Ch 28

Question 1

Truman Doctrine

Answer 1

President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces.

Question 2

Marshall Plan

Answer 2

The Marshall Plan was a U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive in the aftermath of World War II. It was formally called the European Recovery Program.

Question 3

Containment (policy)

Answer 3

Containment was a foreign policy strategy followed by the United States during the Cold War. First laid out by George F. Kennan in 1947, the policy stated that communism needed to be contained and isolated, or else it would spread to neighboring countries.

Question 4

Berlin Airlift

Answer 4

a 1940s military operation that supplied West Berlin with food and other vital goods by air after the Soviet Union blockaded the city. The operation lasted from June 1948 until September 1949.

Question 5

NATO

Answer 5

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Question 6

COMECON

Answer 6

Comecon, byname of Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), also called (from 1991) Organization for International Economic Cooperation, organization established in January 1949 to facilitate and coordinate the economic development of the eastern European countries belonging to the Soviet bloc.

Question 7

Warsaw Pact

Answer 7

The Warsaw Treaty Organization (also known as the Warsaw Pact) was a political and military alliance established on May 14, 1955 between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries.

Question 8

Decolonization

Answer 8

the process through which colonial rule dissolved, and it encompasses the various political, economic, cultural and social dimensions of this process both in the periphery and in the metropole.

Question 9

Suez Canal Crisis

Answer 9

The Suez Crisis began on October 29, 1956, when Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal, a valuable waterway that controlled two-thirds of the oil used by Europe.

Question 10

Sputnik

Answer 10

Sputnik, any of a series of three artificial Earth satellites, the first of whose launch by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, inaugurated the space age. Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite launched, was a 83.6-kg (184-pound) capsule.

Question 11

Hungarian Uprising 1956

Answer 11

a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the Communist government of Hungary and its Soviet imposed policies, lasting from October 23 until November 10, 1956.

Question 12

Welfare state

Answer 12

A welfare state is a state that is committed to providing basic economic security for its citizens by protecting them from market risks associated with old age, unemployment, accidents, and sickness. The term ‘welfare state’ first emerged in the UK during World War II.

Question 13

Socialized medicine

Answer 13

Socialized medicine is a term used in the United States to describe and discuss systems of universal health care—medical and hospital care for all by means of government regulation of health care and subsidies derived from taxation.

Question 14

European Economic Community (Common

Market)

Answer 14

The EEC was designed to create a common market among its members through the elimination of most trade barriers and the establishment of a common external trade policy. The treaty also provided for a common agricultural policy, which was established in 1962 to protect EEC farmers from agricultural imports.

Question 15

Consumer society

Answer 15

A term sometimes applied to modern Western societies, which suggests that they are increasingly organized around consumption (of goods and leisure), rather than the production of materials and services.

Question 16

Abstract Expressionism

Answer 16

the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.

Question 17

Existentialism

Answer 17

existentialism, any of various philosophies, most influential in continental Europe from about 1930 to the mid-20th century, that have in common an interpretation of human existence in the world that stresses its concreteness and its problematic character.

Question 18

Second Vatican Council (Vatican II)

Answer 18

The Second Vatican Council (or Vatican II) was the twenty-first ecumenical council of the Catholic Church . It was convened by Saint John XXIII and lasted for four sessions from 1962 through 1965.

Question 19

Americanization

Answer 19

Americanization, in the early 20th century, activities that were designed to prepare foreign-born residents of the United States for full participation in citizenship. It aimed not only at the achievement of naturalization but also at an understanding of and commitment to principles of American life and work.

Question 20

Denazification

Answer 20

the process of removing Nazi ideology and influence from all forms of public life in defeated Germany. The occupying allies carried this process out in a number of ways: The Nazi Party was banned and advocating National Socialist ideas was made punishable by death.

Question 21

“West Germany”

Answer 21

a republic consisting of the western two-thirds of what is now Germany. West Germany was created in 1949 when the United States, Great Britain, and France consolidated those zones, or portions, of Germany that they had occupied at the end of World War II.

Question 22

“East Germany”

Answer 22

a former country in central Europe: created in 1949 from the Soviet zone of occupied Germany established in 1945: reunited with West Germany in 1990.

Question 23

Korean War

Answer 23

conflict between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in which at least 2.5 million persons lost their lives. The war reached international proportions in June 1950 when North Korea, supplied and advised by the Soviet Union, invaded the South.

Question 24

Mao Zedong

Answer 24

Mao Zedong (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which he ruled as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976.

Question 25

Ho Chi Minh

Answer 25

Hồ Chí Minh led the Communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, defeating the French Union in 1954 at the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ

Question 26

“First” Vietnam War

Answer 26

The First Indochina War (generally known as the Indochina War in France, and as the Anti-French Resistance War in Vietnam) began in French Indochina on December 19, 1946, and lasted until July 20, 1954. Fighting between French forces and their Việt Minh opponents in the south dated from September 1945.

Question 27

Nikita Khrushchev

Answer 27

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of that country’s Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964.

Question 28

Fidel Castro

Answer 28

a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008.

Question 29

Cuban Missile Crisis

Answer 29

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.