Deck 28: Cold War and a New Western World, 1945-1965

Question 1

At the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, Khrushchev controversially did which of the following?

A)He pardoned Stalin for his crimes.
B)He condemned Stalin.
C)He urged the Party to adopt a limited form of capitalism in order to stay in power.

Answer 1

He condemned Stalin.

Question 2

When did Khrushchev's unpopularity with the Communist Party reach its apex?

A)After his rash plan to place missiles in Cuba
B)When he ordered the execution of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
C)When he granted Hungary its independence in 1956

Answer 2

After his rash plan to place missiles in Cuba

Question 3

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 concluded with which of the following?

A)Improved communications between the United States and the Soviet Union to prevent nuclear war
B)The installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba
C)The United States overthrowing Cuba's Soviet-supported government

Answer 3

Improved communications between the United States and the Soviet Union to prevent nuclear war

Question 4

Yugoslavia from World War II through 1960 was characterized by which of the following?

A)Its close alliance with the West in the Cold War
B)A strict adherence to Stalinist-style Communism
C)The leadership of Tito, who asserted Yugoslavia's independence from the Soviet Union

Question 5

Following World War II, India experienced which fate?

A)It remained firmly under British control after a ten-year occupation.
B)It gained its independence in a peaceful transition from British to Indian National Congress rule.
C)It was partitioned into two new countries: one predominantly Hindu and the other mostly Muslim.

Question 6

How are the policies of Indonesian president Sukarno best described?

A)They involved close cooperation with the West to develop industry that could compete with China and the Soviet Union and support from rural workers parties.
B)They involved distrust of the West, increased economic aid from China and the Soviet Union, and domestic support from Indonesian communist parties
C)They involved an increased isolationism and attempts to return to traditional ways of life, production, and culture.

Question 7

Which of the following issues united the postwar Arab states?

A)Egyptian control over the Suez Canal
B)Equal sharing in oil revenues
C)Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation

Question 8

Why do historians think that the origins of the Vietnam War, in part, lie in the process of decolonization?

A)The division of Vietnam into antagonistic northern and southern states occurred after Vietnamese military forces had defeated the French, former governors of the region.
B)The North Vietnamese employed mercenary soldiers from various new postcolonial African states in a local war of liberation.
C)The United Nations, seeking to establish the postcolonial principle of national self-determination, encouraged North Vietnamese radicals to break with the West.

Question 9

Despite World War II's devastating impact on the countries, cities, peoples, and cultures of Europe, Europe's industrial and agricultural output was 30 percent higher than prewar levels by which year?

A)1947
B)1950
C)1953

Question 10

Due to its strong democratic traditions, which of the following was the last Eastern European country to fall under Soviet, one-party domination after World War II?

A)Czechoslovakia
B)Poland
C)Hungary

Question 11

In 1956 in Poland, Wladyslaw Gomulka rose to fame for which of the following reasons?

A)He worked with the Soviets to crush a nascent independence movement.
B)He declared his nation's right to follow its own socialist path.
C)He tried to assassinate Nikita Khrushchev.

Question 12

At the close of World War II, which of the following two states were increasingly drawn into a tense rivalry?

A)China and the Soviet Union
B)European empires and the United States
C)The Soviet Union and the United States

Question 13

Although France granted full independence to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956, where did it attempt to retain its dominion?

A)Algeria
B)Senegal
C)Guadeloupe

Question 14

An American-supported invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961 attempted to accomplish which of the following?

A)The overthrow of Fidel Castro in Cuba
B)The return of Chiang Kai-shek to mainland China
C)A military coup in support of King Farouk of Egypt

Question 15

How is the Great Leap Forward best described?

A)It was Stalin's stated philosophy for his last five-year plan.
B)It was an initiative resulting from the radicalization of the feminist movement.
C)It was Mao Zedong's effort to achieve a classless society and the final stage of communism.

Question 16

In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek transferred the Chinese Nationalist government from the mainland to where?

A)Shanghai
B)Hong Kong
C)Taiwan

Question 17

Which of the following guiding strategic principles heavily informed most U.S. policy toward communism since 1947?

A)Massive retaliation
B)Containment
C)Appeasement

Question 18

How are economic policies of Stalin best described?

