mcgraw hill, chapter 29 summery

CHAPTER 29
The Cold War

CHAPTER SUMMARY
The mutual suspicion, fear, and outright hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union
grew out of ideological differences and concrete actions stretching back to World War I and the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. These differences were briefly set aside for a portion of World
War II. Following the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941, Washington and Moscow entered
into what has been called a “strange alliance.” This anti-German union of convenience and
necessity temporarily muted the tensions between the two countries. But disagreement over such
issues as the timing of the second front and antagonistic visions of postwar Europe pushed the
United States and the Soviet Union into a “Cold War” within months of the end of World War II.
The immediate cause of the Cold War revolved around the fate of central Europe. Would it
remain within the Soviet orbit or would it be open to Western influence? In response to Soviet
aggression in the region, by 1947 the United States had developed the Truman Doctrine, in
which it would seek to “contain” communism at every turn. From this point on, the Cold War
became much more international in scope and was marked by occasional confrontation and an
ongoing fear of an actual military conflict.
Meanwhile, the American people, after a decade and a half of depression and war, were
not anxious to join in a new international struggle. But after being coaxed and cajoled by the
Truman administration, they did respond. Still, something had to give, and that was a
commitment to return to domestic reform. Instead of recharging the New Deal or advancing the
Fair Deal, the Truman administration and the American people grew increasingly worried about
communism. This was especially the case after the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in
1949. American concerns soon shifted to Asia with the rise to power of Mao Zedong in China
and the North Korean invasion of South Korea. It seemed that something had to account for the
inability of a country as powerful as the United States to control international events. In answer
to their anxiety, many Americans latched onto charges of domestic communist subversion in
Hollywood, in education, even in the federal government. No American exploited these fears
more effectively than Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Through smears and insinuation,
McCarthy and the right wing of the Republican Party proved to be powerful enough to discredit
and weaken the Democrats. Although they could not seize control of a majority of the electorate,
their charges helped prepare the way for the 1952 triumph of the first Republican president in
two decades, Dwight Eisenhower.

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 29 should enable the student to understand:

1. The status of Soviet–American relations during World War II and the differences that
developed between them over their respective views on the postwar world

2. The origins of the Cold War, the meaning of the doctrine of containment, and the specific
programs that implemented containment

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3. The problems of postwar readjustment in the United States, especially in employment,
strikes, and inflation

4. The nature of the Fair Deal and its successes and failures

5. The significance of the communist revolution in China to America’s foreign policy in Asia

6. The circumstances that led to American participation in a “limited war” in Korea

7. President Truman’s conduct of the war in Korea, including his dismissal of General Douglas
MacArthur

8. The causes, nature, and extent of American fears of internal communist subversion during the
early Cold War years and the political consequences of those fears

MAIN THEMES
1. How the mutual mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union combined with
critical events of World War II to cause the Cold War

2. How the American policy of containment led to an increasing American involvement in
crises around the world

3. How World War II ended the Great Depression and ushered in an era of nervous prosperity

4. How the Cold War contributed to a reluctance to return to domestic reform

5. That the immediate postwar era produced an anticommunist reaction, and how that reaction
affected domestic American politics

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Who was responsible for the development of the Cold War?

2. Does the story of American foreign policy toward central Europe after World War II tell us
that the United States placed principles above self-interest? Or was American foreign policy
grounded in national self-interest? As best we can tell, was corresponding Soviet foreign
policy based on national interest or on ideological interests?

3. Was the Cold War inevitable? What actions by the United States and/or the Soviet Union
might have prevented it?

4. What role did the wartime conferences involving Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin play in the
coming of the Cold War? Analyze those conferences from the standpoint of American
national interests.

5. How were the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, support for Chiang Kai-shek in
China, and the American response to the North Korean invasion based on the foreign policy
of containment? Did any of them go beyond containment? What did that policy concede to
the Soviets? How did NSC-68 refine containment? What geopolitical realities limited
American options in Asia and Europe between 1945 and 1952?

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6. What general factors contributed to the rise of anticommunist feeling between 1949 and
1953? What events helped pave the way for Senator Joe McCarthy? What did his hunt for
communists in the United States accomplish?

7. Evaluate the successes and failures of the Truman administration when it came to achieving
the aims of its Fair Deal. How did the Fair Deal differ from the New Deal? Was Truman as
committed a reformer as Roosevelt? Why or why not?

8. Discuss the candidates, issues, and campaign strategies in the election of 1948. Why did
Truman win? Why was his win considered the most dramatic upset in modern presidential
politics? Why did Henry Wallace do so poorly? Who were the Dixiecrats? What issue led to
their rise? Why did they prove to be no more than a troublesome annoyance to Truman?

9. Describe the causes and results of the Korean War. Was the decision to involve the United
States in Korea a correct one? Why was it a frustrating war for the United States? How did
those frustrations manifest themselves?

10. Analyze the Republican revival in the late 1940s and early 1950s. How did that revival
contribute to Eisenhower’s victory in 1952? Why did moderate Republicans win out over
right-wing Republicans? What were the differences between the two?

MAP EXERCISES
1. Identify the countries in Europe after World War II.

2. Locate Berlin, the Warsaw Pact nations, and the NATO nations. Where is the Iron Curtain?

3. Identify the states carried by Truman, Dewey, and Thurmond.

4. Locate Pusan, Inchon, the Yalu River, Panmunjom, the 38th parallel, and the Korean War
armistice line.

INTERPRETATIVE QUESTIONS BASED ON MAPS AND TEXT
1. Why was the form of government in Poland such a difficult issue to resolve? What resulted?

2. Why was Germany divided and why was Berlin divided even though it lay in the Russian
zone? What caused the United States, Great Britain, and France to combine their zones into a
single unit?

3. Explain the policy of the Truman Doctrine. What was to be contained? Where? What
developments were the catalyst for Truman’s promulgation of the policy? What was the
economic manifestation of the idea?

4. Why was the Soviet Union so suspicious of the West and so insistent on control of East
Germany and the nations along the Soviet border? Were the Soviet concerns justified?

5. How did Truman manage to win the election of 1948 despite his loss of part of the Deep
South?

6. Why did four states of the supposedly solid Democratic Deep South go for Thurmond? What
implications for the future of the Democratic Party can be seen in this vote?

