AP Euro Ch. 28-30

Ostpolitik

"eastern policy"; Brandt's policy of reconciliation and a peace settlement with Eastern Europe; NOT total reunification

blitzkrieg

"lightning war"; first used by Hitler in WWII to crush Scandinavia, Poland, and other countries using planes, tanks, and trucks

Lebensraum

"living space" that Hitler believed Germans, the "master race," needed to flourish. This land was occupied by "subhumans" and Hitler envisioned a sweeping conquest to rid Eastern Europe of Slavs and Jews

euthanasia

"mercy killing"; Nazi killing campaign begun in 1938

Kristallnacht

"night of broken glass"; a 1938 assault on Jews in which the Nazis smashed windows and looted Jewish shops, destroying homes and synagogues. Afterwards, Jews were rounded up and forced to pay for the damages. As a result, over half of German Jews left their homes to emigrate.

pied noirs

"people with black feet"; Europeans that had taken up permanent residence in Algeria and maintained complete control of politics and economy

Battle of Britain

1940 battle when up to 1,000 German planes each day attacked British airfields and factories, fighting British aviators in the sky; losses were high on both sides. Germany began civilian bombing, and Britain increased plane production and won 3 to 1 in air war

Teheran Conference

1943: Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill discussed their plans to crush Germany and win the war. Their agreement implicated that U.S./Great Britain would liberate France but that Stalin would work on Eastern Europe

Nuremberg Trials

1945-46 trials held by the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the U.S., and France in which the highest-ranking Nazi military and civilian leaders were tried. Twelve of the twenty-two were sentenced to death. This was the last time that this group of Allies worked together for a while

Yalta Conference

1945: Big Three meeting in which Soviet forces were doing well but U.S./Great Britain wasn't. They agreed that each of them would occupy a zone of Germany and the Germans would pay heavy reparations; the Soviet Union also agreed to declare war on Japan after Germany's defeat. Poland was to be absorbed into the Soviet Union and Eastern governments were to be freely-elected by pro-Russian (this agreement almost immediately dissolved)

Divided Heaven

1963 novel by Eastern writer Christa Wolf in which the protagonist remains committed to socialism despite her boyfriend leaving to work in West Germany and the problems she sees in a socialist factory; it didn't outright reject communism so was allowed

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

1979 invasion meant to save the increasingly unpopular Marxism

Falklands War

1982 war in which Margaret Thatcher successfully rallied Britain's support around a British victory over Argentina

Truman Doctrine

America's policy geared to containing communism to those countries already under Soviet control. Truman aided both Greece and Turkey, who were undergoing communist revolution, by sending military help

Betty Friedan

American feminist who wrote The Feminine Mystique and thought that housewives lived in a "gilded cage" that prevented them from becoming genuine human beings. She also helped found the National Organization for Women (NOW), which flourished

Marshall Plan

American plan created by secretary of state George C. Marshall for providing economic aid to Western Europe to help it rebuild. It was enormously successful for both the U.S. and Western Europe. It was offered to the East Bloc, but Stalin refused aid.

Battle of El Alamein

British forces defeated the combined German and Italian armies and halted the Axis taking-over of North Africa in 1942; "hinge of fate" (Churchill)

Arthur Neville Chamberlain

British prime minister who agreed that Germany should receive Sudetenland through appeasement, believing it secured peace for the Western powers ("peace in our time")

Miners' Strike of 1984-85

British strike that Margaret Thatcher broke up, weakening trade union power and promoting the turn to free-market economics

Mohandas Gandhi

British-educated Indian lawyer who built a mass movement preaching non-violent "non-cooperation." He accomplished a new, liberal constitution that led to independence from Great Britain

Berlin Wall

Built by East Germans under Krushchev in 1961 between East and West sides, violating existing agreements with the Great Powers. Kennedy allowed the wall to be constructed, believing it would lessen Cold War tensions

Helmut Kohl

Christian Democrat West German councillor under whom unemployment in heavy industry increased but the economy grew exceptionally. He and the Christian Democrats presided over the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. He created a ten-point plan for the unification of Germany and after the fall of the wall promised East Germans a one-for-one exchange of their currency into West German marks.

