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Harris/Cold War History Study Questions
HIST 388: HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR
Prof. Steven E. Harris
A Guide to Answering the Study Questions:
1. Answer each question separately, and indicate the number you are answering. (Some questions have two parts, such as #2 in week 2’s questions – you should answer these together.)
2. Answer each question in 1-2 paragraphs. In all, your answers together should run about 1-2 pages maximum, single spaced. Please type your answers.
3. Focus on providing clear and concise answers to each question. The purpose is not to account for every possible fact, date, and event related to the question, but rather to zero-in on what you believe to be the most important and most illustrativeinformation from the readings that help you answer the question.
4. Most of the questions are based on the secondary source readings for the week. However, draw upon the primary sources as well for examples in order to illustrate the points you make in your answers. You may also address points I make in the lectures.
5. This is not a paper, but more like questions you would answer on an exam. Therefore, you need not include citations.
6. In addition to the quality of your answers, you will be graded on grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Week 2 Study Questions: Allies against Nazism
1. What were the main factors – social, political, and/or economic – that constituted the context in which the “Red Scare” took place?
2. What catalysts and actors transformed that context into the phenomenon known as the “Red Scare”? What kinds of actions and policies did proponents of the “Red Scare” pursue?
3. In what ways did the Allies and the Soviet Union help one another and cooperate during the war against Nazi Germany?
4. What were the main factors – both long term and short term – that made it difficult for the Allies and the Soviet Union to continue cooperating immediately after World War II?
Week 3 Study Questions: From Allies to Antagonists
1. According to Gaddis, what were the main, underlying differences in the United States’ and the Soviet Union’s approach to establishing their imperial relationship over their respective parts of postwar Europe?
2. How did the Soviet Union’s relationship with the Chinese Communists evolve from the end of World War II in 1945 to the eve of the Korean War in 1950?
3. How does Klein’s approach to studying Cold War history in Asia differ from Gaddis’? In answering this question, address at least one of the following: a) the kinds of primary sources they use; b) the questions they are attempting to answer; or c) the categories of history you would put them in (e.g., diplomatic, military, intellectual, political, social, economic, or cultural history).
4. According to Klein, what was the “global imaginary of integration” and what did its proponents want it to accomplish?
5. Extra credit question: How is Klein’s notion of “Cold War Orientalism” an adaptation of and a departure from Said’s original concept of “Orientalism”?
Week 4 Study Questions: Emerging Geo-Politics of the Cold War
1. How did Khrushchev’s reforms and policy of “de-Stalinization” affect the internal politics of Eastern European states, the Soviet Union’s relationship with those states, and the Soviet Union’s relationship with China?
2. In what ways was the Korean War a continuation of “total war” ideas and practices in the 20th century? According to Cumings, how has this war shaped North Korea’s relationship with the United States to the present day?
3. What did both East and West German authorities initially find so threatening and de-stabilizing about American culture in the 1950s?
Week 5 Study Questions: Nuclear Arms, the Space Race, and Science
1. How did Kennedy’s “New Frontier” differ from Eisenhower’s “New Look” in managing nuclear weapons and fighting the Cold War? According to Suri, how was Khrushchev’s approach to fighting the Cold War close to both?
2. Why were Konrad Adenauer, Walter Ulbricht, and Mao Zedong dissatisfied with the two superpowers’ search for stability and maintenance of the status quo in international relations in the 1950s and early 1960s?
3. How did nuclear weapons affect how the various adversaries fought the Korean War? (In answering this question, be sure to draw from both Cumings and Gaddis.)
Week 6 Study Questions: The Homefront: McCarthyism and De-Stalinization
1. What ideas, persons, and groups became targets of the anti-communist movement in 1950s America, and what kinds of legislation resulted from the movement?
2. What impact did Stalin’s death have on Soviet politics and society, and in what ways did ordinary people experience the “thaw”?
Week 7 Study Questions: Ground Zero: Berlin and the Fate of Germany in the 20th Century
1. According to Gaddis, what were the major asymmetries between East and West Germany, and what was their relationship to the Berlin crisis of 1960-1961 that led to the construction of the Berlin Wall?
2. Who were the Halbstarke and why were they important in Poiger’s story of American cultural influences over East and West German youth culture?
3. According to Poiger, how did the West German “Cold War liberals” change West German attitudes about the effects of American popular culture?
Study Questions – Week 8: From Empires to Superpowers: De-Colonization and the Third World
1. What role did tourism play in the Cold War?
2. In what ways was James Michener a “classic Cold War liberal,” and why were his criticisms of the United States acceptable whereas those of Paul Robeson were not?
3. In fighting the Cold War in various regions of the “Third World,” was the United States able to maintain its traditional stance of anti-colonialism?
Study Questions – Week 9: The Cuban Missile Crisis
1. What did Khrushchev and the Soviet Union seek in placing nuclear weapons in Cuba?
2. According to Gaddis, in what ways did the Cuban Missile Crisis alter the dynamics of the Cold War?
3. In your opinion, does the Cuban Missile Crisis deserve its place as the greatest event of the Cold War, or has its place been exaggerated?
Study Questions – Week 10: Blue Jeans and Washing Machines: Mass Consumption and the Nuclear Family in the Cold War
1. What kinds of social and political meanings did Riesman believe ordinary people and politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain would ascribe to consumer goods?
2. Do the primary source readings for this week support or dispute Riesman’s predictions about the course a “Nylon War” would take between the US and the USSR?
3. What roles were Soviet housewives and white, American mothers supposed to play in the Cold War?
4. How did middlebrow narratives featuring adoption and the nuclear family help to further the “global imaginary of integration” in US-Asia relations?
Study Questions – week 11: Art, Literature, and Popular Culture
1. Identify two American films of the 1950s that refused to tow the line on anti-communism in Hollywood and describe the ways in which these films challenged the Cold War consensus in film.
2. How did the United States government use abstract art as a weapon during the Cold War?
3. What roles did Asian-Americans and Hawaii play in the development of race relations in the US and in the advancement of US policies in Asia in the Cold War?
Study Questions – week 12: Superpowers Lose Wars: Vietnam and Afghanistan
1. According to Suri, how did the motivations behind US involvement in Vietnam change over succeeding presidential administrations and how were these motivations connected to domestic politics?
2. From Berkeley to Prague, 1968 was a year of student, worker, and youth protest on both sides of the Iron Curtain. What were the common issues behind the discontent among the various protest movements and how were they related to the international order imposed by the Cold War?
Study Questions – week 13: Détente, Human Rights, and Dissidents in Eastern Europe and the USSR
1. According to Suri, what motivated state leaders to pursue détente? Describe two examples of policies and/or international agreements inspired by détente.
2. How did dissident groups in Russia and/or Eastern Europe use the Helsinki Accords to justify their actions and why was their use of the Helsinki Accords a threat to their governments?
3. What was the greengrocer’s dilemma and what did Havel interpret it to mean?