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7. Why was Korea of such strategic importance? How did the nation get divided?

8. What combination of motive and opportunity spawned the North Korean invasion?

9. How did the UN forces (mainly South Korean and American) turn the tide of the invasion?
What did the UN forces moving north do when they reached the 38th parallel?

10. How did the entry of the Chinese change the war?

11. How did the war finally end? What had the United States accomplished by its intervening?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
These questions are based on the preceding map exercises. They are designed to test students’
knowledge of the geography of the area discussed in this chapter and of its historical
development. Careful reading of the text will help students answer these questions.

1. What attitudes and events eroded the American commitment to the “One World” concept?
What vision of world affairs replaced it?
2. Just as the United States had fought a two-front war in World War II, the nation now seemed
faced with a two-front Cold War in Europe and Asia. What were the similarities and
differences in the early years of the Cold War in the two widely separated geographic
spheres?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
H. W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (1993)
Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War (1980)
Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (2000)
Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red (1990)
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (1982)
Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (1995)
Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan (1987)
Stanley Kutler, The American Inquisition (1982)
Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1967, 7th ed. (1993)
Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration,
and the Cold War (1992)
David McCullough, Truman (1992)
Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy,
1947-1950 (1992)
Victor Navasky, Naming Names (1980)
Thomas G. Paterson, Soviet-American Confrontation (1974)
Richard Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and
1950s (1985)
Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998)
William Steck, The Korean War: An International History (1995)
Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (1978)

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Allan M. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom (1993)

mcgraw hill, chapter 28 summery

CHAPTER 28
America in a World at War

CHAPTER SUMMARY
The United States entered World War II unified in spirit to defeat the Axis powers but militarily
unprepared to accomplish this goal. A corporate–government partnership solved most of the
production and labor problems in rapid order. Concerns of balanced federal budgets were
suddenly irrelevant and public spending soared. As a result, not only was a refurbished American
army able to make a creditable contribution to the fighting as early as 1942, but the surging
American output of war materials also finally spelled an end to the generation-long Great
Depression. As would be expected, a world at war brought great changes to American society.
The war brought the return of wages and consumerism to many people. Plenty of jobs allowed
labor unions to grow quickly. The status and activities of women and minorities were deeply
affected. There were shifts toward equality and there were blatant abuses of civil rights. Overall,
however, there was the unifying effort for victory.
The Roosevelt administration made a critical decision early on that the defeat of Germany
took precedence over the defeat of Japan. But much to the dismay of the Soviet Union, which
was locked in a desperate battle against the Nazis on the eastern front, an Allied invasion of
Europe was put off in favor of campaigns in Africa and then Italy. The Soviet’s bitterness would
haunt the United States in the postwar period. Gradually, the Soviets won the offensive in the
east. The United States and Britain, aided immensely by a series of stunning technological
achievements in intelligence gathering and enhanced strategic capabilities, turned the tide on the
western front. The final key to victory was the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944. Less
than a year after the D-Day invasion, Hitler was dead and the war in Europe was over.
Although somewhat less a focus, the war in the Pacific turned in favor of the United
States even more rapidly but at a very high cost. Seven months after Pearl Harbor, American
forces had stopped the Japanese advance and, in the Battle of Midway, had sunk the Japanese
carrier fleet. After this, the American strategy for victory involved leaps from island to island that
drew progressively closer to mainland Japan. These battles saw determined U.S. forces meet
ferocious Japanese resistance. The casualties were staggering. Meanwhile, American planes
pulverized Japanese cities with conventional bombs and the devastating firebombing of Tokyo in
anticipation of an eventual invasion of the islands. Those forces were being readied when the
new atomic bombs obliterated large sections of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atomic weapons
brought an end to World War II but also began a new and troubling chapter in world history.

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 28 should enable the student to understand:

1. The American military strategy and contributions to Allied victory in the Pacific and in North
Africa and Europe

2. The key areas and uses of new technology developed by the Allies and the role it played in
the war effort

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3. The efforts of the federal government to mobilize the nation’s economy for war production

4. The effects of American participation in the war on the Great Depression and on New Deal
reforms

5. An assessment of the changes that American participation in the war brought for women as
well as for racial minorities

6. The moral versus strategic arguments regarding the United States’ decisions toward Japanese
Americans, European Jews, and the nation of Japan during World War II

7. The effects of World War II on American society both during and after the war

MAIN THEMES
1. That the vast productive capacity and technological superiority of the United States was the
key to the defeat of the Axis powers

2. That the war had a profound effect on the American homefront

3. How three major western offensives combined with an ongoing Russian effort to defeat
Germany

4. How sea power contained the Japanese, and how Allied forces moved toward an invasion of
Japan until the atomic bomb ended the war in the Pacific

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How did World War II increase the role of government in American society and in the
nation’s economy? Why did entry into World War II quickly end the Great Depression when
years of New Deal programs could not do so?

2. Identify and explain the overall Allied strategy and the key battles that shifted the momentum
of the war in the direction of the Allies in both the Pacific and in Europe in 1942 and 1943.

3. Why was the United States so unified during this war? What were the differences between
World Wars I and II on this issue? Why did these differences exist? What challenges to
conformity and tradition arose during each war? What forces worked to retain traditional
values and practices during World War II?

4. How did the American government respond to the information it received in 1942 on the
Holocaust? Why did it act as it did? What other options were open? Why were they not
taken? What actions should have been taken and why?

5. Discuss the political, social, and economic advances and/or setbacks suffered by American
laborers, women, and minorities during World War II.

6. Describe the military action in Europe from mid-1943 to 1945 that resulted in an Allied
victory. What differences were there among the Americans, British, and Soviets on matters of
wartime strategy and political/military goals?

7. Discuss the key technological developments by the Allies in intelligence, sea warfare, and air
warfare. Pick the single technological advance that you believe made the greatest difference

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in bringing an Allied victory.

8. Describe the military action in the Pacific from mid-1943 to 1945 that resulted in an Allied
victory. Was the Europe-first strategy a good one in retrospect?

9. Why did President Truman decide to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What
other options did he have?

