Truman Flashcards
Why did Truman drop “the Bomb”?
It was the shorter, safer, in the long run less destructive option.
Why didn’t Truman have to drop “the Bomb”?
The Japanese were possibly close to surrender, The Soviets were entering the war causing Japan to consider surrender.
Who was William Levitt?
The man behind cookie-cutter housing districts.
What is a “Levittown”?
A town of Identical Houses.
What years were the “Baby Boomers”?
1946-1964
What two international crises caused the Truman Doctrine?
The crises in Greece and Turkey.
What was the Truman Doctrine?
To contain communism and put pressure on it through American Strength.
What is the policy of “containment”?
To stop the spread of communism to places that it was not yet established in.
What three things came out of the policy of containment?
The Truman Doctrine, The NATO, The Marshall Plan.
What is NATO (Give the meaning of the acronym and a description?
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
What was the Marshall Plan?
An aid program for war-torn European Nations.
Why was the Marshall Plan criticized?
Because it rebuilt capitalism in Europe and helped America’s own economic interests in the end.
What was the cost for Jackie Robinson in his breaking the color barrier?
Death Threats and insults through his career.
What caused the Berlin airlift?
The Soviet blocking of infrastructure to west Berlin.
What were “Loyalty Boards”?
Investigation boards investigating if one was loyal to the US or to the Soviets.
Who was Whittaker Chambers?
a repentant, “reformed” Communist Party member and later a senior editor at Time magazine
Who was Algier Hiss?
A Roosevelt New Dealer, Hiss (1904-96) was born and bred to the eastern establishment, with impeccable credentials as a progressive and a long, distinguished career in public service, beginning as a law clerk under Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
What two events or institutions were viewed as Communist schemes to weaken America and set up Communist domination?
Yalta, UN.
What were the “Pumpkin Papers”?
microfilm copies of stolen State Department documents, stolen by Hiss for the Soviets.
Who was Klaus Fuchs?
a respected German-born physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb at Columbia University and later at Los Alamos during the war
Who were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?
close relatives of a Los Alamos worker who had passed Atomic secrets to them to pass on to the Russians
Were the Rosenbergs guilty of espionage and how do we know?
Yes. Soviet Documents have since proven that They were spies.
Why were the Rosenbergs executed?
They refused to testify in court.
Who was Joseph McCarthy? (Name his office, the State he was from, and his reason of notability)
He was the freshman senator from Wisconsin, elected to the Senate in 1946 by lying about his wartime service record and smearing his primary and general election opponents.
