US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
Chapter 24: World War Looms
1. Why did totalitarianism take over much of
Europe during the 1920s and 1930s?
2. What was the secret provision of the GermanSoviet Nonaggression Pact of August 1939?
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14. Which country invaded mainland China in 1937
and waged a war of terror against its civilian
populace?
15. Why did the Japanese attack the US Pacific
Fleet at Pearl Harbor?
3. What was the Final Solution?
4. Approximately how many Jewish victims were
murdered in the Holocaust? Total victims?
Chapter 25: The U.S. in World War II, 1941-1945
16. Largely because of his administrative and
diplomatic skills, who was chosen as the Supreme
Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during
WWII?
5. What was Blizkrieg?
17. Operation OVERLORD was the codename for
the Allied invasion of:
6. The United States’ entry in World War II was a
direct result of what event?
18. What American citizens were imprisoned after
Pearl Harbor?
7. Define: fascism.
19. The purpose of the Manhattan Project was to:
8. What did Winston Churchill oppose on the
grounds that it surrendered the Sudetenland of
Czechoslovakia to Hitler without reliable promises
or even Czech input?
9. What was Mein Kampf?
10. Which nations came to be known as the Axis
powers after they signed the Tripartite Pact in
September 1940?
11. Explain the US neutrality policy of cash and
carry:
20. What impact did the Battle of the Bulge have on
the European war?
21. Known as V-E Day, May 8, 1945 is celebrated
as the date when:
22. Who made the final decision to drop the atomic
bombs on Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945?
23. During the war, the legal way to obtain most
restricted consumable goods (flour, sugar) in the
United States was to buy them with:
12. Explain: appeasement.
24. Why is the Battle of Stalingrad considered a
turning point in the war?
13. Who was the fascist dictator of Italy?
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
25. What U.S. agency was established to control
inflation as a result of increased wartime
production?
26. What does the U.S. Selective Service System
oversee?
27. Where were the atomic bombs dropped that
ended World War II?
28. Thousands of Japanese-Americans were
interned in relocation camps based on what
reasoning?
29. Who was the leader of the Free French and the
French government in-exile in London after June
1940?
30. What post-World War II organization was set
up to establish and maintain international peace?
Chapter 26: The Cold War, 1946-1960
31. The Cold War was a struggle for power and
political/economic influence between what two
global superpowers?
32. What presidential pledge aimed to help free
people around the world from the oppression of
totalitarian, communist governments?
33. The Marshall Plan was a US foreign aid
program directed at rebuilding ______ in order to
discourage communism and promote capitalism.
34. What European country was partitioned into two
separate nations after World War II, one side being
communist & the other free?
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35. What city was divided into Communist and
democratic/free sectors following World War II?
36. North Korea was militarily supported by
_________ & _________ during the Cold War.
37. Initially, General ___________ successfully led
United Nations troops in the Korean War but was
later fired for insubordination.
38. The United States fought in the Korean War for
what reason?
39. Winston Churchill popularized this name of the
political division between communist Eastern
Europe and democratic Western Europe:
40. What was the name of the first artificial satellite
sent into outer space by the Soviets?
41. The U.S. foreign policy called “containment”
was aimed at containing the spread of:
42. What was the 1955 military alliance established
by European communist nations in response to
NATO?
43. The first leader of the People’s Republic of
China was who?
44. What was agency was formed to investigate
possible Communist infiltration of the government
and other high-visibility parts of American society
during the 2nd Red Scare?
45. The 38th Parallel became an important dividing
line between:
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
revised 2014
46. Who led the U.S.S.R. during Eisenhower’s
Administration, emphasizing scientific and
economic competition with the U.S. instead of
military threats?
Chapter 28: New Frontier & Great Society, 19611968
57. What did Miranda v. Arizona establish in
regards to the rights of the accused?
Chapter 27: Postwar America, 1945-1960
47. Why did the economy slump after WWII?
58. What impact did the Warren Court have on the
rights of the accused?
48. How did planned obsolescence contribute to the
postwar consumer culture in America?
59. Why did the Soviets/East Germans erect the
Berlin Wall in 1961?