Iron curtain

Churchill's way of describing the divide between eastern and western Europe

Cominform

Communist Information Bureau; established as an international organization by the Soviets and dedicated to maintaining Russian control over communist governments all over Europe; later lost control

Korean War

Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, and the U.S. sent military help and a fragile peace was negotiated. In the end, Korea remained divided

Janos Kadar

Communist leader in Hungary who had allowed for liberalization of the rigid economy in exchange for citizen obedience He was later replaced by a reform communist

COMECON

Council for Mutual Economic Assistance; an economic organization of communist states meant to help rebuild eastern Europe under Soviet auspices

Velvet Revolution

Czech protesters forced Communist leaders into a power-sharing agreement which led to the resignation of the communist government; led by Vaclav Havel

Alexander Dubcek

Czechoslovak leader who advocated "socialism with a human face," relaxing censorship and rigid planning, believing socialism could be reconciled with personal freedom and internal party democracy. However, the East Bloc leadership occupied Czechoslovakia and arrested the leaders, ending the humanitarian communist movement

tiger economies

East Asian countries who exported high-tech consumer goods to the West, shifting manufacturing jobs away from the highly industrialized countries of northern Europe; Japan, South Korea, and Singapore

German Democratic Republic

East Germany

ENIAC

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer; built for U.S. army in 1945

Francois Mitterrand

French president elected in 1981 who, with his Socialist Party, pulled France to the left. His attempt failed and his party had to reprivatize industry that they had previously nationalized

Rudi Dutschke

German student leader who described his social fight as "the long march through the institutions," working from inside the political system to establish change

Militarizing the Rhineland

Hitler marched his troops there, violating the treaties of Versailles and Locarno, and when neither Britain or France did a thing, Hitler allied with Italy in the Rome-Berlin Axis of 1936, which fascist Japan also joined. This alliance intervened in the Spanish Civil War and helped overthrown republicanism there and establish fascism

SS

Hitler's elite personal guard that arrested and shot without trial a thousand SA leaders and other enemies, consequently growing rapidly

New Order

Hitler's program based on racial imperialism which gave preferential treatment to the Nordic peoples; the French, an "inferior" Latin people, occupied the middle position, and the Slavs and Jews were treated harshly as "subhumans"; based on National Socialism

Indian partition

India was divided into separate Muslim and Hindu states because of conflict. The British allowed this, and independence became official in 1917

Primo Levi

Italian Jew who observed that all the survivors at Auschwitz had entered the "gray zone" of moral compromise. They had to viciously or desperately commit immoral acts to stay alive

Peal Harbor

Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii in which they sank or crippled every battleship. This brought America into the war.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Japanese cities that America dropped atomic bombs on; soon after, Japan surrendered

Guomindang

Jieshi's conservative party supported by the U.S. that was forced to retreat to the island of Taiwan by the triumphing Communist party

Mau Mau Rebellion

Kenyan rebellion in which Britain brutally crushed the rebels but had to grant Kenya independence in 1963

Krushchev's secret speech

Krushchev's attack on Stalin and his crimes to Communist delegates at the 1956 Twentieth Party Congress. He claimed that Stalin had glorified himself to build a propagandistic "cult of personality." They delegates agreed, and the Soviet Union proceeded with de-Stalinization

Lech Walsea

Lenin Shipyards electrician, devout Catholic, and leader of Solidarity. In 1981, he settled for mild government concessions and plans for a strike were dropped. He was viewed as too moderate by some.