10. What caused ongoing tension between the United States and the Soviet Union during World
War II? How important was the eastern front to the outcome of the war in Europe? Why did
the United States not provide a second front in Europe earlier than D-Day? What were the
consequences of that decision? Were the origins of the Cold War buried in the wartime
tensions between the two countries?

MAP EXERCISES
1. Note the farthest extent of Japanese expansion (August 1942).

2. Trace the American island-hopping offensive against the Japanese and identify the major
battles.

3. On maps of Europe and North Africa, identify the countries during World War II and the
major cities in each. Also locate the Suez Canal, Sicily, the English Channel, Normandy, and
Vichy, France.

4. Note the farthest extent of Axis conquest.

5. Trace the Allied advance against the Axis in North Africa, Italy, and the western and eastern
fronts. Identify the major battles.

INTERPRETATIVE QUESTIONS BASED ON MAPS AND TEXT
1. What two broad offensives were planned to turn the Japanese tide? How successful were
they?

2. Why did Winston Churchill desire a North African offensive? Why did Roosevelt agree?

3. How did developments on the Russian front affect British–American decisions in the
Mediterranean region?

4. To what extent did the Sicilian and Italian campaigns succeed in their objectives? Why do
some military historians regard the invasion of Italy as a strategic mistake?

5. Where did the war in Europe begin? What areas did Germany attack after the so-called phony
war?

6. What challenges were posed by the cross-Channel invasion, and how did the Allies prepare
for them? How successful was the invasion when it finally came?

7. Why was the submarine so crucial to the German war effort? How did the Allies overcome
the threat?

8. Why was the Soviet Union so concerned about the British–American decision to launch

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North African and Italian campaigns before an invasion across the English Channel?

9. What were the Soviets doing while the British–American forces were liberating Paris and
driving toward the heart of Germany? Why was the taking of Berlin so controversial?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
These questions are based on the preceding map exercises. They are designed to test students’
knowledge of the geography of the area discussed in this chapter and of its historical
development. Careful reading of the text will help students answer these questions.

1. Why did the United States decide to concentrate on Germany first in the two-front war? Was
this decision wise? Why was it not entirely popular?

2. Describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union that emerged
during the 1930s and World War II. What seeds for future discord were planted despite the
concerted effort against Germany and later Japan?

3. What geopolitical forces drew the United States into World War II? How did the American
attitude toward the world change as a result of the war?

4. Compare the Allied European advance in World War II with that in World War I (see Chapter
23 of the text). Why did France and Russia suffer the most in both wars?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth
(1995)
Stephen Ambrose, D-Day: June 6, 1944 (1994)
Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During
World War II (1981)
John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II
(1976)
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995)
Roger Daniels, Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II (1993)
John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986)
Lewis A. Erenberg and Susan E. Hirsch, The War in American Culture: Society and
Consciousness During World War II (1996)
Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in
World War II (1994)
Susan Hartmann, The Homefront and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (1982)
John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946)
Margaret Hoyle, A World in Flames (1970)
Geoffry Perret, There’s a War to Be Won: The United States Army in World War II (1991)
Richard Steele, Propaganda in an Open Society (1985)
David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (1984)
Neil Wynn, The Afro-American and the Second World War (1976)

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115

GENERAL DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTERS 24–28
These questions are designed to help students bring together ideas from several chapters and see
how the chapters relate to one another. Some questions will also help students explore how
changes in the landscape and in geopolitical conditions are significant to understanding
American history.

1. Were the 1920s a real return to normalcy or was the decade a forward-looking period of
modernism?What ongoing forces of change since the late nineteenth century helped spur a
conservative reaction within the country during this period?

2. Did the causes of the Great Depression lie in the economy of the 1920s or did they lie more
in the fundamental nature of American capitalist-industrialist society as it had developed
since the Civil War? In other words, could either business or government have taken actions
in the late nineteenth century that could have prevented the Great Depression?

3. To what extent can the origins of World War II be traced to the nature of the World War I
peace? Why was the United States so hesitant about entering both world wars?

4. To what extent did the Great Depression and World War II combine to increase the role of
government in American society and the nation’s economy? What were the benefits and the
costs of this increased role?

5. How had the status of working-class and middle-class women changed between 1920 and
1945?

6. What dominant forces of social and cultural conformity operated on the American people
from 1920 to 1945? What challenges to conformism and tradition arose? Why did traditional
values and practices prevail for the most part?

7. What mechanical, technological, and scientific developments of the 1920s were applied to
waging war in the 1940s?

8. What changes in the geographic patterns of American politics occurred from 1920 through
the 1930s? To what extent were these changes the product of demographics and to what
extent were they the result of the policies of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal?

9. What caused the Dust Bowl? How was the environmental problem intertwined with
economic changes and troubles?

mcgraw hill, chapter 27 summery

CHAPTER 27
The Global Crisis, 1921–1941

CHAPTER SUMMARY
Following the disillusionment of World War I, the U.S. government made the conscious decision
to avoid international commitments that might lead to involvement in another war. Never again,
Americans wanted to believe, would the United States send an army to Europe. But neither the
government nor its people could—or desired to—avoid all contact with the rest of the world.
Thus international trade continued and in some cases expanded. So did travel and cultural
contacts. At the same time, U.S. diplomats sought to ensure world peace through multinational
agreements to avoid an arms race, going even as far as to “outlaw” war in 1928. The desire to
keep American troops at home extended to this hemisphere as well. Both the Hoover and
Roosevelt administrations took steps to improve strained relations with the countries of Latin
America. Europe, however, was soon to be another matter. So was Asia. By the early 1930s,
crises on both continents were brewing as a result of aggressive actions on the part of Japan,
Germany, and Italy. The initial American response to the aggression was one of renewed
commitment to isolationism. Blatant land grabs by Japan in 1931, Italy in 1935, and Germany in
1936 were met with verbal rebuke by the United States but little else. In the mid-1930s Congress
passed a series of Neutrality Acts, which had the effect of denying a commitment to historic
American neutral rights. Insistence on those rights, isolationists argued, had helped push the
United States into war in 1917; however, events in the late 1930s led the Roosevelt
administration to abandon this legislation.
As Axis aggression grew bolder, President Roosevelt gradually began to chip away at the
neutrality policies. He had to move cautiously, however, because the American public was not
fully supportive of this effort. Following the Japanese invasion of China, Roosevelt delivered his
“quarantine” speech, which issued a vague call on the peace-loving states to quarantine aggressor
states. Even this mild attempt at interventionism was roundly criticized by the public. Following
the start of another world war in Europe in September 1939, public attitudes shifted in alarm
over the early successes of Germany. Roosevelt felt empowered to gradually ease the United
States closer to participation in war. Programs such as “lend-lease” replaced hard-and-fast
American neutrality. All such gradual steps came to a sudden end on December 7, 1941, when
the Japanese made a surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. The next day
the United States declared war on Japan. A few days later, Germany and Italy declared war on
the United States. Isolationism was history and the United States entered World War II suddenly
determined and unified.