49. Why did the “baby boom” phenomenon occur
from 1945-1964?
60. What event became the closest that the U.S. and
Soviet Union ever came to direct and/or nuclear
conflict?
50. What childhood disease did Dr. Jonas Salk’s
vaccine help to eradicate in 1955?
51. Why did J. Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats split
from Truman and the Democrats in 1948?
52. What new genre of music did rhythm, blues,
country, and pop combine to create?
53. Who fathered the concept of dynamic
conservatism in the 1950s, in an effort to continue
certain New Deal programs and be “conservative
when it comes to money, but liberal when it comes
to human beings?”
54. In what event were Premier Khrushchev and
Vice-President Nixon arguing over the political and
economic differences between communism and
capitalism/democracy?
61. How did television factor into the outcome of
the presidential election of 1960?
62. What was the impact of the launching of
Sputnik upon the United States?
63. Why were the findings of the Warren
Commission controversial?
64. Why was a direct hotline between Washington
and Moscow important to U.S./Soviet relations
during the Cold War?
65. How did John F. Kennedy challenge the U.S. to
achieve victory in the space race with the Soviets?
66. Which of LBJ’s Great Society programs was
designed to provide government-subsidized health
insurance for the elderly?
55. Why did “white flight” occur in cities during the
1950s-1960s?
56. What form of mass media became ten times
more common in U.S. households from 1948-1966?
67. What was an example of how the federal
government responded to calls for consumer
protection and rights during the 1960s-1970s?
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
68. In what way(s) was Project Head Start supposed
to help American children and their families?
69. How was Michael Harrington’s The Other
America inspirational to many of LBJ’s Great
Society programs?
70. Why did LBJ win an easy victory over
Goldwater in the 1964 election?
71. What was the major factor that contributed to
the demise of the Great Society?
Chapter 29: The Civil Rights Movement, 1955-1970
72. What Supreme Court case in 1896 affirmed the
legality of racial segregation?
73. Which doctrine relating to racial segregation
was overturned by the Supreme Court decision in
Brown v. Board of Education only in relation to
public school facilities?
74. The 1957 Little Rock crisis arose when efforts
were made to:
75. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically
prohibited discrimination in what place(s)?
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79. How did the Selma marches contribute to the
passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
80. What was the response of Montgomery’s black
residents to Rosa Parks’ arrest for violating the
city’s segregation laws?
81. What was Thurgood Marshall’s role in the early
Civil Rights Movement?
82. How did Malcolm X’s philosophy on achieving
civil rights equality differ from Martin Luther King,
Jr., the SCLC, and SNCC?
83. How was the militant nature of “Black Power”
exhibited in the 1972 Munich Olympics?
84. Why was the Black Panthers organization
created?
85. Because of the presence of de facto segregation
in many school districts, how did the Supreme
Court in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of
Education (1970) attempt to forcibly integrate
students?
Chapter 30: The Vietnam War, 1954-1975
86. What Vietnamese political figure had been
fighting for Indochinese independence from 1919
until his death in 1969?
76. How did President Eisenhower respond to the
Little Rock Crisis?
87. What was the “domino theory?”
77. What was the significance of Emmett Till’s
murder in relation to the Civil Rights movement?
88. What provision of the 1954 Geneva Accords
was designed to unify Vietnam one year after its
division at the 17th Parallel?
78. What was Dr. King’s overall message in his
famous I Have a Dream speech in August 1963?
89. Why did Buddhist monks begin practicing selfimmolation throughout South Vietnam in the early
1960s?
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
revised 2014
90. What effect did the Tonkin Gulf Resolution
have on American involvement in South Vietnam?
100. What was Richard Nixon’s plan for withdrawal
from Vietnam via “Vietnamization?”
91. How did the Vietcong plan to wage a successful
war against overwhelming American military
might?
101. How was the War Powers Act supposed to
prevent another presidentially-managed war such as
Vietnam?
92. Although a military failure for the VC and
North Vietnamese, how was the Tet Offensive
psychologically and politically successful for them?
