Cold War Study Guide
Study your notes and worksheet on Korea and Vietnam.
1. How did the Soviet Union gain control of Eastern Europe after WWII? Know what is meant by the Iron
Curtain, who used that phrase, and where the Iron Curtain was. Know what is meant by satellite nations and
which countries were Soviet satellites.
2. How did Japan become a democratic nation after WWII?
3. What is the Cold War? NATO? Warsaw Pact? What starts the Cold War and what events signal the end of
the Cold War? During what years did the Cold War take place?
4. Know examples of the US policy of containment.
5. What is a nonaligned country? How did the US and the USSR try to get these nations to be on their side?
Why did many African and Asian countries not take sides during the Cold War?
6. Why were the US and the USSR reluctant to attack each other directly during the Cold War?
7. Why and how were Korea and Vietnam divided? How did the UN become involved in Korea? Where did
most of the UN troops come from?
8. What was the outcome of the Korean War? The Vietnam War? Turning points of both wars? How did the
wars start? Why did the US sent troops to Vietnam? How are these wars similar?
9. Know which presidents got the US involved in Vietnam and how? Which president pulled the US out of
Vietnam?
10. Why has the United Nations been a more successful organization than the League of Nations?
11. What is deterrence? How did this policy lead to a nuclear arms race? What steps did the US and the USSR
try to take that would reduce the possibility of nuclear destruction?
12. How are Lenin’s New Economic Policy and Gorbachev’s perestroika similar?
13. Why did communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe ultimately fail? How did Gorbachev try to reform
the USSR and save it? Why did his reforms fail? Remember that the economy planned a large role in the
overthrow of Czar Nicholas II (1917) and the collapse of the USSR (1991).
14. What is the Cuban Missile Crisis? Who was involved? What was the outcome?
15. How did the collapse of communist governments in Europe affect NATO?
16. How did the Soviet focus on military technology affect the economy for the average Soviet consumer?
17. How did President Reagan’s proposed Star Wars defense system help to bring about the collapse of the
Soviet economy?
**There will be several political cartoons on this test so be sure you understand the big picture. Don’t just
memorize definitions.
Vocabulary
Marshall Plan
Iron Curtain
Domino Theory
Berlin Wall
Brain Drain
Berlin Blockade
Berlin Airlift
Detente
ICBMs
SALT talks/treaty
Viet Cong
Vietminh
Vietnamization
Seoul
Saigon
Brinkmanship
Checkpoint Charlie
Premier
Sputnik
“Brain Drain”
Ho Chi Minh
Douglas MacArthur
John F. Kennedy
Boris Yeltsin
Mikhail Gorbachev
Harry S Truman
Nikita Khrushchev
Leonid Brezhnev
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mao Zedong
Joseph Stalin
Yuri Gagarin
Honors Students discussion questions
Be prepared to answer these questions in a minimum of 4 paragraphs.
1. What was at least one action that the United States should not have taken during the Cold War because its
outcome had more negative effects than positive? Explain.
Think about:
Involvement in wars
Support for foreign leaders
Money spent on anti-communist causes
2. What do you think prevented a third world war given the fact that World War I and World War II were only
20 years apart?
Think about:
New types of weapons
Containment of regional wars
The United Nations
3. What was the relationship between the nuclear arms race and the space race? Do you think the
achievements would have been as remarkable without competition between the two superpowers? Explain.