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 27 should enable the student to understand:

1. The extent and nature of American isolationism in the 1920s

2. The effects of World War I and the Great Depression on American foreign policy
3. The pattern of Japanese, Italian, and German aggression during the 1920s and 1930s and the

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United States’ response to it
4. The factors that led to the passage of neutrality legislation in the mid-1930s and its effects on
American foreign policy

5. The specific sequence of events that brought the United States into World War II

MAIN THEMES
1. How the United States moved during the 1920s to increase its role in world affairs, while
attempting to avoid political and military commitments
2. Why and how the United States moved toward isolationism and how it tried to legislate
neutrality in the face of mounting world crises
3. How war in Europe and Asia gradually altered the United States’ foreign policy until the
attack on Pearl Harbor finally sparked American entry into World War II

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Explain and evaluate the objectives, means, and results of American diplomacy during the
1920s. How successful was the United States in achieving its goals? What were the
weaknesses in American foreign policy?

2. How and why did the early years of the Great Depression alter international affairs and
American diplomacy?

3. Explain the relationship between American attitudes toward World War I and the isolationist
sentiment and neutrality legislation of the 1930s. Did the neutrality laws make the United
States more or less secure? Did these laws make war in Europe more or less likely? How so?

4. How and why did American public opinion shift from favoring neutrality in 1935 to favoring
intervention in 1941? Which groups of Americans were the first to see the danger of fascism
and why? In what sense was the Spanish Civil War a “dress rehearsal” for World War II?

5. How did President Roosevelt attempt to get around neutrality legislation? Were his actions
legal? Were they justified by the events of the times? What might have happened if he had
not taken these actions?

6. Why did the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor? What did they hope to accomplish? Why was
the United States caught unprepared for the attack? How successful was the attack for Japan
in the short term? In the long term? What were the consequences of the attack in the United
States?

INTERPRETATIVE QUESTIONS
1. To what degree was isolationism a factor in the United States during the 1920s? Was the dual
policy of economic penetration and arms limitation an effective approach? Why or why not?
What might have made more sense?

2. Compare and contrast the American response to the onset of World War I and World War II.
Specifically compare Presidents Wilson and Roosevelt as leaders of a people desirous of
peace while Europe was at war.

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110

BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh (1998)
Warren Cohen, Empire Without Tears: America’s Foreign Relations, 1921-1933 (1987)
Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and Isolationists, 1932-1945 (1983)
Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945 (1979)
Robert Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression (1970)
Irwin F. Gellman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Policies in Latin America,
1933-1945 (1979)
Akira Iriye, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, vol. 3: The Globalizing of
America, 1913-1945 (1993)
_____, The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific (1987)
Manfred Jonas, The United States and Germany (1984)
Joseph Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill (1976)
Melvyn P. Leffler, The Elusive Quest: America’s Pursuit of European Stability and French
Security, 1919-1933 (1979)
Gordon Prange, Pearl Harbor (1986)
Lawrence Wittner, Rebels Against War (1984)

For Internet resources, practice questions, references to additional books and films, and more,
see this book’s Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/unfinishednation4.

mcgraw hill, chapter 26 summery

CHAPTER 26
The New Deal

CHAPTER SUMMARY
In 1933, the Great Depression was, as it turned out, at its worst point. Equally troubling, the
American people’s confidence in the nation’s public institutions, business leaders, and even in
themselves had plummeted with the collapsing economy. As he began his presidency, Franklin
Roosevelt faced the challenge of taking corrective actions that would give an immediate bounce
to both the economy and the national spirit. He understood the urgency of the times demanded
bold actions that would reassure laborers and capitalists, liberals and conservatives alike. As he
told people not to be fearful, he closed all banks. He called for a balanced budget and reductions
in government salaries while he began to experiment with a variety of untried and costly federal
programs. He used his gift of speech and the radio to communicate both confidence and
compassion to the American people.
During the first two years of his presidency, that sense of compassion was translated into
a new state of affairs between the federal government and the economy. This change was forged
in the short-term provision of temporary work relief for the unemployed and their families and
the long-term recovery and reform of America’s industry and financial institutions. Not all of the
scores of New Deal programs that were implemented worked or were even considered
constitutional by the Supreme Court, and the grip of the Depression proved tenacious. As a
consequence, Roosevelt faced mounting demands to pursue more aggressive reform. The result
was a Second New Deal, launched in 1935. The programs in this version of reform were less
conciliatory to big business and more favorable to the needs of labor than had been the case in
1933. Included in this package were the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security
Act. The potent combination of this legislation and the charm of Roosevelt swept the president to
a historic reelection in 1936. What emerged was a political coalition of liberals, white
Southerners, northern blacks and ethnics, large numbers of farmers and laborers in the Midwest
and the East that would dominate the Democratic Party for decades to come.
But in 1937, Roosevelt made critical mistakes. He blundered in a misguided proposal to
expand the Supreme Court. That same year his decision to slash federal relief spending
contributed to a severe recession within the Depression. A year later he erred again when he tried
—and failed—to purge conservative Democrats in primary elections. These failures, combined
with mounting conservative opposition in the country at large, led to the end of new New Deal
programs. Still, the impact of the New Deal was enormous. Roosevelt had held the country
together as he propped up capitalism and democratic government. As for the Great Depression,
the New Deal proved to be a holding action until America’s entry into World War II wiped away
all limits on spending and joblessness. But in its legacy, Roosevelt’s New Deal established a new
relationship in which the federal government assumed the responsibility to provide basic
economic protections for its people. The people, in turn, accepted this new relationship and
would demand that it be nurtured and developed in the decades to come.