Chapter 31: The Era of Social Change, 1963-1973
102. How did Cesar Chavez improve working
conditions for migrant Mexican workers in the
1960s-1970s?
93. What was the popular name for jellied
petroleum that was used widely by the U.S. to
destroy acres of VC-infested jungle?
103. Why was La Raza Unida Party formed in the
American Southwest in the 1970s?
94. What did CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite,
“the most trusted man in America,” tell America
after visiting Vietnam during Tet?
104. What was Betty Friedan’s argument about
women in American society in her book The
Feminine Mystique?
95. How was the presidential election of 1968
impacted by American involvement in the Vietnam
War?
105. How was the proposed (but failed) Equal
Rights Amendment the culmination of the 2nd
women’s rights movement?
96. Americans predominantly fit into one of which
two groups regarding American involvement in the
Vietnam War?
106. Why did Phyllis Schlafly oppose the Equal
Rights Amendment, even though she herself was a
working woman?
97. What did American atrocities such as the My
Lai massacre reveal about fighting an
unconventional war?
107. What was the impact of the 1973 Supreme
Court decision in Roe v. Wade?
98. After setting fire to the ROTC building on the
campus of Kent State University in 1970, what
happened to the protesters when the Ohio National
Guard appeared to restore order?
99. What was the groundbreaking revelation in
Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the so-called “Pentagon
Papers?”
108. Why did lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)
become a popular drug of choice for members of
the hippie counterculture movement?
109. What drug linked the free-thinking, antiestablishment nature of the 1950s’ Beatniks to the
hippies of the 1960s?
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
110. What was the purpose of the hippies’ Summer
of Love in 1967?
111. How was the Woodstock Music & Art Fair in
August of 1969 an example of the Hippie
Revolution?
112. What popular 1960s band’s evolution of image
and sound became a reflection of or example for the
counterculture movement?
113. Which phrase best sums up a hippie’s cultural
philosophy?
Chapter 32: An Age of Limits, 1972-1980
114. How was Nixon’s New Federalism different
from LBJ’s Great Society?
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122. What was President Nixon’s unprecedented
response to the potential House vote on
impeachment in August 1974?
123. What controversial decision did President Ford
make less than a month after Nixon’s exit from
office?
124. How did the Nixon White House impact the
results of the presidential election of 1976?
125. What was the Camp David Accords?
126. What was/were the primary consequence(s) of
the 1979 Iranian Revolution for the United States?
127. How did the oil crises of 1973 and 1979
manifest themselves for most Americans?
115. What was Nixon’s Southern strategy?
116. What was stagflation?
117. Why did OPEC nations sharply increase oil
prices in the U.S. in 1973?
118. How was Nixon/Kissinger’s Cold War policy
of deténte different from containment?
128. What threat did chemicals like DDT pose
according to environmentalists?
129. What was Nixon’s most important response to
the growing environmentalist movement of the
early 1970s?
130. What impact did the Three Mile Island
incident in 1979 have on US energy policy (to this
day)?
119. What did CREEP and “the Plumbers” do at the
Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972?
120. Why did Nixon conduct a series of firings in
his administration during the “Saturday night
massacre” of October 20, 1973?
121. What was the role of Bob Woodward & Carl
Bernstein in the Watergate scandal?
Chapter 33: A Conservative Movement Emerges,
1980-1991
131. Why did Americans overwhelmingly elect
Reagan in 1980?
132. What groups of Americans made up Reagan’s
Moral Majority that swept him into office?
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
revised 2014
133. How did Reagan plan on ending the Cold War
and cause Communism to fall?
144. Why did Reagan become known as the “Teflon
president?”
134. What was Reagan’s Strategic Defense
Initiative and how was it supposed to end the threat
of mutually assured destruction?
145. How did the Solidarity movement in Poland
help bring down the Iron Curtain?
135. How were supply-side economics supposed to
help generate wealth for Americans, regardless of
class?
146. What happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989
and why did it occur?
147. Why was George H. W. Bush elected to the
presidency in 1988?
136. In the second debate of the 1984 presidential
campaign, what did the aging Reagan say that
probably later won him the election?
