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U.S. History

Unit 8

World War II and the Early Cold War

7 topics · 27 practice questions · Free responseNot yet reviewed

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Notes

Road to war

  • Dictators in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union and Japan expanded in the 1930s. Britain and France tried appeasement at Munich.
  • The U.S. stayed isolationist (Neutrality Acts) but aided Britain through Lend-Lease. Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) brought the U.S. into the war.

Home front and the war

  • War production ended the Depression. Rationing, war bonds and women workers ("Rosie the Riveter") supported the effort.
  • The Double V campaign, Tuskegee Airmen and Navajo code talkers showed minority contributions. Executive Order 9066 led to the incarceration of about 120,000 Japanese Americans (Korematsu, 1944).
  • Europe: D-Day (June 6, 1944) and V-E Day (May 8, 1945). Pacific: Midway, island hopping and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  • The Holocaust killed about 6 million Jews; the Nuremberg Trials followed.

The early Cold War

  • The U.S. and the Soviet Union became rival superpowers. Containment shaped U.S. policy: the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift and NATO.
  • The Korean War (1950 to 1953) ended in an armistice near the 38th parallel.
  • At home, HUAC, the Rosenberg case and Senator McCarthy fueled a Red Scare.
  • The GI Bill, baby boom and suburbs reshaped society; Sputnik sparked the space race and more science education.

Topics in this unit

Each topic has its own short notes and practice.

Practice

Read this excerpt from FDR's address to Congress on December 8, 1941: "Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." Roosevelt was asking Congress to:
Which pair of events shows the change from U.S. isolationism to direct involvement in World War II?
In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court:
Read this excerpt from the Truman Doctrine speech (1947): "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." This statement is an example of:
Which was a military alliance formed by the U.S. and Western European nations in 1949?
Which was a cause of the second Red Scare in the late 1940s and early 1950s?

Free response

Write your answer first, then open the scoring guide.

Free-response question

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union went from wartime allies to Cold War rivals.

(a) Describe ONE way World War II changed life on the American home front.

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Millions of women went to work in factories to build planes, ships and weapons, taking jobs once held mainly by men. Rationing also limited goods like sugar and gasoline.

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(b) Explain the policy of containment and give ONE example of how the U.S. carried it out in Europe.

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Containment was the U.S. policy of stopping communism from spreading to new countries. The Marshall Plan sent billions of dollars to rebuild Western Europe so that poverty would not push those nations toward communism.

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(c) Explain how Cold War fears affected American society at home.

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Fear of communist spies led to HUAC hearings, Hollywood blacklists and Senator McCarthy's accusations, often without evidence. Innocent people lost jobs, and many Americans became afraid to express unpopular opinions.

Check off the points you earned:

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