Ch.26 Review Slides

Ch.26: Cold War politics in the Truman Years

Iron Curtain Speech

• Where Churchill denounced Soviet suppression of the popular will in Eastern and central Europe
• Famously declared that an "iron curtain" had descended across the continent

George Kennan

• Wrote a comprehensive rationale in February 1946 for a foreign policy of containment
• The idea that Soviet expansion could be checked "in the face of superior force"
• Not all public figures accepted the toughening line
• Those who criticized the administration's policy met stiff resistance from Truman's cabinet

NATO

• Marked a reversal of the nation's traditional foreign policy
• Joined its first peacetime military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in 1949
• pledged to go to war if one of its allies were attacked

The Berlin Airlift

• When the Soviets staged a brutal coup against the government of Czechoslovakia, installing a Communist regime
• The United States circumvented the blockade by airlifting goods to West Berliners for nearly a year
• The Soviet abandonment of the blockade lent credence to the containment policy

The G.I. Bill

• Offered 16 million veterans job training and education
• Unemployment
• Low-interest loans
• Sarked a boom in higher education
• Bill discriminated against Women because they filled a small number of military sots
• Also discriminated against African Americans because the funds were administered at the state and local levels

Executive Order 9981

• Order abolished racial discrimination in the armed forces
• Led to the end of segregation in the services

Joseh McCarthy

• Argued that Communists within the United States were more dangerous than those abroad
• His influence was so great that McCarthyism became a term synonymous with the anti-Communist crusade

The U.S. Involvement in Korea

• After North Korea invaded South Korea, Truman assumed that the Soviet Union or China had instigated the attacks
• Truman obtained UN sonsorshi of a collective effort to reel the attacks
• United States deloyed almost 1.8 million troos and dictated military strategy
• ushed North Korea back over the thirty-eigth arallel and moved beyond the arallel into North Korea

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