Social Studies Curriculum

United States History

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Cold War (1945-1989)

Four weeks (through Week 10)

Enduring Understandings

The students will understand:

1. The ideologies of America and Soviet Union came into conflict and powerfully influenced global and domestic affairs.
2. Ideologies are value systems that may contain both political and economic beliefs.

Essential Questions

1. How do the superpowers develop and shape conflict?
2. How does the Cold War evolve from post-WWII through glasnost and perestroika?
3. How do regional conflicts become political and economic concerns around the globe? 
4. How did the Cold War affect the United States at home?

Objectives

• Examine the development of the United Nations.
• Assess the Cold War’s impact on domestic policy and civil liberties. 
• Examine the emerging roles of the superpowers along with the conflict and responsibilities that accompany it. 
• Examine the move toward collective security through organizations like NATO and the Warsaw Pact. 
• Evaluate the role of media and propaganda in the Cold War.
• Examine the rise of China toward superpower status.
• Evaluate the role of the United Nations and the U.S. in the Korean conflict and its aftermath. 
• Compare and contrast the role of technology especially in regards to the arms race and the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
• Examine domestic economic affairs and global economic competition. 
• Analyze the regional conflicts, which became Cold War hotspots in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and East Asia.
• Analyze organized attempts within the Soviet Bloc to resist communist ideology and any U.S. response. 
• Trace the Vietnam conflict and examine its significance in changing social and political policies, attitudes and behaviors in the United States. 
• Evaluate Alaska’s strategic significance in the Cold War.
• Define essential terms including: Six Day War, partition, cold war, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift, blacklist, McCarthyism, H-bomb, containment, brinksmanship, mutually assured destruction, satellite nation, bloc, HUAC, domino theory, Iron Curtain, Geneva Accords, Viet Cong, search and destroy missions, Ho Chi Minh Trial, Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Credibility Gap, POW/MIA, Pentagon Papers, anti-war draft resistance, Silent Majority, Vietnamization, Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs, War Powers Act, détente, INF Treaty, Commonwealth of Independent States, Solidarity Movement, ICBMs, ABMs, U-2 incident, capitalism, communism, Reds, Kremlin, Tiananmen Square, sphere of influence, space race, NASA, Sputnik.
• Reflect on the involvement of the following:  the Rosenbergs, Nikita Khrushchev, John Foster Dulles, Ho Chi Minh, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, J. Edgar Hoover, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, William Westmoreland, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Fidel Castro, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Leonid Breshnev, Deng Xiaoping, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and Nelson Mandela.

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