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GI Bill
Was created to help veterans of World War II. It established hospitals, made low-interest mortgages available and granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools. -
Yalta Conference
Roosevelt, Black Sea, Stalin, and Churchill reaches momentous agreements. Final plans were laid for smashing the buckling German lines and assigning occupation zones in Germany to victorious powers. -
United Nations
A successor to the old League of Nations, but it had a different predecessor insignificant ways. It decided to prevent another great-power war. The league adopted rules denying the veto power to any party to a dispute. -
Nuremberg War Crimes Trial
The allies joined in trying 22 culprits. Accusations included committing crimes against the laws of war and humanity important aggressions contrary to solemn treaty pledges. -
Employment Act of 1946
A United States federal law. Its main purpose was to lay the responsibility of economic stability of inflation and unemployment onto the federal government. -
Operation Dixie
the name of the post-World War II campaign by the Congress of Industrial Organizations to unionize industry in the Southern United States, particularly the textile industry. -
Containment Doctrine
Crafted by George F canon, this concept of the Russia, whether tsarist or communist, was relentlessly expansionary. This doctrine was in response to various Soviet challenges that took on intellectual coherence. -
Truman Doctrine
An American foreign policy whose stated purpose was to contain Soviet geopolitical expansion during the Cold War. -
Taft-Hartley Act
a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. It was enacted by the 80th United States Congress over the veto of President Harry S. Truman, becoming law on June 23, 1947. -
Marshall Plan
An American initiative passed in 1948 for foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $12 billion in economic recovery programs to Western European economies after the end of WWII. -
Berlin Aircraft
The Americans organized the gigantic Berlin airlift in the midst of hair trigger tension. For nearly a year, flying some of the very aircraft they recently dropped bombs on Berlin , American pilots fairy thousands of tons of supplies a day to the grateful Berliners, their former enemies. -
Executive Order 9981
An executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces. -
House Un-American Activities Committee
Members investigated “subversion.” Richard M. Nixon, an ambitious read-catcher, let the chase after Alger Hiss, a prominent ex-New Dealer and a distinguished member of the eastern establishment. He was accused of being a communist agent in the 1930s . -
Fair Deal
An ambitious set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address. More generally the term characterizes the entire domestic agenda of the Truman administration, from 1945 to 1953. -
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
An intergovernmental military alliance between 30 North American and European countries. -
National Security Council Memorandum Number 68
The 58-page memorandum is among the most influential documents composed by the U.S. Government during the Cold War, and was not declassified until 1975. Its authors argued that one of the most pressing threats confronting the United States was the “hostile design” of the Soviet Union. -
Korean War
War between North Korea and South Korea. The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union and the United States liberated Korea from imperial Japanese colonial control on 15 August 1945. -
Army-McCarthy Hearings
Series of hearings held by the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations to investigate conflicting accusations between the United States Army and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. -
Vietnam War
The French could no longer control Vietnam so Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam decided to form a communist country. It is believed the US president didn’t wish to offend France by normalizing relations with Ho, so he began a campaign of terrorism against the south. It had always been his dream to reunite Vietnam into one country. -
Sputnik Crisis
The launch of Sputnik I rattled the American public. President Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to it as the “Sputnik Crisis”. -
U2 Incident
Soviet Union shot down a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane and called the flight an aggressive act. The U.S. denied Soviet claims that the pilot, F. Gary Powers, had stated that his mission was to collect Soviet intelligence data. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
U-2 spy plane flying over Cuba discovered nuclear missile sites under construction. These missiles would have been capable of quickly reaching the United States. -
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
An international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. -
Perestroika and Glasnost
His dual program of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) introduced huge changes in economic practice, internal affairs and international relations. -
Berlin Wall Falls
Word soon spread and people gathered at the border crossings. Although the guards had no orders to do so, they reopened the borders with the rest of Germany, allowing people to cross freely. The wall ceased to function from that day forward.
