APUSH Chapter 31 The Fair Deal and Containment

baby boom

Markedly higher birth rate in the years following World War II; led to the biggest demographic "bubble” in American history.

Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill)

Act of 1944, also known as the "GI Bill of Rights,” which provided money for education and other benefits to military personnel returning from World War II.

Employment Act of 1946

Act which set up a three-member Council of Economic Advisers to make appraisals of the economy with regard to employment levels and advise the president in an annual economic report, while a new congressional Joint Committee on the Economic Report would propose legislation.

Atomic Energy Commission

Created in 1946 to supervise peacetime uses of atomic energy.

Taft-Hartley Act

Passed over President Harry Truman’s veto, the 1947 law contained a number of provisions to control labor unions, including the banning of closed shops.

Operation Dixie

CIO’s largely ineffective post-World War II campaign to unionize southern workers.

National Security Act

Act of 1947 that authorized the reorganization of government to coordinate military branches and security agencies; created the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Military Establishment (later renamed the Department of Defense).

United Nations

Organization of nations to maintain world peace, established in 1945 and headquartered in New York.

iron curtain

Term coined by Winston Churchill to describe the cold war divide between western Europe and the Soviet Union’s eastern European satellites.

containment

General U.S. strategy in the cold war that called for containing Soviet expansion; originally devised in 1947 by U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan.

George F. Kennan

Diplomat who authored the anonymous 1947 Foreign Affairs article that introduced the theory of containment.

Truman Doctrine

President Harry S. Truman’s program of post-World War II aid to European countries-particularly Greece and Turkey-in danger of being undermined by communism.

cold war

Term for tensions, 1945-89, between the Soviet Union and the United States, the two major world powers after World War II.

George C. Marshall

Army general during World War II who orchestrated the Allied victories over Germany and Japan, and later Secretary of State who developed the Marshall Plan in 1947, a program of massive aid for the reconstruction of Europe.

Marshall Plan

U.S. program for the reconstruction of post-World War II Europe through massive aid to former enemy nations as well as allies; proposed by General George C. Marshall in 1947.

Berlin Airlift

Allied air forces flew food, medicine, coal, and equipment into Berlin to counteract the Russian blockade of the city from June 1948 to May 1949.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

(NATO) Defensive alliance founded in 1949 by ten western European nations, the United States, and Canada to deter Soviet expansion in Europe.

Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC)

Committee established by the Franklin Roosevelt administration in 1941 that offered willing employers the chance to say they were following government policy in giving jobs to black citizens; the FEPC’s authority was chiefly moral, since it had no power to enforce directives.

Jackie Robinson

Army veteran who joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and became the first black player in major league baseball.

Americans for Democratic Action

Democratic faction, formed in 1947, that criticized President Truman but also took a firm anti-Communist stance.

Henry A. Wallace

Secretary of Commerce under President Truman who was fired in 1946 over a disagreement in foreign policy; ran for president against Truman in 1948 on the Progressive party ticket.

J. Strom Thurmond

South Carolina governor who ran for president against Truman in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket.

Dixiecrat party

Also known as the States Rights Party, a group of Deep South delegates who walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention in protest of the party’s support for civil rights legislation.

Progressive party

Created when former president Theodore Roosevelt broke away from the Republican party to run for president again in 1912; the party supported progressive reforms similar to the Democrats but stopped short of seeking to eliminate trusts.

Fair Deal

Domestic reform proposals of the second Truman administration (1949-53); included civil rights legislation and repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, but only extensions of some New Deal programs were enacted.

Point Four

A plan for technical assistance to underdeveloped parts of the world that was the fourth part of President Truman’s anti-Communist foreign policy, which included the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, and NATO; it was never put into effect.

NSC-68

A top secret document produced by the National Security Council that called for rebuilding conventional military forces to provide options other than nuclear war.

Douglas MacArthur

Popular general who aggressively directed American forces during the Korean War and clashed with President Truman, who removed him from command in 1951.

Inchon

Port city for Seoul, Korea, where General MacArthur landed a American force to the North Korean rear on September 15, 1950, a brilliant ploy that pushed the North Koreans back across the border.

Second Red Scare

Post-World War II Red Scare focused on the fear of Communists in U.S. government positions; peaked during the Korean War and declined soon thereafter, when the U.S. Senate censured Joseph McCarthy, who had been a major instigator of the hysteria.

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

Formed in 1938 to investigate subversives in the government; best-known investigations were of Hollywood notables and of former State Department official Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1948 of espionage and Communist party membership.

Alger Hiss

President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served in several government departments; Hiss was accused by Whittaker Chambers, a former Soviet agent, of leaking secret government documents and was convicted of perjury in 1950.

Whittaker Chambers

A former Soviet agent who accused Alger Hiss in 1948 of giving him secret government documents; later become an editor of Time magazine.

Richard Nixon

California congressman who rose to national prominence for pursuing the case against Alger Hiss and exploiting an anti-Communist stance to win election to the Senate in 1950; later elected president in 1969.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Couple convicted of transmitting atomic secrets to the Russians and executed on June 19, 1953.

Joseph R. McCarthy

Republican senator from Wisconsin who accusing the State Department of being infested with Communists and was a major instigator of the Red Scare, McCarthy was later censured by the Senate.

McCarran Internal Security Act

1950 Act passed over President Harry S. Truman’s veto which required registration of American Communist party members, denied them passports, and allowed them to be detained as suspected subversives.