AP US HistoryMarch 30 – April 10 2020 (updated)

Okay guys, we are getting drips and drabs from the College Board on the 2020 test. So, here’s what we know so far:

The exam will be all free response (apparently LEQ and SAQ format) which is great news if you hate my MCQs.

The material will cover History Periods 1 – 7 which is also good news because you will only be on your own for the end of WWII and early Cold War. I think that your best plan of action is to go to ap classroom and start looking over Unit 7.12 – 7.15 of the College Board’s Unit Seven Materials.

Here is Tom Ritchey’s Materials Also. https://www.tomrichey.net/wwii-and-the-cold-war.html

As many of you know by now, SCS has mandated that no graded materials be required for the 4thQ. While I think that this is ridiculous, I have no recourse. Here is Ms. Holland explaining the situationhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UruDqvBm4IM&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR25LOiV0z68yh3tNCqFYmfrFHOECKb--bcAMLPbrFnQrTEPsh0307VYMss

I will provide links and materials to help you and I am of course available if you have questions. I have continued to but in 4Q grades as a way for me to keep up. I so much appreciate those of you who continued to send me assignments and I hope that you will not give up. This might be the greatest chance ever to score a 4 or 5 on the exam. This can happen if you will use the time COVID-19 has provided for prep work.

I unlocked all of the FRQ and MCQ progress checks from ap classroom also. I still this MCQ practice will help you get ready. I also opened all of the Old Quia quizzes and a few that we have not yet done. See links below.

MONDAY - TUESDAY

Examine the socio-economic and political impact of WWII on the Home front 1941 – 1945 (CUL-3) (POL-6) (WXT-2)

Materials Strategy/FormatPpt and video R.CCR.2-3

Student Skill TypesChronological Reasoning (1, 2, 3)Comp/Context (5)Historical Evidence (6,7)

Introduction The impact especially among Japanese-Americans was for more difficult that what German-Americans had face during WWI. This was truly one of the most negative side effects. By Executive Order 9066 had forced thousands to relocate in what was termed internment camps for the duration of the war. This was a reflection of Japanese attacks that could jeopardize the west coast but really it more aptly reflected the racism of the era magnified by the attack on Pearl Harbor.

On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt authorized the Department of War to designate military areas and to exclude any or all persons from them. Armed with this power, military authorities immediately moved against Japanese aliens. In Hawaii, the military did not force Japanese Americans to relocate because a large portion of the population was of Japanese ancestry and the local economy depended on their labor. On the West Coast, however, military authorities ordered the Japanese to leave, drawing no distinction between aliens and citizens. Forced to sell their property for pennies on the dollar, most Japanese Americans suffered severe financial losses. Relocation proved next to impossible as no other states would take them. Japanese Americans protested their treatment in court. Citing national security considerations, the Supreme Court upheld the internment order by a six to three vote in the case, Korematsu v. U.S. (1944). In a dissenting opinion, however, Frank Murphy admitted that federal policy had fallen "into the ugly abyss of racism." On December 18, 1944, in the Endo case, the Supreme Court ruled that a civilian agency (the War Relocation Authority) had no right to incarcerate law-abiding citizens. Two weeks later, the federal government began closing down the camps, ending one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

About 18,000 Japanese American men won release from those camps to fight for the United States Army. Most served with the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Most of the Nessi Regiments fought in Italy where the 442nd sustained nearly 10,000 casualties, with 3,600 Purple Hearts, 810 Bronze Stars, 342 Silver Stars, 123 divisional citations, 47 Distinguished Service Crosses, 17 Legions of Merit, 7 Presidential Unit Citations, and 1 Congressional Medal of Honor (digitalhistory.com). In short, they fought heroically, emerging as the most decorated military unit in World War II. In one of the most painful scenes in American history, Japanese American parents, still locked inside concentration camps, received posthumous Purple Hearts for their sons.

There is no question that the Second World War had a more far reaching impact upon American History than the first war did. The duration, cost and death toll guaranteed that would be the case. Today we will

look at several socio-cultural results. Also important was the result that the war had upon the economy and politics.

