Cold War Basics
What type of war involves tension and competition without direct fighting between major powers?
Cold War
Leader of the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War
Joseph Stalin
U.S. and Soviet forces raced to develop these powerful weapons
Nuclear weapons
U.S. goal of stopping the spread of communism
Containment
A divided country where a war was fought from 1950 to 1953
Korea
Two main opposing systems during the Cold War
Capitalism and Communism
U.S. president during the Cuban Missile Crisis
John F. Kennedy
Wall built in 1961 that divided a European city
Berlin Wall
U.S. plan to rebuild Europe after WWII
Marshall Plan
Island nation led by Fidel Castro
Cuba
A term describing the fear of communism in the U.S. during the 1950s
Red Scare
Communist leader of Cuba during the Cold War
Fidel Castro
The 1962 event, when the world came close to nuclear war
Cuban Missile Crisis
Military alliance formed by the U.S. and its allies
NATO
The Southeast Asian country where the U.S. fought communism
Vietnam
Why was it called a “cold” war
The superpowers never fought each other directly
The Soviet leader during the Cuban Missile Crisis
Nikita Khrushchev
The USSR launched the first artificial satellite
Sputnik
The Communist Alliance created in response to NATO
Warsaw Pact
European country split into East and West after WWII
Germany
Competition between the U.S. and the USSR to explore space
Space Race
The U.S. president who called the USSR an “evil empire.”
Ronald Reagan
The 1989 event that symbolized the end of the Cold War
Fall of the Berlin Wall
The belief that if one country fell to communism, others would follow
Domino Theory
The war in the 1980s that weakened the Soviet Union
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan