Chapter 36 Terms and Definitions

Yalta Conference: The February 1945 meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin that planned the postwar world, including the division of Germany and the founding of the United Nations.
Iron Curtain: Winston Churchill's 1946 term for the political and military barrier dividing communist Eastern Europe from the democratic West.
Harry S. Truman: The thirty-third president, who succeeded Roosevelt in 1945 and firmly committed the United States to containing Soviet expansion.
George F. Kennan: The American diplomat whose "long telegram" argued for patient, firm resistance to Soviet expansion, laying the intellectual foundation for containment.
Containment: The core U.S. Cold War strategy of resisting the spread of communism wherever it threatened to expand, without seeking to roll back existing communist regimes.
Truman Doctrine: Truman's 1947 pledge to support free peoples resisting communist subjugation, first applied through aid to Greece and Turkey.
Marshall Plan: A massive American program of economic aid, proposed by Secretary of State George Marshall, that rebuilt Western Europe's economies after World War II.
Berlin Airlift: The 1948–1949 American and British operation that flew food and supplies into blockaded West Berlin, forcing the Soviets to lift their blockade.
NATO: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a 1949 mutual-defense alliance between the United States, Canada, and Western European nations — America's first peacetime military alliance.
Warsaw Pact: The Soviet-led military alliance of Eastern European communist states, formed in response to NATO and formalizing the continent's Cold War division.
Mao Zedong: The Chinese communist leader who defeated Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in 1949 and proclaimed the People's Republic of China.
Chiang Kai-shek: Leader of China's Nationalist government, defeated by the communists in 1949, who fled with his followers to Taiwan.
NSC-68: A secret 1950 policy paper calling for a massive, sustained buildup of American military power to contain communism worldwide.
Korean War: The 1950–1953 conflict triggered by North Korea's invasion of South Korea, fought under a United Nations banner and ending in a stalemate near the original border.
Douglas MacArthur: The American general who led the daring Inchon landing in Korea but was later fired by Truman for publicly challenging the president's limited-war strategy.
HUAC: The House Un-American Activities Committee, which investigated alleged communist influence in Hollywood and government during the Second Red Scare.
Alger Hiss: A State Department official convicted of perjury in a Cold War espionage case that convinced many Americans communist spies had infiltrated the government.
Rosenberg Case: The espionage trial and 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
Joseph McCarthy: The Wisconsin senator whose unsubstantiated 1950 claims of communist infiltration in the State Department launched an era of reckless political accusation.
McCarthyism: The practice of making sweeping, poorly substantiated accusations of disloyalty or communist sympathy, named for Senator Joseph McCarthy.