The Propaganda War and Stoking Patriotism

For sure the Second World War did not feature the need to convince Americans of the war as had been true in Wilson’s time. The bombing of Pearl Harbor completely assured that but the issue was that we were also at war with Germany and Italy. Also, by 1942 Americans had to also be shown the need to support the Soviets. This was somewhat problematic since a byproduct of WWI was the Red Scare, as Americans felt sure that a communist takeover by Bolsheviks was coming.

President Roosevelt hoped to avoid the crude propaganda campaigns that had stirred ethnic hatred during World War I. Nevertheless, anti-Japanese propaganda was intense. Movies, comic strips, newspapers, books, and even store advertisements caricatured Japanese by portraying them with thick glasses and huge buck teeth.

Motion pictures emerged as the most important instrument of propaganda during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, Hollywood quickly enlisted in the war cause. The studios quickly copyrighted movie titles like Yellow Peril and V for Victory. Hollywood's greatest contribution to the war effort was morale. Combat films produced during the war emphasized patriotism, group effort, and the value of sacrifice for a larger cause. The films portrayed World War II as a peoples' war, typically featuring a group of men from diverse ethnic backgrounds thrown together, tested on the battlefield, and molded into a dedicated fighting unit. Wartime films also featured women serving as combat nurses, riveters, welders, and long-suffering mothers who kept the home fires burning. Off-screen, leading actors and actresses led recruitment and bond drives and entertained the troops. Leading directors like Frank Capra and John Huston made documentaries to explain "why we fight" and to show civilians what actual combat looked like. Some film stars like Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart joined active duty regiments. Ronald Reagan was, before the war, one of the up and coming stars and he left Hollywood for the war effort. Some say that his time away damaged his career but made him interested in politics. Hopefully you already know where that led.

Shifting Social and Cultural Patterns World War II produced important changes in American life--some trivial, others profound. One striking

change involved fashion. To conserve wool and cotton, dresses became shorter and vests and cuffs disappeared, as did double-breasted suits, pleats, and ruffles. Even more significant was the tremendous increase in mobility. The war set families in motion, pulling them off of farms and out of small towns and packing them into large urban areas. Urbanization had virtually stopped during the Depression, but the war saw the number of city dwellers leap from 46 to 53 percent. New fabrics like nylon developed and replaced silk hosiery as that material was used to make parachutes. Even women’s braziers were changed as the metal under wires were removed (I know I know….insert your joke here)

War industries sparked the urban growth. Detroit's population exploded as the automotive industry switched from manufacturing cars to war vehicles. Washington, D.C. became another boomtown, as tens of thousands of new workers staffed the swelling ranks of the bureaucracy. The most dramatic growth occurred in California. Of the 15 million civilians who moved across state lines during the war, over 2 million went to California to work in defense industries.

Women and the War Effort

As most of you correctly answered on the last test, in 1920 women won the right to vote with the 19th amendment mostly because of the war. However, the economic and social gains were short-lived. The Second World War had a more dramatic impact on women. The sudden appearance of large numbers of women in uniform was easily the most visible change. The military organized women into auxiliary units with special uniforms, their own officers, and, amazingly, equal pay. By 1945, more than 250,000 women had joined the Women's Army Corps (WAC), the Army Nurses Corps, Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), the Navy Nurses Corps, the Marines, and the Coast Guard. Most women

who joined the armed services either filled traditional women's roles, such as nursing, or replaced men in non-combat jobs. However over 200 women were killed in combat situations as nurses close to the front lines.

Women also substituted for men on the home front. For the first time in history, married working women outnumbered single working women as 6.3 million women entered the work force during the war. The war challenged the conventional image of female behavior, as "Rosie the Riveter" became the popular symbol of women who abandoned traditional female occupations to work in defense industries. Social critics had a field day attacking women. Though it is somewhat debatable, social workers blamed working mothers for the rise in juvenile delinquency during the war. The effects on family and child rearing were dramatic. The term “latch-key kids” or “Eight-Hour orphans” first introduced a now common idea of older siblings making sure that younger ones did chores and work on homework. Of course single-child families demanded much more from kids.

