Spring 2006
History 1378
Study Guide for Examination 2
Preparing for the Exam
Each exam includes multiple choice, identification, and essay questions based on the lectures and the assigned readings. To help you prepare for the exams, a study guide is attached to this syllabus. Note: You are responsible for the material presented in the lectures and readings, whether or not it is covered in the study guide.
Identification
World War II: Fascism, Nazi Party, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Manhattan Project
Cold War: Containment, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, Alger Hiss, Whitaker Chambers, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, "Paranoid Style," Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis
1950s: McCarthyism, Massive Retaliation, Sputnik, Iran, Guatemala
Vietnam: Counterinsurgency, Flexible Response, Domino Theory, Dien Bien Phu, Geneva Accords, Ho Chi Minh, Ngo Dinh Diem, Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Tet Offensive, Vietnamization
Civil Rights: Brown v. Board of Education, Little Rock crisis, Montgomery Bus Boycott, America and its Peoples Luther King, Sitin, Freedom Riders, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, 24th Amendment, Great Society, Malcolm X, De facto and de jure segregation
Since 1970: Oil Embargo, Detente, Watergate, War Powers Act, Freedom of Information Act, Campaign Finance Reform
Questions to think about:
1. Why did Americans favor neutrality during the 1930s? What legislation did Congress pass in that period to guarantee the country's neutrality?
2. Explain why relations between the U.S. and Japan worsened during the 1930s.
3. One group of Americans saw its civil liberties infringed during the Second World War. Which group? What happened?
4. Why did President Truman decide to drop the atomic bomb on Japan? What alternatives were available to him? How do Truman's supporters defend his decision? What do critics argue?
5. Identify the major issues, events, and misconceptions that helped bring on the Cold War. Explain how President Truman sought to implement the containment policy.
6. Why did the U.S. enter the Korean War? What consequences did involvement in Korea have for American foreign policy?
7. Trace the gradual growth of American involvement in Vietnam. Why did the U.S. assume the financial costs of France's war effort? Why did conventional techniques of warfare, like massive bombing, fail in Vietnam? What was President Nixon's strategy in Vietnam? Why did he expand the war into Cambodia?
8. What was the specific incident that started the chain of events that led to President Nixon's resignation? What did the White House tapes show that Nixon was guilty of? In other to prevent future abuses of power, what laws did Congress enact in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate?
9. What broad changes have taken place in the American economy; in America's place in the world; and in the nature of the American political system since the early 1970s? Why have these shifts occurred?
Questions based on Huck’s Raft:
Discuss:
a) the impact of World War II on the lives of the young;
b) the ways that the 1950s was and was not a golden age for young people.
Discuss:
a) how and why American childhood changed from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s;
b) the panics and public controversies that arose over childhood beginning in the 1970s, explain why these panics took place, and whether public anxieties over children were exaggerated or were rooted in reality; and
c) the problems (institutional, cultural, and societal) that appear to lie behind the school shootings of the late 1990s