137. How was the diplomatic failure of Reagan and
Gorbachev’s summit at Reykjavik in 1986 actually
an American victory?
138. What disease ravaged homosexuals and blood
transfusion patients in the 1980s, becoming a major
social concern?
139. What effect did basketball star Len Bias’ death
in 1986 have on the U.S.’ war on drugs?
140. How did the Supreme Court case Webster v.
Reproductive Health Services restrict legal
abortions?
141. Why was Mikhail Gorbachev the Soviet leader
that the West had been waiting for?
148. Why did the U.S. participate in Operation
Desert Storm in 1991?
Chapter 34: The U.S. in Today’s World, 1992-2001
149. How did the economy impact the 1992
presidential election?
150. How did Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with
America” help convince many Americans that
Clinton was not a liberal president?
151. How did the Lewinsky scandal lead to
Clinton’s eventual impeachment and censure by the
House of Representatives?
152. What were the economic impacts of NAFTA
on the United States?
153. Why was the 2000 presidential election so
closely contested that it led to a Supreme Court case
between the two candidates?
142. Define: glasnost and perestroika.
143. What famous line did Reagan deliver at the
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 1987, foreshadowing
the end of the Cold War?
154. What enormous technology corporation was
broken up in 2001 in violation of antitrust laws for
its dominance of the software and hardware
markets?
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
revised 2014
155. How did Apple help itself grow in business
success and popularity among youth during the
1990s and beyond?
164. What was Timothy McVeigh’s motive behind
the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building
in Oklahoma City?
156. What is the employment phenomenon of
downsizing and how did it affect the U.S. job
market in the 1980s-1990s?
165. Al Qaeda staged an attack against what U.S.
naval vessel in the Gulf of Aden in October 2000,
killing 17 sailors?
157. In what part of the economy did the U.S. begin
to see tremendous job growth by the 1990s?
166. What was the third target of the 9/11 hijackers
that was spared due to the actions of passengers on
board United Airlines Flight 93?
158. Although genetic engineering holds the
possibility of addressing problems such as world
hunger and hereditary disease, why is it so
controversial?
159. What new form of media was included in the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 that allowed
companies to own multiple media services for the
first time?
160. What was the federal government’s position on
recognizing homosexual marriage through the
1990s and early 2000s?
167. What radical Islamic terrorist organization
claimed responsibility for the bombings of
embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998?
168. Why has the U.S. been unable to turn over
control of Afghanistan to its own troops and
government since 2002?
169. What was George W. Bush’s reasoning for the
invasion of Iraq in March 2003?
170. Why was the anti-terrorism Patriot Act of 2001
so controversial?
161. What problems did opponents of illegal
immigration argue were occurring throughout the
1990s and early 2000s?
162. What was the “individual mandate” contained
in the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act
passed by Congress in 2010?
Chapter 35: Terrorism and the War on Terror,
1993-2011
163. What New York City highrise was bombed in
1993 by Ramzi Yousef and other Islamofascist
terrorists?
171. Who was the U.S. able to eliminate from its
“most wanted” list of terrorists on May 2, 2011?
172. Why did Iran’s former president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad use threatening language towards the
United States and allegedly began a uranium
enrichment program (to build a bomb)?
173. Who succeeded Kim Jong Il as leader of North
Korea?
174. Why did the accused terrorist detention center
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba become so controversial?
US HISTORY II – Final Exam Study Guide
175. What happened at Abu Ghraib in 2004 that
challenged how America conducted the War on
Terror?
Identify the following important Americans/ presidents:
180. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
181. Alger Hiss
182. Dr. Benjamin Spock
183. Ralph Nader
184. Eugene “Bull” Connor
185. Gen. William Westmoreland
186. Dr. Timothy Leary
187. Henry Kissinger
188. Art Laffer
189. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
190. Franklin D. Roosevelt
191. Harry S. Truman
192. Dwight D. Eisenhower
193. John F. Kennedy
194. Lyndon B. Johnson
195. Richard M. Nixon
196. Gerald R. Ford
197. Jimmy Carter
198. Ronald Reagan
199. George H. W. Bush
200. Bill Clinton
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