African-Americans and the Origins of the Civil Rights Campaign One of the most important effects of the war was the impact and creation of the civil rights movement. n

1941, the overwhelming majority of the nation's African American population--10 of 13 million--still lived in the South, primarily in rural areas. During the war, more than one million blacks migrated to the North--twice the number during World War I--and more than two million found work in defense industries.

Black leaders fought discrimination vigorously. In the spring of 1941 (months before America entered the war), the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A. Philip Randolph, with strong backing from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), called for 150,000 blacks to march on Washington to protest discrimination in defense industries. Embarrassed and concerned, Roosevelt issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination in defense industries and creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).

During the war, the Marines excluded blacks, the Navy used them as servants, and the Army created separate black regiments commanded mostly by white officers. The Red Cross even segregated blood plasma.

As urban areas swelled with defense workers, housing and transportation shortages exacerbated racial tensions. In 1943, a riot broke out in Detroit in a federally-sponsored housing project when whites wanted blacks barred from the new apartments named, ironically, in honor of Sojourner Truth. White soldiers from a nearby base joined the fighting, and other federal troops had to be brought in to disperse the mobs. The violence left 35 blacks and 9 whites dead.

Similar conflicts erupted across the nation exposing, in each instance, the same jarring contradiction: White Americans espoused equality abroad but practiced discrimination at home. One black soldier told Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, "Just carve on my tombstone, here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man." A 1942 survey showed that many black Americans sympathized with the Japanese struggle to expel white colonialists from the Far East. Significantly, the same survey revealed a majority of white industrialists in the South preferred a German victory to racial equality for blacks.

During World War II, the NAACP intensified its legal campaign against discrimination, and its membership grew from 50,000 to 500,000. Some African Americans, however, considered the NAACP too slow and too conciliatory. Rejecting legal action, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in 1942, organized a series of "sit-ins." In what was called the Double V campaign the organization pioneered the non-violent protests made famous by Dr. Martin Luther King. Civil disobedience produced a few victories in the North, but the South's response was brutal. In Tennessee, for example, angry whites savagely beat the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin for refusing to move to the back of the bus. We will discuss later the impact that the death of two veterans at the hands of a white mob had upon President Truman as a factor in his executive order desegregating the military and federal government.

Hispanic Americans It is also not surprising that the war had a huge impact upon Hispanic Americans (predominately Mexican

and Puerto-Rican at this point). Almost 400,000 Mexican Americans served in the armed forces during the war. Most served in the Pacific theatre. For many Mexican Americans, jobs in industry provided an escape hatch from the desperate poverty of migratory farm labor. In New Mexico, about one-fifth of the rural Mexican American population left for war-related jobs.

The need for farm workers rose dramatically after Pearl Harbor. To meet the demand, the United States established the Bracero (work hands) Program in 1942, and by 1945, several hundred thousand Mexican workers had immigrated to the Southwest. Commercial farmers welcomed them; labor unions, however, resented the competition, leading to animosity and discrimination against Mexicans and Mexican Americans alike.

In Los Angeles, ethnic tensions erupted into violence. Anglo society feared and resented newly formed Mexican American youth gangs, whose members celebrated their ethnicity by wearing flamboyant "zoot suits." In June 1943, hundreds of White sailors, on liberty from nearby naval bases, invaded downtown Los Angeles. Eager to put down the Mexican American youths, they attacked the zoot suiters, and riots broke out for several nights. The local press blamed the Mexican American gangs, and the riots did not end until military police ordered sailors back to their ships.

Jewish Americans and the Holocaust One of the most enduring questions of the war was why the U.S. did so little to aid Jews once the

holocaust was revealed. Of course, some conspiracy nags claim the U.S. so hated Jews that they wanted to see Hitler successful. It is terrible that anti-Semitism was a common feature of western culture. As early as June 1942, word reached the United States that the Nazis were planning the annihilation of the European Jews. A report smuggled from Poland to London described in detail the killing centers at Chelmno and the use of gas vans, and it estimated that 700,000 people had already been killed.

