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The United Nations were formed right after World War ll to prevent another conflict similar to that. It was intended to create civil rights and liberties, human rights, social progress, political freedom, international security, and economic development. -
The Truman Doctrine committed the United States to a foreign policy based on Kennan's strategy of containment. The hope was that communism would stop being spread, limiting the system to countries in which it already existed. The underlying policy was an assumption that the Soviet Union sought world domination. -
The Hollywood 10 was a group of ten Americans that were investigated for possible communist beliefs of threats. They were a part of the American Film Industry and were sentenced to 6-12 months in prison. -
The Marshall Plan was a US sponsored program that was designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive in the aftermath of World War ll. It was formally called the European Recovery Program. -
NATO is short for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and was created by the US, Canada, and western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. -
The Korean War was caused because North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union all wanted the Korean Peninsula to be a communist area. The war began when the North Korean troops marched into South Korea which set off the war. -
Sputnik was launched as the world's first artificial satellite. It traveled around the world at 18000 mph, circling the globe every 96 minutes. Its launch was a triumph of Soviet technology. It linked the Soviet Union and seven eastern European countries after the death of Joseph Stalin. -
The Bay of Pigs was a group of Cuban exiles organized and supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency. They landed on the southern coast of Cuba in an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro. The invasion ended in disaster, so President Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure. -
The Berlin Wall was a wall built by East Germany (the Soviet Union) to divide the city of Berlin into an east and west side controlled by the Soviet Union (east) and United States (west). It was intended to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin. -
The US officials entered the Vietnam War to prevent the spread of communism. North Vietnam was communist and wanted to make North Vietnam and South Vietnam one country. The United States entered this war to prevent the spread of communism over Southeast Asia. -
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to try to prop up the communist government there, which was being attacked by Muslim Mujahideen fighters. They wanted to prevent the expansion and influence of the Soviet Union. It marked the end of any further negotiation between the superpowers. -
The Berlin Wall came down, marking the first critical step towards German reunification. It finally concluded 339 days later with the dissolution of east Germany and the official reunification of the German state along the democratic lines of the West German Basic Law.