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NAME:_______________
American History
Unit 11: The Early Cold War Vocabulary
TERM
1. COLD
WAR
DEFINITION
the hostile but nonviolent struggle for power between the United
States and the Soviet Union, as well as their respective allies, from
the end of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
2. YALTA
CONFERENCE
held in February 1945 in the Soviet city of Yalta, a conference of the
main Allied leaders—U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, British
prime minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet premier Joseph
Stalin—to plan the future of post–World War II Europe
3. POTSDAM
CONFERENCE
in July and August 1945 in the German city of Potsdam, a
conference of the main Allied leaders—U.S. president Harry S.
Truman, British prime minister Winston Churchill and later his
successor Clement Atlee, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin—to
finalize post-World War II plans for Europe
4. PROLETARIAT
the working class in a society
5. COLLECTIVISM
an economic system in which the people, often under supervision of
the state, jointly own the means of production and distribution
6. SUPERPOWERS
a nation that is SO POWERFUL that it influences or controls
LESS POWERFUL states
7. CONTAINMENT
after World War II, the U.S. foreign policy practice of attempting to
restrict the expansion of Soviet influence around the world
8. ATOMIC ENERGY
9. UN ATOMIC ENERGY
COMMISSION
the power released by a nuclear reaction
a panel established by the United Nations in 1946 to propose ways
to control atomic energy and restrict the development of nuclear
weapons
10. IRON CURTAIN
the ideological barrier that existed between Eastern and Western
Europe from 1945 to 1990
11. HEGEMONY
the DOMINATING INFLUENCE of one country or group over
others
12. TRUMAN
DOCTRINE
a U.S. foreign policy, established in 1947 by President Harry S.
Truman, of providing economic and military aid to countries—
initially Greece and Turkey—that were attempting to resist
communism
NAME:_______________
American History
Unit 11: The Early Cold War Vocabulary
13. MARSHALL
PLAN
a U.S. plan, initiated by the Secretary of State George Marshall and
implemented from 1948 to 1951, to aid in the economic recovery of
Europe after World War II by offering certain European countries
substantial funds
14. MOLOTOV
PLAN
a Soviet plan, initiated by Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav
Molotov in 1949, to aid in the economic recovery of Eastern Europe
after World War II by establishing the Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance to create two-way trade agreements between the Soviet
Union and other COMECON members and to integrate members'
economies
15. BERLIN
BLOCKADE
the Soviet blockade of the German city of Berlin, implemented from
1948 to 1949 to halt land travel into the city in hopes of forcing the
United States, Great Britain, and France to give up their plan to
combine their occupation zones into a single, democratic West
German state; the Allied nations resisted the blockade by airlifting
food and supplies into Berlin
16. COUP
D’ETAT
17. SATELLITE
NATIONS
18. NATO
the sudden overthrow of a government by violent force
a country under another country's control
as part of the Cold War, a military alliance formed in 1949 among
the United States, Canada, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Iceland, Italy, Britain, Denmark, Norway, and
Portugal—and expanded to include Greece and Turkey in 1952 and
West Germany in 1955—to establish collective security against the
Soviet Union
19. WARSAW
PACT
as part of the Cold War and in response to the formation of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an agreement signed in 1955 by
the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Hungary, Poland, and Romania to establish a military alliance for
mutual defense
20. KOREAN
WAR
a war fought on the Korean Peninsula from 1950 to 1953 after troops
from communist North Korea, armed with Soviet weapons, invaded
democratic South Korea, prompting the United States and the
United Nations to send forces to support South Korea and fight
NAME:_______________
American History
Unit 11: The Early Cold War Vocabulary
21. DMZ
an area, often along the border between two military powers, that no
military forces are allowed to enter
22. 3RD
WORLD
originally, the group of nations that had recently gained
independence from colonial rule and were not aligned with the West
(First World) or the East (Second World) after World War II; more
broadly, the developing nations of the world
23. ARMS
RACE
24. H-BOMB
a competition between nations to achieve the more powerful
weapons arsenal
a hydrogen bomb, or a bomb created by fusing atoms; more powerful
than an atomic bomb, a weapon of mass destruction that the United
States first tested in 1952 as part of the arms race
25. BRINKSMANSHIP
a foreign policy characterized by a willingness to push a dangerous
situation to the brink, or edge, of war rather than give in to an
opponent
26. DETERRENCE
a foreign policy in which a nation develops a weapons arsenal so
deadly that another nation will not dare attack
27. MAD
during the arms race between the United States and the Soviet
Union, the principle that either side would respond to a nuclear
attack by launching its own missiles, which helped prevent the Cold
War from becoming a hot war
28. COMMUNIST
SYMPATHIZERS
29. SUBVERSION
30. LOYALTY
OATHS
31. HUAC
a person who believes in communist ideology but is not a member of
the Communist Party
a plot or an action intended to overthrow a government
a pledge of loyalty to a group, such as an organization or a nation
formed in 1938, a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives
that investigated subversive organizations in the United States until
1975
32. INCRIMINATE
33. CONTEMPT OF
CONGRESS
34. BLACKLIST
to provide evidence that makes someone appear guilty
willful failure to obey the authority of Congress
a list of people or groups who are under suspicion for something and
are thus excluded from certain opportunities
35. ALGER HISS
a court case involving Alger Hiss, a U.S. State Department official
NAME:_______________
American History
Unit 11: The Early Cold War Vocabulary
CASE
accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union, that contributed to a
growing fear of subversion during the early Cold War; in 1950 a
federal grand jury convicted Hiss of perjury, but his guilt in regard
to espionage was not proven
36. PERJURY
37. ROSENBERG
TRIAL
willfully lying while under oath to tell the truth
the controversial 1951 trial of two Americans, Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg, charged with passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union;
the two were sentenced to death and executed in 1953, making them
the only American civilians to be put to death for spying during the
Cold War
38. MCCARTHYISM
the practice of publicly accusing people of subversive activities
without evidence to back up the charges; named for Senator Joseph
McCarthy, who began such a practice in the early 1950s as part of
the search for communists in the United States during the early
Cold War
39. CENSURED
to formally scold someone
40. ATOMIC
AGE
the era in which atomic weapons have been used, beginning in 1945
41. CIVIL
DEFENSE
the organization and training of citizens to work with the armed
42. FCDA
with the first use of the atomic bomb and lasting to the present time
forces and emergency services during a war or natural disaster
a federal agency established by Congress in 1951 to plan for civil
defense during the arms race by preparing Americans to survive a
nuclear attack