Black Shirts

Mussolini's private militia that destroyed socialist newspapers, union halls, and Socialist Party Headquarters, eventually pushing Socialists out of the city governments of Northern Italy; opposed the "reds"

Special Action Units

Nazi death squads that moved town to town shooting Jews and often making them dig their own graves and shooting them so they fell in; this "einsatzgruppen" murdered some 2 million civilians

East Bloc

Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, and East Germany, all of which were Soviet-controlled

General Wojciech Jaruzelski

Polish Communist leader who proclaimed martial law (he put himself as head of government) and arrested Solidarity's leaders in 1981, but Solidarity remained strong throughout the decade

IRA

Provisional Irish Republican Army; paramilitary group that attacked British officers in Northern Ireland its members saw as occupying the district

samizdat

Russian term meaning "self-published" that referred to written works that criticized communism and were therefore written secretly to avoid censorship and passed around through a network of readers, helping build the foundations for protest movements in the 1970s and 1980s

Cosmonaut

Soviet astronaut

glasnost

Soviet premier Gorbachev's popular campaign for openness in the government and media, his campaign to "tell it like it is". Banned books were published and anti-Stalin plays and such were allowed.

Warsaw Pact

Soviet-backed alliance of Eastern European nations

AK-47

Soviet-produced machine gun that became a symbolic tool of the Marxist revolution

ETA

Spanish group that used bombings and assassinations to try to force the government to grant them territorial independence; in the Basque region they killed more than 400 people

Sergei Kirov

Stalin's number two who was mysteriously murdered in 1934. Stalin probably ordered it, but he blamed it on "fascist agents" in the Communist Party, using this to launch a regime of terror and purge the supposed traitors and solidify his control

Nicolae Ceasescu

Stalinist Romanian communist dictator who, when faced with protesters, sent his ruthless forces to kill thousands. However, he was defeated and executed by a military court

Gosplan

State Planning Commission that oversaw the industrial part of the five-year plan by setting production goals and controlling delivery of materials, Heavy industry was favored over the production of consumer goods and necessary staples. Still, Soviet industry was extremely successful. Steel was huge!

Suez Crisis

The British, French, and Israelis retaliated after Nasser's nationalizing of the Suez Canal, planning a military invasion. The Israelis invaded the Sinai peninsula and European bombers attacked Egyptian airfields. The Americans and Soviets tried to get Britain and France to back down and Egypt triumphed, keeping the canal. ~ Last gasp of European imperialism

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization; an anti-Soviet military alliance of Western governments

Milton Friedman

U.S. neoliberalist leader who believed that governments should cut support of social services, limit business subsidies, and retreat from any kind of regulation

UNRRA

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration; opened over 160 DP camps and spent 10 billion to provide for them from 1945-1957

Colossus computer

Used by Britain in WWII to break German military codes

Green Party

West German political party founded in 1983; they were elected into parliament, and later members were elected into parliaments in Belgium, Italy, and Sweden

Federal Republic of Germany

West Germany

Berlin airlift

Western allies sent constant planes over Berlin, supplying west Berliners with provisions and keeping the Soviets from swallowing up the city; the Soviets backed down after 324 days

Lateran Agreement

a 1929 agreement that recognized the Vatican as an independent state, with Mussolini agreeing to give the church heavy financial support in return for public support from the pope

Manchuria

a large territory bordering China that fascist Japan invaded and occupied in 1931

National Socialism

a movement born of extreme nationalism and racism led by Adolf Hitler that ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced Europe into WWII

five-year plan

a plan launched by Stalin in 1928 termed the "revolution from above" aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union and creating a new communist society with new attitudes, loyalties, and socialist humanity. Stalin used constant propaganda, harsh repression, and rewards for the obedient

eugenics

a pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a national population which helped inspire Nazi ideas about "race and space" and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust

totalitarianism

a radical dictatorship that exercises "total claims" over the beliefs and behavior of its citizens by taking control of the economic, social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of society

The Great Purge

a series of spectacular public trials in which false evidence was used to incriminate administrators and Red Army leaders in the Soviet Union under Stalin; got rid of half of the Communist Party members

neocolonialism

a system designed to perpetuate Western economic domination and undermine the promise of political independence that European countries inflicted on African countries through 1970

really existing socialism

a term used by Communist leaders to describe the socialist accomplishments of their societies, such as nationalized industry and collective agriculture, began to decline in the 1980s

British Commonwealth

a voluntary and cooperative association of former British colonies that already included Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; Pakistan and India also joined