105

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 26 should enable the student to understand:

1. The series of emergency measures that were enacted during the first 100 days of the New
Deal in order to restore confidence in the economy

The New Deal programs for raising farm prices and promoting industrial recovery
The first federal efforts at regional planning
New Deal programs for reforming the banking system and the stock market
The evolution of the federal relief programs
The differences between the First and Second New Deals

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

7. The reasons for the enactment of the Social Security Act and the immediate impact of the
legislation

8. The political pressures from both the left and the right on President Roosevelt and his
reaction to those pressures
9. The changes in labor legislation and in organized labor during the New Deal

10. The Roosevelt rationale for the Court-packing scheme and the political fallout from it

11. The reasons for the “Roosevelt recession” and his response to that recession
12. The impact of the New Deal on minorities and women

13. The lasting political and economic significance of the New Deal

MAIN THEMES
1. How Franklin Roosevelt pushed through programs of economic recovery and Depression
relief, despite his essentially traditional economic views

2. The nature of popular protests against early New Deal reforms and the nature of Roosevelt
Second New Deal programs made in response to the complaints
3. The significance of Roosevelt’s massive reelection in 1936, the political errors he made after
this victory, the persistence of the Great Depression, and the effects of all of this on the later
New Deal

4. That the New Deal created a new role for the federal government in its relationship between
labor, business, and the general public

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why was Franklin Roosevelt better able than Herbert Hoover to win the public’s confidence?
What made Roosevelt’s personality an important part of his presidency? Analyze the
strengths and weaknesses of Roosevelt as a politician. How would you define a successful
president? Does Roosevelt fit your definition? Why or why not?

2. Why did President Roosevelt portray himself as a pragmatist, rather than an ideologue? Was
he in fact a pragmatist? Which of his First New Deal programs worked? Which did not and
why?

106

3. Which of Roosevelt’s early New Deal programs are indicative of his willingness to
experiment? Which reveal his attachment to conventional ideas?
4. What forces caused Roosevelt to launch his Second New Deal in 1935? Did this represent a
significant departure from earlier New Deal programs or was it a logical continuation of
those programs? What was different about these programs and early New Deal programs?
5. As the New Deal attempted to save the capitalist system of economy, why did businessmen
become some of the harshest critics of the New Deal? Why were conservatives so opposed to
Roosevelt personally?
6. Compare the impact of the New Deal on blacks, Hispanics, and Indians with its impact on the
typical white American, whether working class or middle class. Was the New Deal
progressive or conservative when it came to each of these groups?

7. Why did the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) come into being? What impact did it have on
the private utilities industry? What were the benefits of the TVA? What were its limitations?
Why do you suppose the New Deal did not produce more such programs?

8. Why did the New Deal fail to end the Great Depression? Could it have ended it and, if so,
how? Where did the New Deal succeed?

9. What specific programs and ideas have provided the most lasting legacy of the New Deal?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mimi Abramowitz, Regulating the Lives of Women (1988)
Anthony J. Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 (1989)
Irving Berstein, The Turbulent Years (1970)
Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (1982)
_____, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995)
Blanche D. Coll, Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security, 1929-1979 (1995)
Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884-1933 (1992)
_____, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Defining Years, 1933-1938 (1999)
Kenneth Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933-1937 (1986)
Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Rendezvous with Destiny (1990)
David Hamilton, From New Day to New Deal: American Farm Policy from Hoover to Roosevelt,
1928-1933 (1991)
Laurence C. Kelly, The Assault on Assimilation: John Collier and the Origins of Indian Policy Reform
(1983)
David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999)
William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963)
_____, The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy (1995)
Richard Lowitt, The New Deal and the West (1984)
Thomas K. McCraw, TVA and the Power Fight (1970)
Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks (1978)
Geoffrey Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (1989)
G. Edward White, The Constitution and the New Deal (2000)
Robert H. Zieger, American Workers, American Unions, 1920-1985 (1986)

For Internet resources, practice questions, references to additional books and films, and more, see this
book’s Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/unfinishednation4.

mcgraw hill, chapter 25 summery

CHAPTER 25
The Great Depression

CHAPTER SUMMARY
By the end of the 1920s, a decade-long economic boom had raised the expectations of more than
a few Americans that poverty would soon be vanquished from the nation. This optimism proved
both illusionary and harmful to society. When the stock market collapsed in October 1929, what
should have been a wake-up call to the public and national leaders was instead treated as a
serious, but temporary downturn. Few leaders in business or government (and many were in
both) saw any reason for a fundamental change in the federal government’s laissez-faire
economic policies. In the months that followed, as the economy continued to sink, the theme of
President Herbert Hoover’s administration was decidedly “stay the course.” The causes of the
Great Depression were complex; the consequences are difficult to fathom. Within four years at
least one of every four Americans was without a job, and many of those still employed had seen
their wages and hours slashed. Nothing in the nation’s institutions was equipped to adequately
respond to this crisis. Where they existed, local and private social welfare programs were quickly
overwhelmed. President Hoover’s call for voluntary cooperation and community service had
little substantive effect. In fact, Hoover’s decision to hold to high tariffs and World War I debt
collection only worsened what was an international depression, thereby adding to America’s own
economic woes.
Despite the immense suffering and upheaval caused by the Depression, and its many
strains on the family, most Americans held to traditional beliefs and desires. Certainly radical
solutions gained in popularity, but the nation proved, by and large, to be both resilient and
conservative. This was the case for middle- and working-class white Americans. It was also true
for American minorities, whose woes and sufferings were far greater. But staying with traditional
values did not mean that Americans were passive or did not desire action from their elected
representatives. By 1932, World War I veterans were marching in Washington, demanding an
early payment of their veterans’ bonus. Many farmers were protesting and some were on strike.
And millions of voters expressed their disapproval with President Hoover by voting against him
in as large a number as those who had voted for him just four years before. The Democrat
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was swept into office promising a “new deal” for the nation. In 1932,
neither the public nor Roosevelt was sure just what that meant.

