History Final

Atlantic Charter

The Atlantic Charter was a joint declaration issued during World War II (1939-45) by the United States and Great Britain that set out a vision for the postwar world. First announced on August 14, 1941, a group of 26 Allied nations eventually pledged their support by January 1942. Among its major points were a nation's right to choose its own government, the easing of trade restrictions and a plea for postwar disarmament. The document is considered one of the first key steps toward the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.

Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic was the struggle between the Allied and German forces for control of the Atlantic Ocean. The Allies needed to keep the vital flow of men and supplies going between North America and Europe, where they could be used in the fighting, while the Germans wanted to cut these supply lines. To do this, German submarines, called U-boats, and other warships prowled the Atlantic Ocean sinking Allied transport ships. The battle began on the opening day of the war in September 1939 and ended almost six years later with Germany's surrender in May 1945.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. The crisis was unique in a number of ways, featuring calculations and miscalculations as well as direct and secret communications and miscommunications between the two sides. The dramatic crisis was also characterized by the fact that it was primarily played out at the White House and the Kremlin level with relatively little input from the respective bureaucracies typically involved in the foreign policy process.

Free Speech Movement

The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a college campus phenomenon inspired first by the struggle for civil rights and later fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War. The Free Speech Movement began in 1964, when students at the University of California, Berkeley protested a ban on on-campus political activities. The protest was led by several students, who also demanded their right to free speech and academic freedom. The FSM sparked an unprecedented wave of student activism and involvement.

Lend-Lease

The Lend-Lease Act stated that the U.S. government could lend or lease (rather than sell) war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." Under this policy, the United States was able to supply military aid to its foreign allies during World War II while still remaining officially neutral in the conflict. Most importantly, passage of the Lend-Lease Act enabled a struggling Great Britain to continue fighting against Germany virtually on its own until the United States entered World War II late in 1941.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., emerged as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement.

Red Scare

The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, which intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s. (Communists were often referred to as "Reds" for their allegiance to the red Soviet flag.) The Red Scare led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.S. government and society. Federal employees were analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government, and the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as U.S. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, investigated allegations of subversive elements in the government and the Hollywood film industry. The climate of fear and repression linked to the Red Scare finally began to ease by the late 1950s.

Tet Offensive

The Tet Offensive was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and outposts in South Vietnam. The offensive was an attempt to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States to scale back its involvement in the Vietnam War. Though U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy casualties, North Vietnam achieved a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as the attacks marked a turning point in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the slow, painful American withdrawal from the region.

New Frontier

The campaign program advocated by JFK in the 1960 election. He promised to revitalize the stagnant economy and enact reform legislation in education, health care, and civil rights. Kennedy's plan, supports civil rights, pushes for a space program, wans to cut taxes, and increase spending for defense and military

Bikini Atoll

The isolated reef, located in the Marshall Islands of the central Pacific, that was the site of U.S. nuclear bomb tests, consequently contaminating the atoll with high levels of radiation and driving its inhabitants away.

U.S.S. Reuben James (sunk 1941)

USS Reuben James (DD-245)—a post-World War I, four-funnel Clemson-class destroyer—was the first United States Navy ship sunk by hostile action in the European theater of World War II and the first named for Boatswain's Mate Reuben James, who distinguished himself fighting in the First Barbary War.

Rachel Carson

United States biologist remembered for her opposition to the use of pesticides that were hazardous to wildlife (1907-1964)

B-29

a high range bomber plane introduced by the U.S. in 1944 against Japan; higher range bomber than had ever been flown before, which allowed it to fly above the range of enemy fighters and anti-craft weapons B-29, also called Superfortress, U.S. heavy bomber used in World War II. Its missions included firebombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities and dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively.

Environmental Protection Agency

an independent federal agency established to coordinate programs aimed at reducing pollution and protecting the environment

Sit-ins

protests by black college students, 1960-1961, who took seats at "whites only" lunch counters and refused to leave until served; in 1960 over 50,000 participated in sit-ins across the South. Their success prompted the formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

Island Hopping

"Island Hopping" is the phrase given to the strategy employed by the United States to gain military bases and secure the many small islands in the Pacific. The attack was lead by General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of the Allied forces in the South west Pacific, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-chief of the Pacific fleet. The US troops targeted the islands that were not as strongly defended by the Japanese. They took control of those islands, and quickly constructed landing strips and small military bases. Then they proceeded to attack other islands from the bases they had established. Slowly the US army moved closer to Japan, taking control of many of the surrounding islands.

John Muir

(1838-1914) Naturalist who believed the wilderness should be preserved in its natural state. He was largely responsible for the creation of Yosemite National Park in California.

Clean Water Act

(CWA, passed 1972) set maximum permissible amounts of water pollutants that can be discharged into waterways; aims to make surface waters swimmable and fishable

Yalta Conference

1945 Meeting with US president FDR, British Prime Minister(PM) Winston Churchill, and and Soviet Leader Stalin during WWII to plan for post-war The Yalta Conference was a meeting of three World War II allies: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchilland Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. The trio met in February 1945 in the resort city of Yalta, located along the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula. The "Big Three" Allied leaders discussed the post-war fate of defeated Germany and the rest of Europe, the terms of Soviet entry into the ongoing war in the Pacific against Japan and the formation and operation of the new United Nations.