Anti-Semitism fueled by the Depression and by demagogues, like the radio priest Father Coughlin, influenced immigration policy. In 1939, pollsters found that 53 percent of those interviewed agreed with the statement "Jews are different and should be restricted." Between 1933 and 1945, the United States took in only 132,000 Jewish refugees, only 10 percent of the quota allowed by law.

Reflecting a nasty strain of anti-Semitism, Congress in 1939 refused to raise immigration quotas to admit 20,000 Jewish children fleeing Nazi oppression. Instead of relaxing immigration quotas, American officials worked in vain to persuade Latin American countries and Great Britain to admit Jewish refugees. In January 1944, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, as the only Jew in the Cabinet, presented the president with a "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews." Shamed into action, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, which, in turn, set up refugee camps in Italy, North Africa, and the United States.

The images are indelibly etched into our collective memory: slave laborers with protruding ribs; piles of hair; and bodies heaped like kindling. During World War II, Nazi Germany and its allies systematically exterminated approximately six million Jews. No more than 450,000 to 500,000 Jews survived World War II in German-occupied Europe. Despite efforts by retreating Nazis to destroy incriminating evidence, meticulous German records allow us to document the number of people killed. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler, a top Hitler aide, stated that, "We have the moral right...to destroy this people," and called the extermination program "a glorious page in our history."

The Nazis operated six death camps in Eastern Europe between December 1941 and the end of 1944: Chelmno, Belzek, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. At Auschwitz in Poland, gas chambers and crematorium ovens killed 20,000 victims a day. Zyklon B crystals were injected into gas chambers by small openings in the ceiling or on the side of the wall. Altogether, 1.6 million people were killed at Auschwitz--1.3 million were Jews and 300,000 were Polish Catholics, Gypsies, and Russian prisoners--and their ashes were dumped in surrounding ponds and fields. The ashes of about 100,000 people lie in a small pond near one of the crematories

Once the war ended and the calls for the creation of Israel as an independent nation accelerated, the Truman Administration acted swiftly to give diplomatic recognition to Israel in 1948. He did this despite advice from the State Department who warned that such a move would anger the Arabs in the region and cause major policy issues from that point forward. It should surprise no one that Truman’s Democratic Party won the Jewish vote in 1948.

War Mobilization and the Economic Impact of the War World War One required government involvement in the economy not seen since the Civil War.

Obviously, WWII will be bigger and the results more marked. World War II cost America 1 million casualties and over 300,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It had an immediate impact on the economy by ending Depression-era unemployment. The war accelerated corporate mergers and the trend toward large-scale agriculture. Labor unions also grew during

the war as the government adopted pro-union policies, continuing the New Deal's sympathetic treatment of organized labor.

Presidential power expanded enormously during World War II, anticipating the rise of what postwar critics termed the "imperial presidency." The use of Executive Orders (though still somewhat rare) increased dramatically. The Democrats reaped a political windfall from the war. Roosevelt rode the wartime emergency to unprecedented third and fourth terms. The 1944 Election saw another FDR victory but Thomas Dewey made major gains in the Midwest. In fact, Harry Truman was placed on the VP ticket because FDR knew he was weak in that area.

The Allies prevailed in World War II because of the United States' astounding productive capacity. During the Depression year of 1937, Americans produced 4.8 million cars, while the Germans produced 331,000 and the Japanese 26,000. By 1945, the United States was turning out 88,410 tanks to Germany's 44,857; the U.S. manufactured 299,293 aircraft to Japan's 69,910. The American ratio of toilet paper was 22.5 sheets per man per day, compared with the British ration of 3 sheets. In Germany, civilian consumption fell by 20 percent; in Japan by 26 percent; in Britain by 12 percent. But in the United States, personal consumption rose by more than 12 percent (eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII)

During World War II, the federal government took an even larger economic role than it did during the World War I. To gain the support of business leaders, the federal government suspended competitive bidding, offered cost-plus contracts, guaranteed low-cost loans for retooling, and paid huge subsidies for plant construction and equipment. Lured by huge profits, the American auto industry made the switch to military production. In 1940, some 6,000 planes rolled off Detroit's assembly lines; production of planes jumped to 47,000 in 1942; and by the end of the war, it exceeded 100,000.