Adolf Hitler

adopted a fierce nationalism and anti-Semitism and Social Darwinism at a young age. He fought in WWI and was determined to avenge Germany and fight the Jews and Marxists. He joined the German Workers' Party that promised to abolish capitalism and create a "people's community." Hitler gained control of the party, renaming it the Nazi Party and using propaganda and public speeches to spread its ideals

"cradle-to-grave" welfare state

adopted by the Labour Party in Britain after WWII and continued through the early 1960s; citizens received benefits such as healthcare, pensions, and unemployment benefits subsidized by taxation

Konrad Adenauer

aging postwar chancellor of West Germany who retired in 1963

SALT treaties

agreement between Gorbachev and Reagan to eliminate all land-based intermediate-range missiles in Europe that led to more arms reductions

Final Act of the Helsinki Conference

all European nations minus Albania and Andorra agreed that Europe's existing political frontiers couldn't be changed by force and accepted many provisions for human rights of citizens in 1975. This wasn't well implemented by the East, but generally effective elsewhere

Enabling Act

an act pushed through the Reichstag by the Nazis that gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years.

Austrian Anschloss

annexation of Austria; Hitler forced the Austrian chancellor to put him in charge and Germany occupied Austria unopposed

Cardinal Karol Wojtyla

archbishop of Krakow who was elected as pope (John Paul II) in 1978. He preached the "inalienable rights of man," drawing large crowds and electrifying Poland

Beer Hall Putsch

armed uprising inspired by Mussolini's 1923 victory led by Hitler in Munich. He was arrested, but his actions established National Socialism

Dunkirk

beaches where Germany split Franco-British forces and trapped all British forces. The British withdrew their troops but not equipment, and the French were taken

Nikita Krushchev

became the new Soviet leader in 1955 and led de-Stalinization. He believed that "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism was possible and that another great war could be avoided

Auschwitz-Birkenau

best-known Nazi concentration camp

kulaks

better-off peasants who were stripped of land and livestock under Stalin and were generally not permitted to join collective farms; many starved or were deported to forced-labor camps for re-education

Rachel Carson

biologist who wrote Silent Spring which was about a future in which there were no birds because of the overuse of pesticides. Her book sparked environmental movements in the U.S. and Europe

SA

brownshirts; Nazi storm troopers that had fought and beaten up Jews and Communists before Hitler took power, The Fuhrer gave them good positions, but once they began to talk of eliminating capitalism, he decided to eliminate them to win support of a traditional military

denazification

carried out by the Allies until about 1948; they punished the worst offenders, but some former Nazis were kept in their posts for law enforcement and protection

Christian Democrats

center-right political parties that rose to power in Western Europe after WWII. They rejected authoritarianism, communism, and leftist class politics, celebrating democracy, liberalism, free market economies, and traditional family values, promoting welfare, public education, and subsidized housing; i.e. Helmut Kohl

Heinrich Bruning

chancellor who, when unable to gain majority support in the Reichstag, dissolved parliament. He convinced the aging President Hindenburg to authorize rule by decree to govern without parliament, trying to cut back government spending, prices, and wages. His conservatism backfired and caused Germans to follow Hitler instead

Jiang Jieshi

conservative Chinese leader of Guomindang (National People's Party); aided by U.S., opposed the Communist Mao Zedong

Joseph Mobutu

corrupt general who led the U.S. supported Congo dictatorship following Lumumba. He lived long and became extremely wealthy while his country remained economically troubled

Second Vatican Conference

council from 1962-65 in which Catholic leaders agreed on reforms meant to democratize the church to up its appeal. Mass was said in local languages rather than Latin and an openness in Catholic theology was called for, but church attendance continued to decline

Treaty of Rome

created the European Economic Community, also known as the Common Market. It was meant to destroy all tariffs among the six countries and create an enormous free market

Paris Accord

delegates from 22 countries plus the U.S. and Soviet Union agreed to a scaling down of armed forces and that all existing borders were valid. It ended WWII and the Cold War and created a general peace treaty