Truman Doctrine

1947, President Truman's policy of providing economic and military aid to any country threatened by communism or totalitarian ideology, mainly helped Greece and Turkey Truman Doctrine, pronouncement by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman declaring immediate economic and military aid to the governments of Greece, threatened by communist insurrection, and Turkey, under pressure from Soviet expansion in the Mediterranean area. As the United States and the Soviet Union struggled to reach a balance of power during the Cold War that followed World War II, Great Britain announced that it could no longer afford to aid those Mediterranean countries, which the West feared were in danger of falling under Soviet influence.

Joseph McCarthy

1950s; Wisconsin senator claimed to have list of communists in American gov't, but no credible evidence; took advantage of fears of communism post WWII to become incredibly influential; "McCarthyism" was the fearful accusation of any dissenters of being communists Joseph McCarthy, in full Joseph Raymond McCarthy, (born November 14, 1908, near Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.—died May 2, 1957, Bethesda, Maryland), U.S. senator who lent his name to the term McCarthyism. McCarthy dominated the U.S. political climate in the early 1950s through his sensational but unproven charges of communist subversion in high government circles. In 1954, in a rare move, his Senate colleagues officially censured him for unbecoming conduct.

The Great Society

1964, LBJ's policies of fighting poverty and racial injustice; President Johnson called his version of the Democratic reform program the Great Society. In 1965, Congress passed many Great Society measures, including Medicare, civil rights legislation, and federal aid to education.

Cuyahoga River Fire

1969 fire caused by the mass pollution in the Cuyahoga River in Ohio. Molten sparks from a passing rail car set fire to oil- and chemical-soaked debris floating on the Cuyahoga. The brief blaze only torched a railroad bridge but branded Cleveland as a dirty city where water burns. Helped launch several water pollution control activities, such as Clean Water Act, EPA, and the OEPA

Battle of the Bulge

A 1944-1945 battle in which Allied forces turned back the last major German offensive of World War II. Battle of the Bulge, also called Battle of the Ardennes, (December 16, 1944-January 16, 1945), the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II—an unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory. The name Battle of the Bulge was appropriated from Winston Churchill's optimistic description in May 1940 of the resistance that he mistakenly supposed was being offered to the Germans' breakthrough in that area just before the Anglo-French collapse; the Germans were in fact overwhelmingly successful. The "bulge" refers to the wedge that the Germans drove into the Allied lines.

"Duck and Cover"

A civil defense social guidance film that is often popularly mischaracterized as propaganda. With similar themes to the more adult oriented civil defense training films, the film was widely distributed to United States schoolchildren in the 1950s.School children practiced crawling under their desks and putting their hands over their heads to protect themselves from an atomic bomb attack.

SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

A civil-rights group formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the civil rights movement. The SNCC soon became one of the movement's more radical branches. group formed by student activists; used the sit-in as an effective method of protest

Equal Rights Amendment

A constitutional amendment originally introduced in Congress in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972, stating that "equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." Despite public support, the amendment failed to acquire the necessary support from three-fourths of the state legislatures.

Earth Day

A holiday conceived of by environmental activist and Senator Gaylord Nelson to encourage support for and increase awareness of environmental concerns; first celebrated on March 22, 1970

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. Winston Churchill, in full Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, (born November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England—died January 24, 1965, London), British statesman, orator, and author who as prime minister (1940-45, 1951-55) rallied the British people during World War II and led his country from the brink of defeat to victory.

Iron Curtain

A political barrier that isolated the peoples of Eastern Europe after WWII, restricting their ability to travel outside the region Iron Curtain, the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas. The term Iron Curtain had been in occasional and varied use as a metaphor since the 19th century, but it came to prominence only after it was used by former British prime minister Winston Churchill in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, U.S., on March 5, 1946, when he said of the communist states, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."

Loyalty-Security Program

A program created in 1947 by President Truman that permitted officials to investigate any employee of the federal government for "subversive" activities. his hyphenated phrase refers chiefly to the measures that were taken under Presidents harry s. truman and dwight d. eisenhower to exclude from public employment, and from defense industries, persons who were believed to pose risks to national security

Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union in 1948, but statutes of limitations had expired for espionage. He was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Hiss was a well-educated and well-connected former government lawyer and State Department official who helped create the United Nations in the aftermath of World War II, was headed to prison in Atlanta for lying to a federal grand jury.

