ISSUES TO UNDERSTAND

After reading the chapter, you should be able to discuss the following:

1.Truman's background and the political situation he faced upon becoming president

2. Why the U.S. economy prospered in the postwar period

3. The postwar domestic problems that led to Republican victories in 1946 4. Causes of the Cold War in Europe and Asia

5. The reasons the United States adopted the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and the results

6. Why the Soviets imposed the Berlin blockade and how Truman responded to it

7. How Europe came to be divided into rival armed camps by the 1950s

8. Reasons for the Communist takeover in China and American reactions to it

9. Escalation of the nuclear and conventional arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union

10. Causes of, controversies about, and outcome of the Korean War

11. The achievements and failures of the Truman administration in the areas of civil rights and social justice

12. Causes and results of the anticommunist hysteria in the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s

13. Who supported Senator Joseph McCarthy and McCarthyism and why

14. Why Eisenhower and the Republicans won the election of 1952

15. The beginnings of the Civil Rights movement

16. The roots of the Vietnam conflict
 
 

VOCABULARY

The following terms are used in Chapter 28. To understand the chapter fully, it is important  that you know what each of them means.

polarization moving to opposite or contrasting positions 1

subversion working to undermine or overthrow existing institutions, such as the govern- : i ment, especially by secret means !

insurgent one who engages in armed resistance to the established government; a rebel or ii revolutionary

oligarchy a form of government in which power is vested in a few or in a dominant class or clique; the members of that class or clique

insubordination refusal to submit to.higher authority

coterie a group of persons who associate closely; a clique or circle

closed shop a factory or other workplace in which new workers must join the union before they can be employed

Jim Crow practice or policy of racial segregation espouse advocate or embrace, as a cause scurrilous grosslyor indecently abusive

recalcitrant not compliant; uncooperative red herring something to divert attention bathos sentimentality

IDENTIFICATIONS

After reading Chapter 28, you should be able to identify and explain the historical significance of each of the following:

GI Bill of Rights (Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944)

Bretton Woods Agreement, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank Employment Act of 1946 and the Council of Economic Adviser

Yalta Declaration of Liberated Europe

George F. Kennan and the containment policy James F. Bymes

Winston Churchill's iron curtain speech

Atomic Energy Act and the Atomic Energy Commission

Truman Doctrine

George C. Marshall and the Marshall Plan Berlin blockade and airlift

North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact General Douglas MacArthur

National Security Council and NSC-68

Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the hydrogen bomb

Taft-Hartley Act

To Secure These Rights

 Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats

 Henry A. Wallace and the Progressive party

 Thomas E. Dewey

 the conservative coalition in Congress

 House Un-American Activities Committee

Federal Employee Loyalty Program

Smith Act and Dennis v. United States

Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and Richard M. Nixon Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Joseph R. McCarthyand McCarthyism McCarran Internal Security Act

McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act

Adlai Stevenson
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