Brezhnev Doctrine

doctrine created by Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev that held that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in any socialist country whenever it saw the need; implemented after Prague spring

perestroika

economic restructuring and reform implemented by the Soviet premier Gorbachev in 1985; some were independence for state enterprises and easing of government control on prices; small reforms and not very successful

social-market economy

economy based on free-market liberalism, some state intervention, and an extensive social welfare market; adopted after WWII

Tadeusz Mazowiecki

editor of Solidarity's newspaper that became Poland's new non-communist prime minister in 1989

Margaret Thatcher

elected as Britain's prime minster in 1978; she was a hardcore neoliberalist. In the 1980s, the "Thatcher years," she set a series of controversial free-market policies, her conservative party working to eliminate most social programs and to transform Britain from a welfare state into one focused on the free market and private enterprise

Doctor Zhivago

epic novel by Boris Pasternak that challenged Communism. Pasternak was denounced but not killed under Krushchev

European Coal and Steel Community

established by Christian Democrats in 1951. It was meant to bring the six involved countries close so that economy was permanently binding them

National Liberation Front

established by Muslim rebels inspired by Communism; they revolted against he French government in Algeria and were crushed by French troops. The Algerian War ensued

Simone de Beauvoir

existentialist French philosopher who wrote The Second Sex. She argued that women had always been trapped in limiting conditions and that only through great courage and creativity could a woman escape the role that men created for her

Aldo Moro

former Italian prime minister murdered by the radical Red Brigades in the late 1970s

Jean-Marie Le Pen

founder of the French National Front who opposed European integration and promised to return to national customs, often at the cost of non-European immigrants

Dwight Eisenhower

general of American and British forces who led them to Normandy beaches where they pushed inland through German lines for 100 days. They moved eastward and southward to Germany and Italy by 1945

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

goal of Japan in occupying Asian countries; propagandists aimed for nationalist feeling in their campaign to liberate Asia from Western Powers ("Asia for Asians"). However, this was all bull; power lay with Japanese military commanders who often mistreated civilians. They defeated the Western Powers in Indochina

guest worker programs

government-run programs in Western Europe (particularly West Germany) designed to recruit labor for the booming postwar economy

Teddy Boys

groups that displayed rebellious styles worn by James Dean and Marlon Brando in movies and cynical attitudes; Halbstarken in Germany and blouson noirs in France

Ho Chi Minh

guerrilla leader who beat France and acquired Indochina, which was split into North and South Vietnam; this led to civil war

Mao Zedong

head of Chinese communists; aided by Stalin's Soviet Union

Mikhail Gorbachev

idealist leader of the Soviet Union who believed in Communism but realized its failing to keep up with the West, so he and his wife decided to revitalize the system with fundamental reforms; he attacked corruption in the bureaucracy and condemned drinking; reform communism to save communism

Commonwealth of Independent States

independent republics of the old Soviet Union established this loose confederation

Ethiopia

invaded by fascist Italian armies in 1935 and was beaten by Italy, or "Rome." This war sealed ties between fascist Italy and Nazi Germany

Fuhrer

leader-dictator that Hitler became that he believed would lead Germany to victory through unlimited power

Winston Churchill

led Britain as the only unconquered-by-Nazis Western power

Patrice Lumumba

led the Congolese in the push for independence from Belgium and was elected prime minister when Belgium gave in. Chaos broke out between the remaining Belgians, and he turned to the Soviet Union for help, and Congolese began to worry that the Congo would become Communist. The CIA helped in a military coup in which Lumumba was assassinated

Imre Nagy

liberal communist reformer installed by the people of Budapest as prime minister in 1956; he forced Soviet troops to leave, but Russia invaded and crushed them. The U.S. never came to help, and 2,700 Hungarians died and 22,000 were sent to prison

Bretton Woods Agreement

linked Western currencies to the U.S. dollar and established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to facilitate free markets and world trade in 1944

Charter 77

manifesto signed by a small group of Czechoslovak citizens and former president Vaclav Havel. It criticized the governments for not following the human rights part of the Helsinki Accords as well as censorship, also arguing for improved environmental policies