To encourage agricultural production, the Roosevelt administration set crop prices at high levels. Cash income for farmers jumped from $2.3 billion in 1940 to $9.5 billion in 1945. Meanwhile, many small farmers, saddled with huge debts from the depression, abandoned their farms for jobs in defense plants or the armed services. Over 5 million farm residents left rural areas during the war.

Overall, the war brought unprecedented prosperity to Americans. Per capita income rose from $373 in 1940 to $1,074 in 1945. Workers never had it so good. Rising incomes, however, created shortages of goods and high inflation. Prices soared 18 percent between 1941 and the end of 1942. Apples sold for 10 cents apiece; the price of a watermelon soared to $2.50; and oranges reached an astonishing $1.00 a dozen.

Many goods were unavailable regardless of price. To conserve steel, glass, and rubber for war industries, the government halted production of cars in December 1941. A month later, production of vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, radios, sewing machines, and phonographs ceased. Altogether, production of nearly 300 items deemed nonessential to the war effort was banned or curtailed, including coat hangers, beer cans, and toothpaste tubes. The plastics industry became highly lucrative in war production.

Congress responded to surging prices by establishing the Office of Price Administration (OPA) in January 1942, with the power to freeze prices and wages, control rents, and institute rationing of scarce items. The OPA quickly rationed food stuffs. Every month each man, woman, and child in the country received two ration books--one for canned goods and one for meat, fish and dairy products. Meat was limited to 28 ounces per person a week; sugar to 8-12 ounces; and coffee, a pound every five weeks. Rationing was soon extended to tires, gasoline, and shoes. Drivers were allowed a mere 3 gallons a week; pedestrians were limited to two pairs of shoes a year. The OPA extolled the virtues of self-sacrifice, telling people to "use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

In addition to rationing, Washington attacked inflation by reducing the public's purchasing power. In 1942, the federal government levied a 5 percent withholding tax on anyone who earned more than $642 a year. The war created 17 million new jobs at the exact moment when 15 million men and women entered the armed services--unemployment virtually disappeared. Union membership jumped from 10.5 million to 14.75 million during the war.

HomeworkHere is a quia quiz for review once you have reviewed the above materials and looked over the videos below

World War II and the Home Fronthttp://www.quia.com/quiz/5274043.html

Here are a couple of videos that quickly review the materials above.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KePr03XEICw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa2UgA-2FhE

WEDNESDAY - FRIDAY Examine the origins of the Cold War Period (1945 – 1991) (WOR-6,7) (POL-6) Discuss the Cold War during the Truman Administration 1945 - 1952(POL-6)

Materials Strategy/FormatPPT Lecture and Discussion L.CCR.2-3Docs set 1940s sources Close Text Reading W.CCR.1-2

Student Skill TypesChronological Reasoning (1, 2, 3)Comp/Context (5)Historical Evidence (6,7)

Introduction

Throughout the year we have seen many terms that are misnomers. The Era of Good Feelings, the Gilded Age etc….). One final term that seems to defy true definition is the Cold War. We are about to enter a period of history that is very long and often times confusing. The term implies that the major powers never fought i.e. a “hot war.” And while the Soviets and the U.S. never truly fought, they did arm others. However, the U.S. did, during the Korean War fight Communist China.

There is a great tragedy about the Cold War because tensions developed between the Democratic West and the Communist East really before the Second World War ended. Winston Churchill said, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed his belief that world peace was nearer the grasp of statesmen than at any time in history. "It would be a great tragedy," he said, "if they, through inertia or carelessness, let it slip from their grasp. History would never forgive them if it did."

