Development of the Cold War Flashcards

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation: a military alliance of the USA, Canada and western European states, in which an attack on one member counted as an attack on all.

The competition to build more powerful nuclear weapons: the USSR tested an atomic bomb in 1949, the USA a hydrogen bomb in 1952 and the USSR in 1953.

A military alliance of the USSR and its eastern European satellite states, set up in response to West Germany joining NATO.

Free elections, the withdrawal of Soviet troops, and Hungary leaving the Warsaw Pact to become a neutral state.

He sent Soviet troops and tanks into Budapest to crush it; thousands were killed, many Hungarians fled to Austria, and Kádár was installed as a loyal leader.

True. He was removed, arrested and executed in 1958, and Hungary was kept firmly inside the Warsaw Pact under Kádár.

The UN condemned the invasion but the Soviet veto blocked action; the West protested and took in refugees but sent no military help, being distracted by the Suez Crisis.

He attacked Stalin's methods in a speech, freed political prisoners and dissolved Cominform. Many in Eastern Europe took this as a sign they could have more freedom from Moscow, which encouraged protests in Poland and Hungary.

Hungary's harsh Stalinist leader, put in power with Soviet backing. Discontent with his rule grew in 1956, and he was removed; after protests in Budapest in October, the reformer Imre Nagy became prime minister.

He was the first Soviet leader to visit the USA. At talks with Eisenhower at Camp David he dropped the deadline of his Berlin ultimatum, and they agreed to discuss Berlin further at a summit in Paris in 1960.

Shortly before it, the USSR shot down an American U-2 spy plane and captured its pilot. Eisenhower refused to apologise, so Khrushchev walked out and no agreement on Berlin was reached.

Mao Tse-tung's communists won the civil war and set up the communist People's Republic of China, which the USSR supported and allied with.

It significantly altered the balance of power: the world's most populous country allied itself with the USSR, making the US policy of containment much harder.

The American belief that if one country became communist, other Asian countries would fall under communist control one after another, like dominoes.

It was a proxy war that showed Cold War rivalry had spread beyond Europe into Asia, and it carried the risk of nuclear weapons being used.

To contain communism: after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (1954) Vietnam was divided, and the USA backed South Vietnam against the communist North and the Vietcong, fearing other Asian countries would fall like dominoes.

False. The USSR supplied weapons to North Korea and China, and some Soviet pilots flew in secret, but it never openly entered the war, so Korea stayed a proxy war.

The first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, launched by the USSR; it was a huge technical achievement that shocked and frightened Americans.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles: nuclear missiles that could travel between continents. By 1957 the USSR had missiles able to reach targets in the USA.

An American nuclear missile launched from submarines, so missiles could be fired from under the sea and were very hard to destroy.

The Soviet cosmonaut who in 1961 became the first human in space, extending the USSR's lead in the space race.

The American space programme run by NASA; Apollo 11 landed Neil Armstrong on the Moon in 1969, giving the USA the lead in the space race.

As an act of aggression against it, which deepened the ideological divide between East and West and led to the Warsaw Pact in 1955.

Both superpowers had enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other, so neither could attack without being destroyed in retaliation.

The rockets that launched Soviet satellites could also carry nuclear warheads to targets in the USA.

That communist and capitalist states could compete without going to war; it raised hopes in Hungary and the satellite states of greater freedom.

If Hungary left the Warsaw Pact and rejected communism, other satellite states might follow, breaking up the Soviet buffer zone in Eastern Europe.

That the plane had been studying weather conditions; Khrushchev then revealed that pilot Gary Powers was alive and had confessed to spying.

The USA was criticised even by its closest ally Britain, and could no longer claim the USSR was wholly responsible for Cold War tension.

The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship: a 30-year alliance in which each promised to help defend the other, and the USSR lent China $300 million.

Communist North Korea, led by Kim Il-sung and armed with Stalin's backing, invaded non-communist South Korea.

It was boycotting the Security Council, in protest that communist China had not been given China's seat, so it was absent when the USA proposed that the UN help South Korea.

The US general who commanded the UN forces in Korea; Truman sacked him in 1951 after he publicly pushed to widen the war into China, including the use of atomic weapons.

With an armistice in July 1953 after two years of stalemate; Korea stayed divided into a communist North and a non-communist South.

Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam, backed by North Vietnam, who fought the US-supported government of the South.

A US security report, written after China fell to communism and the USSR tested an atom bomb, which urged a large build-up of US armed forces to resist communism worldwide.

The US space agency (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), founded by Eisenhower after the shock of Sputnik to lead US space research.

That the USA would land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.

The leaders of the USA, USSR, Britain and France held the first East–West summit since Potsdam (1945). The talks were friendly and both sides promised to keep talking, though no agreements were signed.

Stalin's. Khrushchev emerged as Soviet leader, and with Eisenhower newly US President there was hope of a fresh start.

Fear of nuclear war: Hungary lay inside the Soviet bloc, so sending troops could have meant fighting the USSR directly. (The Suez Crisis was also a distraction.)

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