![]() This foreign policy debate took place within an atmosphere of growing alarm over a Communist threat at home that was partly generated by President Truman himself with the 1947 Loyalty-Security Program, which required government employees to sign loyalty oaths and cast suspicion upon “leftists,” citizens who held ideas perceived to be Communist-inspired. Nonetheless, its authors recommended that the United States try to persuade the Soviets that America had no aggressive intentions toward them and that the two countries could, in fact, coexist peacefully. A 1946 report to President Truman prepared by advisors Clark Clifford and George Elsey concluded that the Soviet Union was an expansionist power, not only in pursuit of world domination but utterly convinced that it could not coexist with the United States. In the five years after World War II policy makers in Washington debated Soviet intentions and the possibility of achieving peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. The “iron curtain” that separated the free nations of Western Europe from the Soviet-occupied states of the East was firmly in place. The Soviets pursued an expansionist policy that, by 1948, had brought Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia under its sway. The United States and its allies, on the other hand, were more interested in rebuilding Germany than in extracting reparations, and they demanded independent governments throughout Eastern Europe. Moreover, since Russia had experienced two devastating wars in thirty years, losing close to forty million people, the Soviets wanted to establish a buffer zone of friendly Soviet-controlled governments around them to ensure that no land attack would ever threaten Russia again. To insure that it would never attack them again, they insisted that Germany - which had been divided into American, British, French, and Soviet occupation zones - be stripped of its ability to make war. The Soviets demanded that Germany make huge payments to repair the damage it did to their country. The former allies disagreed on many issues, but the chief source of conflict was the question of what to do about defeated Germany and Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. When peace came in 1945, relations did not improve. Text analysis and close reading questionsĮven during World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union were allied against Nazi Germany, relations between the two nations were characterized by tension and distrust.Text analysis and close reading questions with answer key.The student version of this lesson, an interactive PDF, includes all of the above, except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-up assignment. Finally, the fourth exercise challenges students to recommend specific actions to implement the policies of NSC 68. It is not only an exercise in drawing inferences but also an exercise in close reading because each argument contains a word that is key to identifying its corresponding policy. The third asks students to match policy options with arguments against them. The second considers how the authors of NSC 68 relied on the connotations of words to help make their case. The first interactive exercise explores vocabulary in context. The former includes a background essay, a textual analysis with close reading questions and responses, four interactive exercises, and an optional follow-up assignment. This lesson is divided into two parts, a teacher’s guide and a student version, both accessible below. Through close reading this lesson examines key passages from the report’s critical early sections to help students see why the United States believed it had to confront the Soviet Union and why the Cold War spread beyond Europe to become a global conflict. To understand America’s actions during the Cold War, it is essential to understand NSC 68 - the 1950 report, requested by President Truman and prepared by the National Security Council (NSC), that guided American foreign policy for nearly forty years. Key Concept 8.1 (IA) (…the US developed a foreign policy based on collective security…)..11-12.6 (determine author’s point of view)..11-12.1 (cite evidence to analyze specifically and by inference).
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