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 25 should enable the student to understand:

1. The reasons for the stock market crash of October 1929 and its relationship to the onset of the
Great Depression

2. The domestic and international causes of the Great Depression

3. The reasons for the severity and persistence of the Depression and it effects on business and
industry

102

4. The problems facing the unemployed and the inadequacy of public and private relief
5. The particular problems of farmers in the Dust Bowl

6. The themes of popular culture during the 1930s found in radio, the movies, and literature

7. The rise of the radical left during the 1930s
8. The impact of the Depression on minorities and the demographic changes that resulted
9. The effects of the Depression on the activities of women and the status of the American
family

10. The reasons for the failure of President Hoover to effectively combat the Depression
11. The campaign platform of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932

MAIN THEMES
1. How the underlying weaknesses of the American economy contributed to the Great
Depression and how the stock market crash touched it off

2. That neither the efforts of local and private relief agencies nor the spirit of “rugged
individualism” expressed in the policies and attitudes of the Hoover administration were able
to halt the spiral of rising unemployment and declining production

3. How the economic pressures of the Depression affected the popular culture and political
ideas of the American people

4. Why Franklin D. Roosevelt was swept into the White House in 1932

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. List and explain the main factors that contributed to the Great Depression. Why has the stock
market crash been described as the trigger to the Depression? Which cause do you think is
most to blame? Why?

2. What message did Herbert Hoover convey to the public regarding the Great Depression?
3. Why were farmers in the South and Midwest hit particularly hard during the 1930s? What
were their responses?

4. What did the Great Depression mean to typical Americans? What happened to their living
standard and lifestyle? Who suffered the most? The least?
5. Analyze the impact of the Great Depression on American race relations, women and
feminism, family structure and behavior. What American values held up during this crisis?

6. Discuss the impact of the Great Depression on American popular culture. What seem to have
been the main desires of Americans who listened to radios, went to movies, or read books
and magazines? What were the criticisms and praises of American society expressed in the
popular culture?
7. Why were American radicals unable to make greater gains during the Great Depression?
What were the relative strengths and weaknesses of American radicalism during the 1930s?
In general, what did most Americans appear to want from their government?

8. What principles had governed President Hoover’s public life? How did they guide his

103

presidency? Were they adequate to the challenge? Why or why not? Might they have been
adequate if he had more time to govern?
9. Why did Franklin D. Roosevelt win the presidency in 1932? Was he calling for great
changes? Why or why not?

MAP EXERCISE
1. Identify the states carried by Herbert Hoover and those carried by Franklin D. Roosevelt in
the election of 1932.

INTERPRETATIVE QUESTIONS BASED ON MAPS AND TEXT
1. Why did the nation so thoroughly reject Herbert Hoover? What was expected from
Roosevelt?
2. What normally Republican parts of the country voted for Roosevelt in 1932? What does that
signify about the seriousness of the Depression?

LIBRARY EXERCISE
The following exercise will require students to consult a historical atlas and other sources found
in most college libraries. Using these library resources and the text, they should be able to
answer the following:

1. Identify the areas included in the Dust Bowl and explain why those areas were so afflicted.
How did climatic forces combine with farming techniques and economic distress to cause the
migration? Trace the migration route to California and identify the parts of that state
occupied by the Okies and other migrants. What long-term effect did the migration have on
California? How did it affect Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and the surrounding Dust Bowl
territory?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lester V. Chandler, America’s Greatest Depression (1970)
Roger Daniels, The Bonus March (1971)
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century
(1997)
Glen H. Elder, Jr., Children of the Great Depression (1974)
Martin Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover (1978)
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash (1954)
James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989)
Joan Jenson and Lois Scharf, eds., Decades of Discontent: The Women’s Movement, 1920-1940 (1983)
Charles P. Kindleberger, The World Depression, 1929-1939 (1973)
Robert S. McElvaine, ed., Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters From the Forgotten Man
(1983)
David P. Peeler, Hope Among Us Yet: Social Criticism and Social Thought in the Depression Years (1987)
Richard Pells, Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression
Years (1973)
Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Film Making in the Studio Era (1988)
Bernard Sternsher, rev., ed., Hitting Home: The Great Depression in Town and Country (1989)
Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (1975)
Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (1979)

mcgraw hill, chapter 24 summery

CHAPTER 24
The New Era

CHAPTER SUMMARY
By several measurements the United States became the world’s richest and most productive
nation during the 1920s. Most urban Americans saw a rise their incomes and found themselves
surrounded by an explosion of new consumer products. It is these “roaring” aspects of the age
that have so colored the memory of what was called the New Era. With the booming markets in
automobiles and housing and various ancillary industries of each, many Americans had reason to
believe that the progressive ideal of an efficient, ordered, and prosperous society was finally at
hand. Unfortunately, the boom masked many problems. Wealth remained concentrated in the
hands of a few, and, contrary to popular impression, many Americans struggled just to get by.
For rural America, the situation was even more bleak. Overproduction of crops, combined with
dwindling political clout, drove many farmers off their land during the decade. As new
technology, new science, new ideas, and new products seemed to be rapidly reordering not only
how people lived, but also what they thought and believed in, not surprisingly, a backlash set in.
The decade’s “roar” was met with a wave of cultural nativism, the revival of the Ku Klux
Klan, restrictions on immigration, and increased conflicts between various racial and ethnic
minorities. Flaring tensions between urban America and rural America and between modernists
and fundamentalists resulted in the passage of prohibition and anti-evolution laws. Writers and
artists, especially those who were just finding their intellectual voices, engaged in their own war
against the new middle-class attitudes toward materialism, race, and gender. Placidly presiding
over much of this turbulence were two small-town, conservative Republican presidents: Warren
Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Despite their contrasting styles, each was a representative of the
majority culture and each personified the pro-business and restrained governmental policies that
dominated American politics throughout the decade.

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 24 should enable the student to understand:

1. The reasons for the industrial boom of the 1920s and for the limits of that boom

2. The major developments in technology, science, and psychiatry, and both their short- and
long-term effect on American society

3. The nature and extent of the problems facing organized labor and the American farmer

4. The changes in traditional American lifestyles, behavior, and values in the 1920s, especially
in the areas of consumerism, communications, religion, and the role of women

5. The reflection of those changed values in American literature and art

6. The reasons for, and effects of, prohibition on American politics and society

7. The reasons for the rise of cultural nationalism and racial unrest in the 1920s

8. The pro-business nature and general political philosophy of the Republican administrations
of the1920s and the consequences of these tendencies for the society at large

99

MAIN THEMES
1. How the automobile boom and the new technology fed the economic expansion of the 1920s
2. That many workers and farmers did not share equitably in the prosperity of the decade

3. How a nationwide consumer culture began to emerge and shape the larger society
4. How the ideas of “new woman” emerged
5. The intellectual criticism of American society and the psychological effects on individuals of
consumerism

6. The broad cultural conflicts between new ideas and ways of living with traditional beliefs
and lifestyles
7. The policies, similar and not, of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did contemporaries refer to the 1920s as the New Era? Was this an appropriate label?

