AP US History — Unit 8: Period 8: 1945–1980
Practice questions, answers, and key terms for Unit 8, aligned to the College Board CED.
Exam weighting: Unit 8 is 10-17% of the AP US History exam.
What AP US History Unit 8 covers
The College Board Course and Exam Description breaks Unit 8 into 13 topics:
- 8.2 The Cold War from 1945 to 1980
- 8.3 The Red Scare
- 8.4 Economy after 1945
- 8.5 Culture after 1945
- 8.6 Early Steps in the Civil Rights Movement (1940s and 1950s)
- 8.7 America as a World Power
- 8.8 The Vietnam War
- 8.9 The Great Society
- 8.10 The Civil Rights Movement Expands
- 8.11 The Civil Rights Movement Continues
- 8.12 Youth Culture of the 1960s
- 8.13 The Environment and Natural Resources from 1968 to 1980
- 8.14 Society in Transition
AP US History Unit 8 practice questions
The US and USSR never fired a single shot at each other — yet they spent 45 years locked in a conflict that shaped everything. How do you fight a war without fighting?
The Cold War was an ideological struggle between US and Soviet powers. Democratic capitalism faced authoritarian communism with no direct combat — fought through proxy wars, arms races, propaganda, and competition for global influence from 1945 to 1991.
George Kennan wrote the 'Long Telegram' from Moscow in 1946, arguing the Soviet Union was inherently expansionist. His one-word strategy became the foundation of US foreign policy for 40 years. What was it?
Containment — don't destroy communism where it exists, but block it from spreading. It became the Truman Doctrine (aid to threatened democracies), NATO (collective defense), and the Marshall Plan (rebuild Europe to resist communism).
Stalin blockaded all roads into West Berlin in 1948 to starve the city into submission. The US could have sent tanks — risking WWIII. Instead, they chose something completely different. What?
The Berlin Airlift kept West Berlin supplied by air for nearly a year. US and British planes flew in food, fuel, and supplies until Stalin lifted the blockade, without a shot fired.
After 3 years and 36,000+ American deaths in Korea, the border ended up right back at the 38th parallel — where it started. Was the Korean War a victory, defeat, or something else?
A stalemate — containment worked, but at a constitutional cost. South Korea survived, yet the dangerous precedent was Truman deploying troops without a congressional declaration of war, expanding presidential war power.
McCarthy claimed 205 communists had infiltrated the State Department — with zero evidence. For four years he destroyed careers and paralyzed government. How did he get away with it?
Fear — McCarthy exploited Cold War anxiety to escape accountability. The Soviet nuclear test (1949), communist China, the Korean War, and the Rosenberg spy case created real anxiety, and anyone who challenged him got accused of communist sympathies.
After WWII, Americans had pent-up savings, new tech, and a booming economy — buying houses, cars, TVs. Babies arrived by the millions. Who was LEFT OUT of the prosperity?
About 1 in 5 Americans lived in poverty, and the boom was deeply racially unequal. Redlining excluded Black families from suburban homeownership, and women were pressured back into domestic roles.
William Levitt built 17,000 identical houses using assembly-line techniques — affordable, efficient, and whites-only. What was this community, and why did it matter beyond housing?
Levittown was the model American suburb — and it was whites-only. GI Bill loans made it cheap for white middle-class veterans, but Levitt refused to sell to Black families, backed by the FHA, creating the white-flight pattern that shaped cities and schools for decades.
By the 1950s, most Americans watched the same TV shows, bought the same products, and aspired to the same suburban lifestyle. Who rejected this conformity — and how?
The Beat Generation (Kerouac, Ginsberg) rejected middle-class materialism and conformity. Rock and roll — rooted in Black rhythm and blues, mainstreamed by Elvis — gave teenagers a rebellious identity separate from adult culture.
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Key terms in Unit 8
These 12 terms show up in the Unit 8 cards. Each one links to its definition in the AP US History key-term reference.
Drill all of Unit 8 with spaced repetition
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