Grand Alliance

military pact that joined Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union

fascism

movement embraced by Mussolini and Hitler that was characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and military

New Left

movement of students in the West who advocated simpler, purer societies based on an updated, romanticized view of Marxism; they thought Soviet Marxism was corrupt and hated capitalism

OEEC and Council of Europe

necessary for Europeans to receive Marshall Plan aid and promoted commerce and cooperation among European countries

Vichy regime

new French WWII government established by the aging Henri-Phillipe Petain that included many aspects of National Socialism and handed French Jews to the Nazis

Yuri Andropov

old chief of secret police who tried to invigorate the system after succeeding Brezhnev, but it just worsened the Soviet Union's situation

Solidarity

outlawed Polish trade union that worked for workers' rights and political reform in the 1980s led by Lech Walsea. They were democratic, supported by the Catholic Church, and didn't directly challenged Communists for power

neoliberalism

philosophy of the 1980s' conservative leaders who argued for decreased government spending on social services and privatization of state-run industries; kind of laissez-faire, Adam Smith-ish; leaders included Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher

Vaclav Havel

playwright-turned-revolutionary who led the Velvet Revolution amd was elected in 1989 as president

nonalignment

policy of postcolonial governments to remain neutral in the Cold War and play both the U.S. and the Soviet Union (benefactor countries) for all they could get

Potsdam Conference

postwar conference in which Harry Truman demanded free elections in the increasingly communist East and Stalin refused

displaced persons

postwar refugees, including 13 million Germans, former Nazi prisoners, forced laborers, and orphaned children. They were often not welcomed into their old home

French Indochina

present-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; the French tried to re-establish colonial rule after Japanese occupation, supported by the U.S., but they were defeated by Ho Chi Minh, who was supported by the Soviet Union and China

Boris Yeltsin

radical reform communist and Gorbachev's rival who embraced the democratic movement. He was elected parliamentary leader of Russian Soviet Republic and declared Russia's independence from the Soviet Union

Italian Red Brigades and West German Red Army Faction

radical reform groups from fringe New Left that turned to violence and terrorism, robbing banks, killing politicians, etc.

New Economic Policy

replaced war communism; Lenin's 1921 policy to re-establish limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in the face of economic disintegration

Josep Broz Tito

resistance leader and Communist over Yugoslavia who successfully declared independence and resisted Soviet domination. Yugoslavia was communist but outside of the East Bloc after this

Charles de Gaulle

romantic nationalistic French president who viewed the U.S. as a threat to France and European independence. He did things such as withdrawing French forces from the "American-controlled" NATO and developed France's own nuclear weapons

Heinrich Himmler

ruthless leader of the SS that took over the political police and concentration camp system

Giacomo Matteotti

socialist politician who was murdered by a group of fascist extremists shortly after Mussolini's fascist party won an overwhelming majority in the Italian parliament. His opponents demanded that Mussolini's armed squads be disbanded and violence abolished

postindustrial society

society that relies on high-tech and service-oriented jobs for economic growth rather than on heavy industry and manufacturing jobs; characterized the 1970s

Joseph Stalin

son of a shoemaker that became the leader of the Soviet Union after Lenin, beating Trotsky through his ability to relate Marxian teaching to Soviet realities through his theory of "socialism in one country," which differed from Trotsky's expansionist ideas. Stalin turned against everyone who challenged his ascendancy and crushed them

Benito Mussolini

started as socialist but later turned against the working class and toward conservatism, eventually calling himself and his supporters "fascists"

Nowa Huta

steel tow established in Poland in the 1950s that provided all work and living necessities to its inhabitants and created opportunities for Polish workers

Willy Brandt

succeeded Adenauer as the first Social Democratic West German chancellor; he led detente, signed a treaty with Poland, and apologized to Jews for Germany's treatment of them in WWII

Leonid Brezhnev

successor of Krushchev under whom the Soviet Union experienced a period of limited re-Stalinization. He and his colleagues only spoke of Stalin's good points, never his crimes, indicating the end of further liberalization.

