How did the Cold War affect notions of freedom in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s? In the context of a geopolitical struggle with Soviet communism, how did Americans come to define freedom at home? How did they seek to spread it abroad – and at what cost?
What is “containment”?
1.The attempt to root out Communist infiltrators in the U.S. State Department.
An early Cold War attempt to control and limit the production of nuclear weapons.
A cornerstone of American foreign policy during the Cold War, it suggested that the U.S. must “contain” communism within its borders while supporting democratic and capitalist regimes.
A word that the beatniks and other cultural radicals used to describe the stifling conservatism and consensus of American culture in the 1950s.
2.A witness famously accused which politician of having “no sense of decency”?
Joseph McCarthy
Harry Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Richard Nixon
3.In the 1950s, the U.S. actively intervened in the domestic political affairs of all the following countries, EXCEPT:
Vietnam
Guatemala
France
Iran
4.The Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision stated that __.
A federal income tax was constitutional.
State employees were allowed to form labor unions.
Racial status could be considered in college admissions.
The racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional.
5.All of the following were conscious forms of rebellion against mainstream American culture in the 1950s, EXCEPT:
The suburbs
Playboy magazine
Beat poetry
Rock n’ Roll music
6.According to Harry Truman’s “Truman Doctrine” (Document 159), the Cold War presented every country with a choice “between alternative ways of life,” one advanced by the United States, and the other by the Soviets. According to Truman, all of the following are characteristics of the free (or American) way of life, EXCEPT:
Free elections
The will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority
The will of the majority
Freedom of speech and religion
- In “What Freedom Means to Us” (Document 167), Richard Nixon makes all of the following arguments, EXCEPT:
Factory earners in the United States can afford to buy a house, a television set, and a car.
Americans are free to join a union, criticize the president, and buy a Soviet newspaper.
In the United States, the rich were rich because they had worked harder and saved more money. It would be unjust to ask them to pay taxes.
From the standpoint of the equitable distribution of wealth, the United States comes closer to the idea of “prosperity for all in a classless society” than the Soviet Union has.
8.Truman Administration program provided some $13 million in cash and supplies to the struggling economies of Western Europe to help rebuild after the end of World War II.
The Marshall Plan
The European Relief Fund
The Peace Corps
The Truman Initiative
9.This plan recommended that the President intensify containment policy against the Soviet Union at home and abroad, increase military spending, accelerate the nation’s arms program, and engage in “covert means” to disrupt communist countries.
The Marshall Plan
The Yalta Conference
NSC-68
NATO
10.Although the Second Red Scare of the 1950s unfairly and unjustly targeted innocent American citizens for being Communists, Soviet espionage was a legitimate threat at the beginning of the Cold War.
True
False