2. What were the main characteristics of this new national consumer-based society? Who
gained from it? Who did not and why?

3. Analyze the intellectual and scientific forces that contributed to the emergence of a modern
secular American culture in the 1920s?
4. Did progressivism die during the 1920s? Or was this the moment of its final triumph?
Explain the reasoning behind your choice.

5. How and why did the role of women change during the 1920s? How and why did women
reformers differ among themselves during the 1920s?

6. Briefly characterize how each of the following people seemed to typify certain aspects of the
1920s: Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover, Charles Lindbergh, Margaret Sanger, H. L.
Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Al Smith, and William Jennings Bryan. What was the unique
vision of each person? Does one individual, or a combination of two or more, capture the
spirit of the decade?

7. What was the vision of the Harlem Renaissance?

8. Why was the New Era a generally Republican era? How did the personalities and policies of
Harding and Coolidge reflect the 1920s?
9. Why were the forces favoring prohibition, religious fundamentalism, and nativism so strong
during the 1920s?

10. What does the election of 1928 tell us about the politics of the 1920s in general?

MAP EXERCISE
1. Identify the major regional areas and cities that were the centers of urbanization in 1920.

2. Identify the states carried by Herbert Hoover and by Al Smith in 1928.

100

INTERPRETATIVE QUESTIONS BASED ON MAPS AND TEXT
1. What technological and social forces were at work in the 1920s to break down regional
differences?

2. What conflicts between the modern secular, mainly urban, culture and the traditional culture
manifested themselves in the 1920s?
3. What states did Hoover carry that would normally have been regarded as safely Democratic?
Why did he make those inroads?
4. Why did Smith carry Rhode Island and Massachusetts despite losing other states where
Democrats normally had a good chance for victory? Where did Smith make significant gains
for the Democrats even though losing statewide totals?
5. To what extent did urban and rural culture become blended in the 1920s? How did they
remain distinct?

ESSAY QUESTION
This question is based on the preceding map exercise. It is designed to test students’ knowledge
of the geography of the area discussed in this chapter and of its historical development. Careful
reading of the text will help students answer this question.

1. What does a state-by-state breakdown of the results of the election of 1928 tell you about the
differences between the two major parties? Why did Hoover make inroads into the once
solidly Democratic South?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beth L. Bailey, From Back Porch to Front Seat (1988)
Stanley Coben, Rebellion Against Victorianism: The Impetus for Cultural Change in 1920s America
(1991)
Robert Crunden, From Self to Society: Transition in American Thought, 1919-1941 (1972)
Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (1995)
James Flink, The Automobile Age (1988)
Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (1984)
Louis Galambos and Joseph Pratt, The Rise of the Corporate Commonwealth: U.S. Business and Public
Policy in the Twentieth Century (1988)
Gary Gerstle, American Crucible (2000)
Daniel Horowitz, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Towards the Consumer Society in America,
1875-1940 (1985)
Morton Keller, Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900-1933
(1990)
Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over
Science and Religion (1997)
Elizabeth Lunbeck, The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America
(1994)
Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (1994)
George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980)
Roderick Nash, The Nervous Generation: American Thought, 1917-1930 (1970)
Michael Parrish, Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920-1941 (1992)
Susan Smulyan, Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920-1934 (1994)

mcgraw hill, chapter 23 summery

CHAPTER 23
America and the Great War

CHAPTER SUMMARY
In the summer of 1914, what was then called the Great War erupted in Europe. The conflict was
expected to be brief, even glorious. Instead, it was a disaster for all of the participants. Four years
of fighting, infused with many new lethal war technologies, saw the inglorious slaughter of a
generation of men. At the outset of the war, the United States assumed a stance of strict
neutrality, but it soon became apparent that the Wilson administration was much more pro-ally
(Great Britain, France, and Russia) than pro-German. Officially, America was simply asserting
its rights as a neutral trading power; however, the assertion of those rights put the United States
on a collision course with the German submarine. After many fits and starts, the German
government announced unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917. Two months later
President Wilson made the final—and fateful—decision to enter the war against Germany. At
this point the armies and civilians of the warring nations had suffered mightily. The insertion of
fresh American troops and supplies in 1917 probably hastened the end of that suffering, tipping
the balance toward the Allies, and thereby providing the margin of victory.
To place America on a war footing, the federal government turned to an array of
unprecedented measures: sharply graduated income taxes, conscription of troops for a foreign
war, management of the economy by federal bureaucracies, and a massive propaganda and anti-
sedition campaign. Part of that propaganda campaign involved President Wilson’s formulation of
nonpunitive war aims known as his Fourteen Points, the highlight of which was the last point, a
call for the creation of a League of Nations for peaceful international diplomacy. Wilson’s desire
to form his “new world order” required his attendance at the postwar peace conference in Paris.
This, too, was an unprecedented move, but it was not a successful one. Wilson’s idealism proved
no match for France and England’s desire for territorial security and revenge against Germany.
The Treaty of Versailles was much more a victor’s peace than a reflection of the Fourteen Points.
The gap between the expectations raised by Wilson and the reality of the punitive treaty was so
great that many Americans preferred to retreat altogether from international obligations. By
1920, after two Senate votes against the Treaty of Versailles and American participation in a
League of Nations, the American people had so tired of two decades of reform, a foreign war,
and a failed peace that they elected a Republican President and Congress, which promised little
more than a retreat from the world and a return to normalcy.

