History notes

gistfile1.txt

Events.


Feb. 1945: Yalta. First conference between Churchill, Stalin, and FDR. Discussed Poland and Declaration of Liberated Europe. Also dividing Germany.
July 1945: Potsdam. Another meeting between the big 3. Talk about reparations. Structure it so that they can actually pay.
1947: Taft-Hartley Act. Required union leaders to take oaths that they weren't Communists.
1948-1949: Berlin Airlift. Flying supplies to West Berlin when the Soviet Union blockades the roads and rail roads.
1949: Communist forces secure mainland China; Nationalists flee to Formosa, set up government. USSR successfully tests an atomic bomb.
1950: McCarran Act. Made supporting the establishment of a totalitarian government illegal. Required Communist or
1950-1953: Korean War. Proxy war. North Korea beaten back, then China jumps in and almost win, then UN forces beat them back again.
1952: Nixon's “Checkers” speech. New use of television for political means.
1956: anti-Communist rebellion crushed in Hungary. Interstate Highway Act. Established to move troops and missiles, actually made transportation really convenient.
1957: Watkins v. United States. Watkins testifies before HUAC. Refused to give information on former members. Received minor misdemeanor. Sputnik. First satellite launched by the Soviets. People worried about our science and math education. NASA created.

Places


Inchon. MacArthur flanks the North Korean army big time. Landed in a port behind enemy lines.
Iran. First threatened proxy war.
Levittown. First planned subdivision/suburb.
Pusan. Port the UN forces were forced back to when China sends troops to help North Korea.
Pyongyang. Capital of North Korea.
Seoul. Capital of South Korea.
Taiwan. Formerly Formosa. Home of the Chinese Nationalists. 
Yalu River. Furthest north McArthur pushes North Koreans.

Terms


38th Parallel: Dividing line between North and South Korea.
Baby boom: vets make kids. 65 million born in, like, 10 years.
Beatniks. Hipsters. Proto-hippies. Coffee. Cool jazz. Poetry slams. Berets.
Blacklisting. Artists couldn't get jobs because they were communist.
Blue-collar. Manual labor. Factories, agriculture, etc. “Blue” because they wore denim work shirts.
Braceros. Mexicans imported to work farms during WWII. Some permanently settled.
Brinksmanship. Threatening nuclear war.
CIA. Central Intelligence Agency.
Civil Defense Agency. 
Cold War. Tensions between USA and Soviet Union over the spread of Communism. No actual fighting, only proxy wars.
Containment. Preventing the spread of Communism. Developed by Kennan.
Developing Nations. Nations still industrializing. Agricultural economy.
DMZ. Demilitarized Zone.
“Duck and cover”. Bert the Turtle. What you're supposed to do in the event of a nuclear attack.
ENIAC. Computer developed by the Army. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.
Generation gap. Gap between baby boomers and parents. 
GI Bill. Provided money for going to school, buying a house, or starting a business.
“Hollywood Ten”. First 10 screenwriters and directors who refused to testify. Invoked 5th amendment rights. Some never went back into show business. Trombow did. Most remained on the blacklist until the 70s.
HUAC. House Unamerican Activities Committee.
Iron Curtain. Border of communism, between the NATO nations and the Warsaw Pact.
Long Telegram. George Kannan. Said that if you contained communism, it would eventually fall apart.
Marshall Plan. US plan to rebuild Europe. Billions lent out. Named for Secretary of State George Marshall.
Massive retaliation. Policy to stop war with the threat of nuclear war.
McCarthyism. Vague accusations.
Military-industrial complex. 
NASA. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Founding prompted by Sputnik.
National Defense Education Act. 
NATO. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The allies minus the Soviet Union and China.
Red Scare. American fear of Communism.
Satellite Nations. Communist puppet nations.
SEATO. South East Asia Treaty Organization.  US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia.
Space race. Soviets won. We got to the moon first.
Truman Doctrine. It was the US's pledge to fight communism world wide. Moved the FDR aircraft carrier into the Mediterranean to protect Turkey.
U-2. Spy plane. Shot down in Russia. Big deal.
UNIVAC. Universal Automatic Computer. Navy computer. Later, more advanced.
Warsaw Pact. Soviet answer to NATO. Included satellite nations.. 
White-collar. Worked in an office. Wore suits and white shirts.