Peace did slip through their grasp. World War II was followed by a Cold War that pitted the United States and its Allies against the Soviet Union and its supporters. It was called a Cold War, but it would flare into violence in Korea and Vietnam and in many smaller conflicts. The period from 1946 to 1991 was

“Cold War?! It felt pretty dang hot to me

back in the Korean War!”

punctuated by a series of East-West confrontations over Germany, Poland, Greece, Czechoslovakia, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and many other hot spots

The Yalta and Potsdam Conferences The first blush of tensions occurred at the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences 1944 – 1945. At the Yalta

Conference meetings between Stalin, FDR, and Churchill tried to organize the war effort but most importantly the post-war world. The dynamic between the three men shaped events. Churchill far more realistically did not trust Stalin and believed that he had plans to occupy Europe himself. FDR while he truly liked Churchill also did not fully trust that Britain was ready to abandon their empire and allow its people to determine their own fate. Stalin did not trust the western powers at all and sought to protect the Soviet Union from capitalist influences. To some degree all three had sound reasons for worry.

In 1945 following Germany’s surrender the Potsdam Meeting was held. FDR had died and Truman replaced him. Churchill while at the initial meeting was defeated in his re-election and was replaced by the new Prime Minister Clement Atlee. Only Stalin remained. Truman did not trust Stalin and tensions were palpable.

One source of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union was the fate of Eastern Europe and especially Poland. The United States was committed to free and democratic elections in Eastern Europe, while the Soviet Union wanted a buffer zone of friendly countries in Eastern Europe to protect it from future attacks from the West. This zone would ultimately exist until 1988-89 against the will of the eastern European states. Even before World War II ended, the Soviet Union had annexed the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and parts of Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland, and Romania. Albania established a Communist government in 1944, and Yugoslavia formed one in 1945. In 1946, the Soviet Union organized Communist governments in Bulgaria and Romania, and in Hungary and Poland in 1947. Communists took over Czechoslovakia in a coup d'etat in 1948.

Another source of East-West tension was control of nuclear weapons. In 1946, the Soviet Union rejected a U.S. proposal for an international agency to control nuclear energy production and research. The Soviets were convinced that the United States was trying to preserve its monopoly on nuclear weapons.

A third source of conflict was post-war economic development assistance. The United States refused a Soviet request for massive reconstruction loans. In response, the Soviets called for substantial reparations from Germany. The U.S. was against this and of course saw this as one cause of WWI.

The Truman Doctrine So, by 1946 with WWII not even a year old the first shot in the ideological war had begun. Winston

Churchill had been invited to give the commencement address at Westminster College in Missouri, the home state of President Truman. In the speech Winston Churchill announced that "an iron curtain has descended across" Europe. On one side was the Communist bloc; on the other side were non-Communist nations. This was like a call to arms for the young graduates in the crowd. Sadly most of these young people would live their whole lives with specter of World War III.

Another cornerstone of action was a telegram from George Kennan. He wrote a 8,000-word telegram from George Kennan, an Embassy official.   This has become known as 'the Long Telegram', and it said exactly what the American government wanted it to. 

 Kennan hated Communism and the Soviet government.   However, he had lived in Moscow since 1933 and knew what he was talking about.   His telegram was re-written as a paper entitled: The Sources of Soviet Conduct and read by many Americans.   It formed the basis of American policy towards Russia for the next quarter of a century. As an expert on Russian History his views were taken very seriously. To President Truman and many in the State Department believed that Stalin had merely replaced Hitler as a threat to world peace. With this in mind the U.S. made an important policy shift. Isolationism was now dead forever.

By February 1947, Britain informed the United States that it could no longer afford to provide aid to Greece and Turkey. The situation seemed urgent. The Greek monarchy was threatened by Communist guerrilla warfare, and the Soviet Union was seeking to control the Dardanelles in Turkey, a water route to the Mediterranean. The U.S. government feared that the loss of Greece and Turkey to communism would open Western Europe and Africa to Soviet influence. The U.S government also worried that if the Soviet Union gained control over the Eastern Mediterranean, it could stop the flow of Middle Eastern oil. This was the first time in a long history of U.S. fears over oil.

President Truman responded decisively. He asked Congress for $400 million in economic and military aid for Greece and Turkey. This was an unprecedented amount of foreign aid during peacetime. He also declared that it was the policy of the United States "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

Truman's overarching message described two ways of life that were engaged in a life-or-death struggle, one free and the other totalitarian. The United States would help free people to maintain their free institutions and their territorial integrity against movements that sought to impose totalitarian regimes.