OBJECTIVES
A thorough study of Chapter 23 should enable the student to understand:

1. The background factors and immediate sequence of events that caused the United States to
declare war on Germany in 1917

2. The new technology of warfare employed between 1914 and 1918 and its effects on the
tactics and course of World War I

95

3. The extent of government control of the American economy during World War I and both the
economic and military contributions of the United States to Allied victory
4. The course of events that led to the United States’ entry into war and the announced
American objectives in fighting
5. The desires and limits of American support for the war, the propaganda campaign to promote
unity, and the development and the outcome of war hysteria in the United States during the
war
6. The public and political climate in the United States and Europe at the start of the Paris peace
conference and Wilson’s successes and failures at Versailles
7. The circumstances that led the U.S. Senate to reject the Treaty of Versailles and their
consequences

8. The economic problems the United States faced immediately after World War I and their
consequences

9. The reasons for the Red Scare and the resurgence of racial unrest in postwar America

MAIN THEMES
1. How official American wartime neutrality was something less than actual neutrality and
eventually led to full American participation in the war

2. That the American intervention on land and sea provided the balance of victory for the Allies

3. How the Wilson administration financed the war, managed the economy, and encouraged
public support for the war effort while raising the expectations for the postwar period

4. How President Wilson tried to apply his personal and political idealism and morality to the
realities of world politics and how he largely failed
5. How the American war effort affected the American homefront not only during but also
immediately after World War I

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Was American involvement in World War I inevitable? What forces worked to maintain
American neutrality? What forces propelled the country into the war?

2. Discuss the military and economic impact of American entry into World War I. What was the
impact on the domestic American economy during and immediately after the war?

3. On what grounds did Wilson call for the United States to enter the war? How did those
grounds govern American conduct during the war and at the peace conference?

4. Describe the suffering that this war visited on Europe. Why did so many people die? Why
was it so much easier to wage a defensive fight than an offensive one during World War I?
5. How did the American government try to unify public opinion behind the American war
effort? What were the consequences of that effort? In what way is propaganda a war weapon?

6. Why did Wilson go to Paris at the end of the war? How was he received by the public? The
other attending representatives? What was the nature of the opposition, both foreign and
domestic, to him and his ideas? Why did he encounter such intransigent opposition to his

96

idealism? How did he handle this opposition? What mistakes did he make along the way?
How might he have handled the situation?
7. Compare Wilson’s Fourteen Points with the final Treaty of Versailles. How do you account
for the differences? What would have been a reasonable treaty settlement in your view?
8. Why did the U.S. Senate reject the Treaty of Versailles? Could Wilson have prevented its
rejection? What were the immediate and long-term consequences of that rejection?

9. How did developments at home and abroad between 1918 and 1920 help produce a sense of
disillusionment? Why did those developments contribute to a Republican victory in 1920?
10. Discuss the economic, social, and racial impact of the American war effort. To what extent
were the Red Scare and a black nationalist movement direct consequences of the American
involvement in World War I?

MAP EXERCISES
1. Identify the Allies, the Central Powers, the occupied nations, and the neutrals.

2. Note the approximate location of Germany’s deepest penetration of France and of Russia and
the approximate location of the armistice line.

INTERPRETATIVE QUESTIONS BASED ON MAPS AND TEXT
1. What two nations bore the brunt of the western front fighting within their borders? What
nation suffered the most on the eastern front? How did the general course of military
operations on both fronts affect the peace negotiations?

ESSAY QUESTIONS
These questions are based on the preceding map exercises. They are designed to test students’
knowledge of the geography of the area discussed in this chapter and of its historical
development. Careful reading of the text will help students answer these questions.
1. To what extent was American involvement in World War I a natural outcome of the imperial
expansion that began in the 1890s? What other factors pulled America into the war?

2. What internal effects did World War I have on the United States?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lloyd Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition (1987)
William Breen, Uncle Sam at Home (1984)
Kathleen Burk, Britain, America, and the Sinews of War (1985)
Garry Clifford, The Citizen Soldiers (1972)
Alfred E. Conrebise, War as Advertised: The Four Minute Men and America’s Crusade,
1917-1918 (1984)
Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I (1985)
Frank Freidel, Over There: The Story of America’s First Great Overseas Crusade, rev. ed. (1990)
Maurine W. Greenwald, Women, War, and Work (1980)
Meirion and Susie Harries, The Last Days of Innocence: America at War, 1917-1918 (1997)

97

Manfred Jonas, The United States and Germany (1984)
John Keegan, The First World War (1998)
David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980)
Philip Knightly, The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as
Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker (1975)
Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (2001)
Robert K. Murray, The Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (1955)
Ralph Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (1970)
Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (1962)

For Internet resources, practice questions, references to additional books and films, and more,
see this book’s Online Learning Center at www.mhhe.com/unfinishednation4.

GENERAL DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTERS 14–23

These questions are designed to help students bring together ideas from several chapters and see
how the chapters relate to one another. Some questions will also help students explore how
changes in the landscape and in geopolitical conditions are significant to understanding
American history.

1. To what extent did the political issues of the Reconstruction era persist throughout the balance of the

nineteenth century? What were those issues?
2. What was the relationship between the American frontier and the nation’s rise to industrial world
supremacy? Could the United States have prospered without the natural resources of the West?
3. What cultural beliefs, attitudes, and myths that developed as the United States pushed into the
American West were carried into the nation’s imperial expansion after 1898?
4. What forces were at work within and outside of the United States to lead the nation into a more active
role in world affairs? Why did the country acquire an empire?
5. Progressivism has been described as “twentieth-century solutions to nineteenth-century problems.” Is
this an accurate description? Would it be more accurate to say that the progressive era was really the
end of the nineteenth century rather than the beginning of the twentieth?
6. Compare America’s economic position in 1865 with its position at the end of World War I. What
forces led to so much change in just over half a century?
7. Compare American urban centers in 1865 with their position at the end of World War I. How did
cities come to dominate the economic, political, and cultural life of the nation? How had social
attitudes, customs, and values changed? What had happened to rural America?
8. Describe the process by which the United States went from an insular nation as little concerned with
world affairs as possible in 1865 to the world’s leading economic, military, and diplomatic power by
the end of World War I.
9. Weigh the ecological costs of railroad development with the economic benefits to the nation. Which
way do the scales tip? Could the benefits have been obtained at less cost?
10. Why did the role of the American presidents change so dramatically between the late nineteenth
century and the early twentieth century? To what degree were these changes motivated by popular
desire or by the other factors?