APUSH Chapter 26 Flashcards
Fiance for the future
- US came out prosperous
- June 1945: capital assets of
manufacturing had increased 65% over prewar levels - Lost the Soviet Union as a future customer & most of Eastern Europe, so looked west
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank) & the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
- July 1944: representatives from 44 allied nations met at Bretton Woods, NH
- Expected to help rebuild war-torn Europe & Asia
- The US was the main loaner - determining the allocation of loans, could unilaterally reshape the global economy.
- The US took the most out of this, benefited the most.
- Soviet Union attend, but refused to ratify the agreements, Stalin believed it would make the Soviet Union an economic colony of the capitalist West
The Atlantic Charter
1941, was the US & Great Britain proclaiming the right of all nations to self-determination in a renounce claims to new territories as spoils of war
Potsdam Conference
July 1945: Stalin regained & extended his territory, & exiting Eastern Poland with Western approval & the little Baltic nations without it
- Soviet influence in a lot of Eastern Europe where the Red Army had been
Divided Germany
- Conquered zones into 4 occupation zones,
~ Each temporarily used by one on the Allied nations
Soviet & American relationship stated to get strained over Germany
- US began to grant amnesty to some former Nazis
Britain & France wanted high reparations from Germany, dismantle their military (post ww1)
December: US, France, & GB all merged their zones, Stalin refused
- The Soviet history & the US’s future plans for Germany started the causes for issues between the 2 countries
United Nations
1944 & April 1945: a world organization that would attribute disputes among member nations & stop aggressors by force if necessary
50 nations signed the UN charter voted in the General Assembly
- Only 5 (US, GB, the Soviet Union, France, & China) served permanently on the Security Council
~ Each had absolute veto power over the Council’s decisions.
China 1949
Communists won the Chinese Civil
- the Western Powers would block the new People’s Republic from claiming China’s UNC, held by the defeated nationalists in Taiwan
George F. Kennan
1946: The nation’s Premier Diplomat in dealing with the Soviet union, sent to 8000 word “long telegram” from Moscow to the state department insisting that Soviet fanaticism made cooperation impossible
- Soviet Union will only respond with force, no effective sit down bargaining
The Containment Policy
To halt the expansion of communism and prevent it from advancing around the world.
Truman Doctrine
The US would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces.
Marshall Plan/the European Recovery Program
Sought to reduce “hungry, poverty, desperation, and chaos” & to restore “the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole.”
- Plan also designed to boost the US
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Pact
A legal agreement between many countries, whose overall purpose was to promote international trade by reducing or eliminating trade barriers such as tariffs or quotas.
- US & 17 other countries
Berlin Blockade
June 1948: the Soviet Union, whose territory fully surrounded the capital, cut off all ground traffic into and out of West Berlin in an attempt to force the Allies to abandon the city.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
April 1949: A mutual-defense alliance
- 10 European nations, Canada, & the US
Warsaw Pact
A political and military alliance established on May 14, 1955 between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries.
Atomic Warfare
- After 1945 the US began to build an atomic stockpile & to conduct tests on remote Pacific Islands
- August 1949: the Soviet Union tested it own atomic bomb
- By the 1950s, both the US & the Soviet Union were testing hydrogen bombs 1,000 times more powerful than the weapons dropped on Japan in 1945