The Truman Doctrine committed the United States to providing aid to countries resisting communist aggression or subversion and provided the first step toward what would become known as the Containment Policy This idea was supported by Dean Acheson who became Truman’s Secretary of State in his second term. It was based upon a fairly valid assumption: Communism was like a virus that infected states especially those that were poor. The Containment Policy would adopt two approaches. One approach was military; the other was economic. In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall who had been the head of the military during WWII proposed a program to funnel American economic aid to Europe. Faced with a rapid growth in the size of Communist parties, especially in France and Italy, the U.S. proposed a program of direct economic aid

The Marshall Plan Marshall a meeting in Paris to discuss the proposal with world leaders. He called on Europeans to

collectively agree on what kind of assistance they needed. Even the Soviet Union was invited to participate in the planning.

The Soviet delegation abruptly quit the summit in Paris to discuss the Marshall offer. When two Soviet satellites--Czechoslovakia and Poland--indicated that they wanted to take part in the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union said no. The Soviet refusal to participate made it easier to secure congressional passage for the plan. When the Czechoslovakian government was overthrown in a Communist coup, congressional passage was assured.

It is doubtful that the U.S. could now perform such a huge task. The Marshall Plan committed more than 10 percent of the federal budget and almost 3 percent of the United States' gross national product to rebuilding Western Europe. Over the next 40 months, Congress authorized $12.5 billion in aid to restore Western Europe's economic health and to halt the spread of communism. Marshall's plan actually cost the United States very little, since it was largely paid for by European purchases of American coal, agricultural crops, and machinery

The First Chance for World War III: Berlin 1949 The Soviet Union was now set to challenge the will of the Allied powers. At the end of the war Berlin was

divided into zones of control as agreed upon at Yalta. There was supposed to be free movement between all sectors. In 1947, the United States, British, French, and Soviet officials met in Moscow to discuss the future of Germany. The participants were unable to agree about whether to end the occupation of Germany or to reunify the country. The conference's failure led the Western Allies to unify their German occupation zones in June 1948 and to establish West Germany.

Berlin Blockade Outraged by Western plans to create an independent West Germany, Soviet forces imposed a blockade

cutting off rail, highway, and water traffic between West Germany and West Berlin. A day later, an airlift began called Operation Vittles. Transport planes began flying in food and supplies for West Berlin's two million residents. By September, the airlift was carrying 4,500 tons of supplies a day. Over the next 11 months, 277,000 flights brought in 2.5 million tons of supplies until the Soviet Union lifted the blockade.

Why would the Soviets not shoot down the planes? First, they were unarmed and second, Truman very publicly deployed nuclear capable B-29 bombers to Britain, easy flying range to Moscow or Leningrad.

NATO In April 1949, a month before the Soviet Union lifted the Berlin Blockade, the United States, Canada,

Iceland and nine European nations formed NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization). Member states pledged mutual assistance against an armed attack and cooperation in military training and strategic planning.

The U.S. stationed troops in Western Europe, assuring its Allies that it would use its nuclear deterrent to protect Western Europeans against a Soviet attack. The admission of West Germany into NATO in 1955 led the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites to form a competing military alliance called the Warsaw Pact. To a degree the world was now bipolar as it had been just before WWI. It would largely stay this way until the 1970s when Nixon and Kissinger went to China and developed closer relations.

The Arms Race In September 1949, President Truman announced that the Soviet Union had successfully detonated an

atomic bomb. Four months later, President Truman advised the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of a hydrogen bomb.

U.S. government officials had predicted that it would take the Soviet Union as long as a decade to develop an atomic bomb. The speed with which the Soviets produced a bomb led to charges that development of the device was a product of Soviet espionage. The United States set off its first hydrogen bomb in 1953, and the Soviet Union tested its first bomb in 1955.

HomeworkHere is a quia review of WWII and the Cold War Period that will be posted Monday April 6

WWII and Early Cold Warhttp://www.quia.com/quiz/7667009.html