A)They completely overtaxed a war-damaged industrial plant as production of material goods long failed to surpass prewar levels.
B)They emphasized the development of heavy industry and the production of modern weapons and space vehicles.
C)They managed to produce both "guns and butter," that is, rearmed the Soviet military while providing cheap and plentiful consumer goods.

Question 19

The Warsaw Pact included all EXCEPT which of the following nations?

A)Poland
B)Bulgaria
C)Yugoslavia

Question 20

Which of the following Middle Eastern political leader promoted Pan-Arabism and advocated a sharing of Middle Eastern oil wealth equally among Arab states?

A)Yasir Arafat
B)Gamal Abdel Nasser
C)Anwar al-Sadat

Question 21

In her pathbreaking text The Second Sex, the influential French feminist author Simone de Beauvoir argued which of the following?

A)Women should renounce all contact with men and set up their own self-governing communes.
B)Women had always and wrongly been defined by their differences from men and consequently seen as second-class beings.
C)World War II had legitimated the political advantages and hegemonic power of males.

Question 22

What is the Truman Doctrine?

Question 23

Who among the following was the first chancellor and "founding hero" of the West German Federal Republic?

A)Konrad Adenauer
B)Helmut Schmidt
C)Willy Brandt

Question 24

Which of the following was a key factor contributing to the development of the Cold War in Eastern Europe?

A)The withdrawal of victorious Russian armies from lands conquered during the campaign against Nazism
B)Raids by American troops pursuing German Nazi war criminals into areas of the former Third Reich under Russian control
C)Stalin's desire to establish pro-Soviet governments in the countries of Eastern Europe to serve as a buffer zone against possible Western attacks on the Soviet Union

Question 25

How is the philosophical doctrine of existentialism best described?

A)It was dominant in the universities of Great Britain and the United States as a foundation for Cold War foreign policy.
B)It concentrated on logic and a theory of knowledge and so returned the West to Enlightenment values.
C)It was best expressed in works that emphasized an inherent meaninglessness and absurdity of life.

Question 26

All of the following statements regarding women in the postwar era are correct EXCEPT which one?

A)Many more married women joined the work force than before.
B)Working women received equal pay with men by the 1960s.
C)Working-class women continued to receive less pay than men.

Question 27

As president of France, how is Charles de Gaulle's position in the Cold War best described?

A)He tried to closely align France with the Warsaw Pact nations.
B)He tried to make France the "third" nuclear power and pursue a largely independent political course.
C)He tried to let American policy guide France and other European nations.

Question 28

Given its premise, Existentialism urged people to do which of the following?

A)Create their own values and give their own lives meaning by living according to those values.
B)Return to faith in God and give up trying to understand the universe rationally.
C)Avoid all material consumption because it clouds one's vision of what is really important.

Question 29

What was the cause and outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Question 30

How is the Common Market best described?

A)It was primarily a military alliance of certain European countries.
B)It was a forum of European nations founded to solve social problems.
C)It was founded for economic reasons, including to promote free trade among member nations.

Question 31

All of the following is characteristic of the United States in the 1950s EXCEPT which one?

A)The collapse of labor unions
B)Confidence in the American way of life
C)An intensification of the "Red Scare"

Question 32

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s included all EXCEPT which of the following?

A)The Supreme Court approval of the concept of "separate but equal" in public schools
B)The Supreme Court upholding racial segregation in public schools in 1954
C)The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Question 33

Which of the following statements concerning postwar Great Britain is FALSE?

A)The National Insurance Act and National Health Service Act made Britain a welfare state in the 1940s.
B)The Conservative Party in the 1950s and 1960s revoked nearly all of the welfare legislation passed by the Labor Party in the 1940s.
C)By the time of the Suez Canal debacle, Britain was no longer a superpower.

Question 34

What is NATO, and what is its purpose?

Question 35

The Truman Doctrine was a consequence of Truman's alarm over which of the following strategic concerns?

A)A civil war in Yugoslavia
B)The weakness of the British in the eastern Mediterranean
C)Soviet aggression in Czechoslovakia

Question 36

Postwar Italian politics was characterized by which of the following?

