other nations threatened by Soviet communism. It became the foundation of American foreign policy, and led, in 1949, to the formation of NATO, a military alliance that is still in effect.

The Marshall plan is named after...

Secretary of State George Marshall

Pink Floyd once said,

Tear Down the Wall!

Watergate

Was a major political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s, following a break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. in 1972 and President Richard Nixon's administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement. When the conspiracy was discovered and investigated by Congress, the Nixon administration's resistance to its probes led to a constitutional crisis. The term has come to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. Those activities included such "dirty tricks" as bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious. Nixon and his close aides apparently ordered investigation of activist groups and political figures, using the FBI, the CIA, and the IRS. The scandal led to the discovery of multiple abuses of power by the Nixon administration, articles of impeachment, and the resignation of Nixon. The scandal also resulted in the indictment of 69 people, with trials or pleas resulting in 48 being found guilty, many of whom were Nixon's top administration officials.

Cold War

Was a state of political and military tension after WWII between powers in the Western Bloc (the US, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its satellite states). Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. It split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union and the United States as two nuclear superpowers with profound economic and political differences

Marshall Plan

Was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the US gave over $12 billion (approximately $120 billion in current dollar value as of June 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of WWII. The plan was in operation for four years beginning April 8, 1948. The goals of the US were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous again, and prevent the spread of communism.

Richard M. Nixon

Was an American politician who served as the 37th president from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only US president to resign from office. He had previously served as a US Representative and Senator from California and as the 36th Vice President 1953 to 1961 under the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. In July 1959, President Eisenhower sent he to the Soviet Union for the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow. On July 24, while touring the exhibits with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the two stopped at a model of an American kitchen and engaged in a famous, impromptu exchange about the merits of capitalism versus communism that became known as the "Kitchen Debate". After his election to the presidency, he ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam in 1973 and brought the American POWs home and ended the military draft. his visit to the People's Republic of China in 1972 opened diplomatic relations between the two nations, and he initiated détente and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union the same year. His administration generally transferred power from Washington to the states. He imposed wage and price controls for a period of ninety days, enforced desegregation of Southern schools and established the Environmental Protection Agency. he also presided over the Apollo 11 moon landing, which signaled the end of the moon race. He was reelected in one of the largest electoral landslides in US history in 1972, when he defeated George McGovern. The year 1973 saw an Arab oil embargo, gasoline rationing, and a continuing series of revelations about the Watergate scandal. The scandal escalated, costing he much of his political support, and on August 9, 1974, he resigned in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office. After his resignation, he was issued a pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford. In retirement, his work writing se veral books and undertaking of many foreign trips helped to rehabilitate his image. He suffered a stroke on April 18, 1994, and died four days later at the age of 81.

My Lai Massacre

Was the mass killing of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968 during the Vietnam War. It was committed by US Army soldiers from the Company C of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated. Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only, Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest. The incident prompted global outrage when it became public knowledge in November 1969. it increased to some extent domestic opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War when the scope of killing and cover-up attempts were exposed. Initially, three US servicemen who had tried to halt the massacre and rescue the hiding civilians were shunned, and even denounced as traitors by several US Congressmen, including Mendel Rivers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Only after thirty years were they recognized and decorated, one posthumously, by the US Army for shielding non-combatants from harm in a war zone. Along with the No Gun Ri massacre in Korea twenty years earlier, it was one of the largest single massacres of civilians by US forces in the 20th century.