World War II pt. B vocabulary Flashcards
Containment
The action of keeping something harmful under control or within limits.
Cold-War
A state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc.
Truman Doctrine
The principle that the US should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or communist insurrection.
Marshall Plan
An American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave over $13 billion in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War II.
NATO
An intergovernmental military alliance between several North American and European states based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949.
Warsaw Pact
A collective defence treaty among the Soviet Union and seven Soviet satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
Cuneiform
Denoting or relating to the wedge-shaped characters used in the ancient writing systems of Mesopotamia, Persia, and Ugarit, surviving mainly impressed on clay tablets.
Berlin Wall
A guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989.
Khrushchev
A politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War.
Mau Zedong
A Chinese communist revolutionary and founding father of the People’s Republic of China, which he governed as the Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949, until his death in 1976.
Cuban Missile Crisis
A 13-day (October 16–28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba.
Arms Race
A competition between nations for superiority in the development and accumulation of weapons, especially between the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Satellite States
A political term that refers to a country or nation that was formally independent, but is now politically and economically influenced by another country.
Domino Theory
The theory that a political event in one country will cause similar events in neighboring countries, like a falling domino causing an entire row of upended dominoes to fall.
East Germany
An Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period.
West Germany
The common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990.
The People’s Republic of China
A populous nation in East Asia whose vast landscape encompasses grassland, desert, mountains, lakes, rivers and more than 14,000km of coastline.
The Great Leap Forward
An economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China (CPC) from 1958 to 1962.
The Cultural Revolution
A sociopolitical movement that took place in China from 1966 until 1976.
The Gang of Four
A political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party officials, they came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes.
The Red Guards
In 1966, a group of middle school students in Beijing named themselves “Chairman Mao’s Red Guards.
Bay of Pigs
A failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961.
Space Race
The 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability.
The Iron Curtain
The name for the boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Sputnik I
Each of a series of Soviet artificial satellites, the first of which (launched on October 4, 1957) was the first satellite to be placed in orbit.
PRI Party
A Mexican political party founded in 1929, that held power uninterruptedly in the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000, first as the National Revolutionary Party, then as the Party of the Mexican Revolution.
Samosa
A triangular savory pastry fried in ghee or oil, containing spiced vegetables or meat.
Sandinista
A member of a left-wing Nicaraguan political organization, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which came to power in 1979 after overthrowing the dictator Anastasio Somoza.
Guerilla
A member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces.
Pinochet
A Chilean general, politician and the military ruler of Chile between 1973 and 1990; he remained the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 1998.
Fidel Castro
A Cuban revolutionary and politician who governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008.
Batista
A Spanish or Portuguese surname (although in Portuguese more common in the spelling Baptista), literally meaning “batiste”.
Juan Peron
An Argentine lieutenant general and politician, after serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President, he was thrice elected President of Argentina, serving from June 1946 to September 1955, when he was overthrown in a coup d’état, and then from October 1973 until his death in July 1974.
Eva Peron
The second wife of Argentine President Juan Perón and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952
Organization of American States
A continental organization founded on 30 April 1948, for the purposes of regional solidarity and cooperation among its member states.
Doomsday Clock
A symbol which represents the likelihood of a human-caused global catastrophe.
Sphere of Influence
A country or area in which another country has power to affect developments although it has no formal authority.
Cooperatives
A farm, business, or other organization that is owned and run jointly by its members, who share the profits or benefits.
Richard Nixon
An American politician who served as the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office.
Henry Kissinger
An American diplomat and political scientist who served as the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Operation Bootstrap
The name given to a series of projects which transformed the economy of Puerto Rico into an industrial and developed one.
Prague Springs
A period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II.
Duvalier
the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971, he was elected president in 1957 on a populist and black nationalist platform and successfully thwarted a coup d’état in 1958.
Salvador Allende
A Chilean physician and politician, known as the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections.
Detente
The easing of hostility or strained relations, especially between countries.
Dissidence
Protest against official policy; dissent.
Helsinki Accords
An agreement signed by 35 nations that concluded the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, held in Helsinki, Finland.