USS Panay

American ship sunk by Japanese in 1937. During the battle for Nanking in the Sino-Japanese War, the U.S. gunboat Panay is attacked and sunk by Japanese warplanes in Chinese waters. The American vessel, neutral in the Chinese-Japanese conflict, was escorting U.S. evacuees and three Standard Oil barges away from Nanking, the war-torn Chinese capital on the Yangtze River. After the Panay was sunk, the Japanese fighters machine-gunned lifeboats and survivors huddling on the shore of the Yangtze. Two U.S. sailors and a civilian passenger were killed and 11 personnel seriously wounded, setting off a major crisis in U.S.-Japanese relations. Although the Panay's position had been reported to the Japanese as required, the neutral vessel was clearly marked, and the day was sunny and clear, the Japanese maintained that the attack was unintentional, and they agreed to pay $2 million in reparations. Two neutral British vessels were also attacked by the Japanese in the final days of the battle for Nanking.

The Manhattan Project

Code name for the U.S. effort during World War II to produce the atomic bomb. Much of the early research was done in New York City by refugee physicists in the United States.

Corn

Corn, (Zea mays), also called Indian corn or maize, cereal plant of the grass family (Poaceae) and its edible grain. The domesticated crop originated in the Americas and is one of the most widely distributed of the world's food crops.

Brown Decision

Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.

Fidel Castro

Cuban socialist leader who overthrew a dictator in 1959 and established a Marxist socialist state in Cuba. Political leader of Cuba(1959-2008) who transformed his country into the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. Castro became a symbol of communist revolution in Latin America. He held the title of premier until 1976 and then began a long tenure as president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers. He handed over provisional power in July 2006 because of health problems and formally relinquished the presidency in February 2008.

Interstate Highway System

Dwight D. Eisenhower backed the interstate highway act of 1956, a $27 billion plan to build forty-two thousand miles of sleek, fast motorways. A system of limited access roadways that connects all major cities in the US. The system was designed to give troops faster routes to get to destinations across the US in the event of an attack on the US. The system's main purpose now is travel by civilians.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American army general and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he became a five-star general in the Army and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. leader of the Allied forces in Europe during WW2--leader of troops in Africa and commander in DDay invasion-elected president-president during integration of Little Rock Central High School

George Marshall/Marshall Plan

George Marshall: General of the Army George Catlett Marshall Jr. was an American soldier and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. The brainchild of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, for whom it was named, it was crafted as a four-year plan to reconstruct cities, industries and infrastructure heavily damaged during the war and to remove trade barriers between European neighbors - as well as foster commerce between those countries and the United States.

Tonkin Gulf Incident/Resolution

Gulf of Tonkin incident, complex naval event in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam, that was presented to the U.S. Congress on August 5, 1964, as two unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the destroyersMaddox and Turner Joy of the U.S. Seventh Fleet and that led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed President Lyndon B. Johnson to greatly escalate U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.

Napalm

Highly flammable chemical dropped from US planes in firebombing attacks during the Vietnam War. Napalm, the aluminum salt or soap of a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acids (organic acids of which the molecular structures contain rings and chains, respectively, of carbon atoms), used to thicken gasoline for use as an incendiary in flamethrowers and fire bombs. The thickened mixture, now also called napalm, burns more slowly and can be propelled more accurately and to greater distances than gasoline. It was developed by U.S. scientists during World War II.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

In April 1961, a group of Cuban exiles organized and supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency landed on the southern coast of Cuba in an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro. When the invasion ended in disaster, President Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure.

Agro-business

In agriculture, agribusiness is the business of agricultural production. It includes agrichemicals, breeding, crop production, distribution, farm machinery, processing, and seed supply, as well as marketing and retail sales.

Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was an American theoretical physicist. During the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer was director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and responsible for the research and design of an atomic bomb. He is often known as the "father of the atomic bomb."

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. The leaders arrived at various agreements on the German economy, punishment for war criminals, land boundaries and reparations.

D-Day (Operation Overlord)

June 6th 1944, Allied forces under Dwight d. Eisenhower landed on the beaches of Normandy in history's greatest naval invasion --> surrounded Germany to force surrender During World War II (1939-1945), the Battle of Normandy, which lasted from June 1944 to August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany's control. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, when some 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France's Normandy region. The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history and required extensive planning. Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.

Mrs. Miniver

Mrs. Miniver is a 1942 American romantic war drama film directed by William Wyler, and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. Inspired by the 1940 novel Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther, the film shows how the life of an unassuming British housewife in rural England is touched by World War II.

"Military-Industrial Complex" Speech

On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces. This was Eisenhower's farewell address, in which he warned the nation about the increasing power of the military industry complex.

Containment Policy

Policy introduced by Harry S. Truman after WWII that said the duty of the U.S. was to stop the spread of Totalitarianism (implying Communism); Defined the foreign policy for the period after WWII until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 Containment, strategic foreign policy pursued by the United States beginning in the late 1940s in order to check the expansionist policy of the Soviet Union. The term was suggested by the principal framer of the policy, the U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan, who wrote in an anonymous article in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs that the United States should pursue a "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies" in the hope that the regime would mellow or collapse. The policy was implemented in the Truman Doctrine of 1947, which guaranteed immediate economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey, and in the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957, which promised military and economic aid to Middle Eastern countries resisting communist aggression.