AP European History Unit 9 Essentials

Winston Churchill's term for the ideological and physical divide separating Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe from the West; the American policy of "containment," backed by the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan, sought to stop the spread of communism beyond it.

The 1945 wartime meetings among Allied leaders that decided the postwar fate of Germany and Europe, planting the seeds of later Cold War disagreements over occupation zones and self-determination in Eastern Europe.

U.S. policies committing American aid and support to countries resisting communism (the Truman Doctrine) and funding the economic reconstruction of Western Europe (the Marshall Plan), both central to the strategy of containment.

NATO (1949) united the United States, Canada, and Western European democracies in a mutual-defense alliance against Soviet expansion; the Warsaw Pact (1955) bound the USSR and its Eastern European satellite states together militarily in response.

Berlin became the most visible flashpoint of the divided Cold War city: the USSR's 1948–49 blockade was broken by an Allied airlift, and in 1961 East Germany built the Berlin Wall to stop the flow of citizens fleeing to the West.

Eastern European nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia placed under Soviet political and military domination after World War II, governed by Moscow-aligned communist regimes.

A popular revolt against Soviet-imposed communist rule in Hungary, crushed by Soviet military intervention, demonstrating the limits of resistance within the Eastern Bloc.

A period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia under Alexander Dubček, ended when Warsaw Pact troops invaded to restore hardline communist control.

The 1962 confrontation over Soviet missiles in Cuba brought the U.S. and USSR to the brink of nuclear war and intensified the broader nuclear arms race that produced constant anxiety across Cold War Europe.

The post-World War II process by which European powers lost or relinquished control of their colonial empires in Africa and Asia, driven by independence movements, war exhaustion, and changing global norms.

The brutal 1954–62 conflict in which Algerian nationalists fought for and won independence from France, becoming a defining and divisive episode in France's decolonization.

Britain's 1947 withdrawal from India, ending nearly two centuries of colonial rule and accompanied by the partition of India and Pakistan — a major milestone in the broader retreat from empire.

The 1957 organization that promoted economic cooperation and a common market among Western European states, gradually expanding in membership and authority into today's European Union.

Postwar Western European governments expanded social welfare programs to support citizens, while West Germany's rapid postwar economic recovery — the Wirtschaftswunder, or "economic miracle" — became a model of recovery driven by industrial rebuilding and American aid.

A wave of student protests, labor strikes, and social movements swept Europe in 1968, paralleling the rise of second-wave feminism, which challenged gender roles and expanded women's rights and opportunities.

Postwar labor shortages drew immigrants from former colonies and other regions into Western Europe, gradually transforming European societies into more multicultural ones and sparking ongoing debates over assimilation and national identity.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring") loosened censorship and attempted economic reform, unintentionally accelerating the unraveling of Soviet control over Eastern Europe.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 amid mass protests across Eastern Europe, Germany reunified in 1990, and the Soviet Union itself dissolved in 1991 — bringing the Cold War to an end.

Since 1991, Europe has grappled with EU expansion into former Eastern Bloc states, globalization, and persistent debates over immigration and national identity, even as European integration continues to evolve and face new limits.