Cold War Vocab

Yalta Conference

• Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met to plan for the end of WW2.

Potsdam Conference

• Allied leaders met at this conference after the defeat of Germany to finalize plans for postwar Germany.

Superpowers

• Nations that influence or control less powerful states- the US and the Soviet Union.

Containment

• The restriction of Soviet expansion.

Iron Curtain

• The "boundary" that divided Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe from Western European nations not under Soviet domination.

Truman Doctrine

• The purpose of the this document was to aid countries that were the targets of Communist expansionism

Marshall Plan

• European Recovery Program, project instituted at the Paris Economic Conference (July, 1947) to foster economic recovery in certain European countries after World War II.

Molotov Plan

• A plan to aid economic recovery in Eastern Europe

Satellite Nation

• A country dominated politically and economically by another nation, especially by the Soviet Union during the cold war.

Ideology

• Set of beliefs that form the basis of a political and economic system.

Communism

• A political system that promises equal ownership and a classless society in which the government owns all property and dominates all aspects of life in a country.

Capitalism

• An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

Domino Theory

• A theory that if one nation comes under Communist control, then neighboring nations will also come under Communist control.

Arms Race

• A competition between nations to expand their stock pile of weapons and armaments in order to gain a military superiority over other nations.

NATO

• Military mutual-defense pact

Warsaw Pact

• Military alliance between the Soviet Union and nations of Eastern Europe, formed in 1955.

38th Parallel

• A parallel of latitude that in East Asia roughly demarcates North and South Korea. The line was chosen by U.S military planners at the Potsdam Conference, in July 1945, as an army boundary, north of which the Soviet Union was to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces in Korea and south of which the Americans were to accept the Japanese surrender.

Berlin airlift

• The supply of West Berlin by American and British planes during a Soviet blockade in 1948-1949.

Cuban Missile Crisis

• [October 14, 1961] Soviets were keeping missiles on military bases in Cuba, pointed at the US; Navy quarantined Cuba; 100,000 troops were on standby in Cuba.

Berlin Wall

• Concrete Wall topped with barbed wire that was designed to separate East and West Berlin