A)The dominance of the Communist Party
B)The demise of the Christian Democrats
C)The hegemony of the Christian Democrats with backing from the Catholic Church

Question 37

Which of the following countries was NOT an original member of the European Coal and Steel Community?

A)France
B)Britain
C)West Germany

Question 38

Describe the causes and outcomes of the Korean War.

Question 39

What role did anticolonial rebellions play in European decolonization in Africa?

Question 40

What is the policy of containment?

Question 41

What are the central tenets of existentialism?

Question 42

Describe the end of the Palestinian Mandate and the creation of the state of Israel.

Question 43

How did the Allies seek to confront the Soviet Union? What risks were they willing to take, and what were they unwilling to take?

Question 44

How did hot wars become places where Cold War rivalries played out? Why did superpowers choose to get involved in such conflicts while avoiding direct confrontations?

Question 45

The belief that Communist aggression fed off of economic turmoil was instrumental in the formulation of which of the following policies?

A)Domino Theory
B)The Marshall Plan
C)NATO

Question 46

What is the "baby boom" of the 1940s and 1950s?

Question 47

How did World War II affect anticolonial movements in Asia?

Question 48

How was decolonization in Kenya and Algeria similar? How was it different?

Question 49

What was "de-Stalinization," and what were its effects?

Question 50

Describe the relations between the three major allied powers throughout the war.

Question 51

What was Yugoslavia's relationship with the Soviet Union?

Question 52

Why was West Germany allowed to participate in Western European cooperation so soon after the war?

Question 53

What was the Marshall Plan, and what were its objectives? To what extent was it successful? Why?

Question 54

How did Eastern European governments respond to Khrushchev's reforms?

Question 55

The Truman Doctrine did all EXCEPT which of the following?

A)Condemn the victory of the Communists in the Chinese civil war
B)Call for $400 million in aid for nations threatened by aggression
C)Assist in the defense of Greece and Turkey

Question 56

What was the significance of the 1965 Civil Rights Act?

Question 57

Why did de Gaulle return to the leadership of France in the 1950s?

Question 58

How did the rise of tourism signify a successful European recovery?

Question 59

How did Soviet authorities respond to the death of Stalin?

Question 60

What is the Common Market?

Question 61

How were French, Dutch, and British experiences of decolonization in Asia similar? How were they different?

Question 62

How did West Germany's recovery differ from Weimar Germany's recovery? What role did the new West Germany play in the new postwar Cold War world?

Question 63

How did Truman and his Western European allies respond to Stalin's blockade of Berlin in 1948?

A)Building the Berlin Wall
B)Airlifting supplies into Berlin
C)Bombing Moscow

Question 64

Describe important changes to everyday finance, life, and entertainment introduced in the postwar period. Why were these changes so significant? Are they still significant?

Question 65

The Communist military response to the formation of NATO was which of the following?

A)Creating the Moscow Alliance
B)Creating the Warsaw Pact
C)Creating the Eastern European Community

Question 66

Which of the following was an overall effect of the Korean War on the Cold War?

A)The Soviet Union's domination over all of Southeast Asia
B)The end of American and Soviet involvement in Asian political affairs
C)The reinforcement of the American determination to "contain" Soviet power

Question 67

Which of the following Cold War policies was adopted in the mid-1950s by the Eisenhower administration?

A)Containment
B)Massive retaliation
C)MAD (mutually assured destruction)

Question 68

Which proved more important to American postwar society: the anti-Communist movement or the Civil Rights movement? Why?

Question 69

How did the creation of the state of Israel affect decolonization in the Middle East? How does it continue to affect relations there?

Question 70

Describe Simone de Beauvoir's main arguments. To what extent were they effective in helping change ordinary perceptions of women's inferior status?

Question 71

How did European states achieve economic and political cooperation by the 1960s? On what points did they fundamentally agree?

Question 72

Why was Khrushchev able to get away with his criticisms of Stalin? To what extent did Khrushchev's politics result in his fall?

Question 73

What similarities existed between Yugoslavia's, Poland's, and Hungary's experiences of Soviet influence in the early postwar period? What differences were there?

Question 74

How is existentialism different than nihilism? Use examples from key texts to support your argument.