People


Dean Acheson. Truman's Secretary of State. Seen as soft on Communism.
Chuck Berry. Rock and roll artist.
Whittaker Chambers. Claimed Alger Hiss was communist.
Chiang Kai-Shek. Leader of Chinese Nationalists party. Fled to Taiwan. Friend of the US.
Winston Churchill. Voted out of office upon the end of the war. Coined the term, the Iron Curtain.
Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike. President of the United States. After Truman. 
Alan Freed. Credited with starting the rock 'n roll craze. Only DJ who played rock 'n roll regularly. First person who realized that white kids were listening to black artists.
Igor Gouzenko. Walked out of the Soviet Embassy with documents concerning the infiltration of Canadian and US organizations.
Lorraine Hansberry. Wrote A Raisin in the Sun. Told the plight of African Americans in slums and the inner city.
Alger Hiss. Falsely accused of being a Communist by Whittaker Chambers.
Buddy Holly. Rock star. Nerd. Died young.
Grace Hopper. Developed the first programming language. Invented COBOL.
Nikita Khrushchev. Soviet Premier. Succeeded Stalin.
Jerry Lee Lewis. Rock star. Married his cousin.
Douglas MacArthur. General. Wanted to nuke China. Headed the Korean War until he was fired for insubordination. Publicly criticized the president. Commander of the Pacific Armed Forces.
Mao Tse-Tung. Communist leader of China.
Joseph McCarthy. Accused everybody of being a Communist. Senator.
Richard Nixon. Anti-communist. Vice presidential candidate. Ike's vice president. Made the Checker's speech.
Elvis Presley. King of rock. 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR. Died near the end of his president. Participated in Yalta.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Communist spies. Jewish. Executed.
Jonas Salk. Invented the polio vaccine.
Josef Stalin. Soviet Premier.
Ed Sullivan. Had the Ed Sullivan show. Big show.
Harry S. Truman. FDR's Vice. President after FDR. President after FDR dies. Then wins slightly.
Emmet Till. Black kid killed in the south for saying hi to a white woman. In Mississippi. From Chicago.

Questions


Effects of...
Postwar occupation of Germany. Split first into 4 pieces, then into 2, Russia vs. The Allies.
End of the war and/or of wartime rationing. People started buying lots of cars. Baby boom.
Use of atomic weapons on Japan. Decimates Japan. Guarantees that every anime for 20 years will start with an atomic apocalypse. Cancer. Starts the nuclear arms race.
Korean war. Division of Korea into North and South.
Launch of Sputnik. Beginning of space race. NASA established.
Suez Canal. US offers to dam the nile, then withdraws the offer. Egypt seizes the Suez Canal to pay for it. US back Britain and France to seize it back, diplomatic victory for the Soviets.
Federal Interstate Highway Act. More roads. Made interstate commerce much easier. Suburbia.
Renewal programs. People who could pay taxes were moving away, so the poor people had pay more. Didn't work. Reduced housing. Government housing created.
Why was Truman in trouble in the 1948 presidential election, how did he manage to win? Accused of being soft on Communism. Attacked majority republican congress as do-nothing congress for not passing his legislation.

Name at least...


3 components of Truman's second-term legislative goals. Minimum wage raised, increased social security benefits, passed the National Housing Act, for low income housing.
3 ways that American institutes took on the problem of Communist infiltration. HUAC. Background checks. Truman Doctrine. Signing Documents.
2 ways that atomic weapons and the Red Scare influenced popular culture. Monster Movies. Propaganda. 
1 military-technological innovation spurred by the cold war (not a-bomb). Highways. Computers.
3 aspects of the postwar economy. Car culture, consumerism, advertising on TV, aeronautics.
3 scientific, medical, or technical advances of the late 1940s or the 1950s. Chemotherapy, discovery of the structure of DNA, polio vaccine. Space travel, computers.
3 popular TV shows of the 1950s. I Love Lucy. Leave it to Beaver. American Bandstand. The Honeymooners. Howdy Dewdy. Adventures of Davy Crocket.
2 major movie trends of the 1950s. Monster, westerns, spy films, Scifi.
3 Fashion trends. Penny loafers, pencil skirt, swing skirts. House dresses, gloves for women, greased hair. 
3 popular kids' toys. Hula hoops, scrabble, Yahtzee, PEZ, skateboards.
2 African American popular singers. Ray Charles, Chuck Berry. Louis Armstrong. Fats Domino. Ella Fitzgerald.
3 reasons cited in the 1950s for rise in juvenile delinquency. Rock and roll. Age gap. Racism. Busy parents. New media. Comic books.
How did the UN become involved in the Cold War? Korean War. Iran. 1945, drops the atomic bomb.
Be able to argue whether Truman's desk sign, the buck stops here, was a fair assessment of his behavior as president.  Fair. Brinksmanship. Suez Canal crisis. 
What brought about McCarthy's downfall. Attacked army officers. Lack of evidence. “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
How did New-Deal programs fare under Eisenhower? Have specific examples. Several depression era agencies were abolished, like the RFC and TVA as “creeping socialism.”
Be able to identify works by at least two of the following artists or architects.
Henri Matisse.
Grandma Moses. Discovered very old.
Jasper Johns. Painted flags and numbers.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Architect. Did the modern skyscrapers.
Eero Saarinen. 
Hans / Jean Arp. Pretentious. 
Francis Bacon. Melting face guy. Not surrealist, just weird.
Mark Rothko. Colors fading into each other. Geodesic domes.
Jackson Pollock. Threw paint on canvas.
Who was no included in the general prosperity of the 1950s. African Americans, Native Americans, Braceros. People in the deep south. Inner cities.
Why did 1950s parents and other authorities feel nervous about rock and roll. Sex. Far from innocent.