Harry Truman

successor of Roosevelt who really wanted democratic elections in Eastern Europe through America's sphere of influence. He cut off help to the Soviet Union and declared that the U.S. would never recognize a government established by force against the people's free will

stagflation

term coined in the early 1980s to describe the combination of low growth and high inflation that lelf to a worldwide recession; hit East and Western Europe

the crisis

term for hard times in Western Europe in the 1970s and 80s

"evil empire"

term that President Reagan used to describe the Soviet Union, which he believed had the advantage militarily, so her acted accordingly, outfitting the West with weapons

Sudetenland

territories inhabited by ethnic Germans in western Czechoslovakia that Hitler demanded be ceded to Germany, and he received the democratic state through appeasement

OPEC

the Arab-led organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. They declared an embargo on oil shipments to the U.S. after the latter assisted Israel in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which resulted in victory for Israel. Within a year, crude oil prices quadrupled

appeasement

the British/French policy toward Germany prior to WWII that aimed at granting Hitler whatever he wanted, including western Czechoslovakia, in order to avoid war

Prague spring

the Czechoslovak Communist Party won a majority and voted out a long-time Stalinist leader in favor of the radical Alexander Dubcek; 1968; censorship and rigid planning was relaxed and then crushed by the Soviet Union

Common Market

the European Economic Community, created by six Western European countries in 1957 as part of a larger search for European unity

Warsaw Uprising

the Polish underground Home Army ordered an uprising to establish independence from the approaching Soviet armies. It didn't end well; the Soviets didn't enter Poland and Germans destroyed the insurgents

shock therapy

the Solidarity-led Polish government's radical take on economic affairs that abruptly ended state planning and moved to market mechanisms and private property

Battle of Stalingrad

the Soviet army surrounded and destroyed the whole German Sixth Army, killing 2/3 of 300,000. This brought the Soviet armies to the offensive and turned German public opinion against Hitler, who hadn't allowed a surrender

collectivization of agriculture

the forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large, state-controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin

de-Stalinization

the liberalization of the post-Stalin Soviet Union led by reformer Nikita Kruschchev

postcolonial migration

the postwar movement of people from former colonies and the developing world into Europe; they moved to the country that had held imperial control over their country in most cases

decolonization

the postwar reversal of Europe's overseas expansion caused by the rising demand of the colonized people themselves, the declining power of European nations, and the freedoms promised by U.S. and Soviet ideals.

detente

the progressive relaxation of Cold War tensions; encouraged by Social Democrats

Big Science

the results of directed research during WWII that combined theoretical work with sophisticated engineering in a large organization. New weapons and new consumer goods emerged; led by U.S.; government funded after WWII

Holocaust

the systematic effort of the Nazi state to exterminate all European Jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during WWII

The Troubles

thirty years in which the IRA attacked soldiers and civilians in Northern Ireland and Britain

Socialist Party

wanted East Germany to be its own independent society but was beaten by the Alliance, which wanted unity between East and West

Social Democrats

wanted to normalize their relationship with East Bloc countries and increase spending on welfare provisions in the 1960s; they were liberal and wanted a free market; i.e. Willy Brandt; encouraged detente

Six-Day War

war between Israel and its Arab neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, and Syria). Israel defeated them all and expanded its territories into former territories of Palestine, exacerbating anti-Western feeling in Arab states because Israel was supported by the West

"build socialism"

what Communist East Bloc leaders urged workers to do through almost superhuman labor for low pay and under poor conditions

"work and bread"

what Hitler promised to Depression-stricken citizens and he kept it, increasing the standard of living and decreasing unemployment

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

wrote One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich that portrayed a life in a Stalinist concentration camp and damned the Stalinist regime

Gamal Abdel Nasser

young army officer who led a nationalist revolution in Egypt and drove out the West-supportive king, becoming president of an independent republic. He advocated nonalignment and played the Soviets and the U.S. against each other by accepting aid from both. He nationalized the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company, infuriating the British, French, and Israelis