Cold+War+Assignments

Folder for video clips can be located on G--->KrallUSIIHonors>Cold War They also be found on the Q drive.
 * YOU WILL BE WORKING ON THIS PAGE FOR THURSDAY AND FRIDAY (on your Day off of School)**
 * BACKGROUND-** Please Read

Following the Second World War, the combatant nations largely separated into armed camps defined by ideology. The Cold War began nearly as soon as the fighting stopped, acknowledged in Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain Speech” in Fulton, Missouri on 5 March 1946. The twelve Western democracies, dominated by the United States, founded the North Atlantic Treaty Association as a mutual defense organization in 1949. In response, the communist nations, dominated by the Soviet Union, formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. This alignment would serve as the basic framework of the Cold War over the next fifty years.

THE THREAT OF COMMUNISM AT HOME [|Timeline of Anticommunism]

At the close of the Second World War, the United States was the only nation armed with atomic weapons. This advantage was short lived however. The American physics and nuclear community was riddled with spies, most of whom, rather than having any ideological sympathy for communism, simply believed that, to deter its use, no nation should have a monopoly on such a horrible weapon. At the Yalta Conference, when President Roosevelt told Churchill and Stalin of the Atomic Bomb, Stalin already knew through Soviet spies. In fact, Stalin knew of the Atomic Bomb before Vice-President Truman, who was kept in the dark by Roosevelt. The Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in 1949 and their first, far more powerful, hydrogen bomb in 1955. Subsequently, a series of spy scandals rocked American government. [|Alger Hiss], a bright up and coming State Department attaché who had accompanied Roosevelt to Yalta, was implicated by Time Magazine editor Whittaker Chambers of passing secrets to the Soviets. Convinced that Soviet spies would steal his evidence in order to protect Hiss, Chambers hid the microfilm in a hollowed out pumpkin, thereby earning his evidence the moniker “the pumpkin papers.” At trial, Hiss was twice acquitted of treason, though he was convicted of perjury. This distinction did not matter to many of Hiss’ critics on the right, who continued to label him a traitor and, believing that Roosevelt had given too much to Stalin, suspected Hiss of Soviet subversion at the Yalta Conference. [|Julius and Ethel Rosenberg], a young couple living in New York, were arrested for conspiracy to commit treason in helping Soviet agents ferret atomic secrets out of the United States. While they were both members of the Communist Party, the espionage charge was far more dubious. All the same, they were convicted of treason, largely on the strength of the vigorous prosecution presented by Roy Cohn. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair on 19 June 1953.


 * Activity 1**- Click on the above links dealing with the Trials of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenburg. Skim through both Trials and witness statements. Create a chart (For each trial) in your notebook listing evidence for the prosecution and evidence for the defense. At the bottom, state both the verdict as well as your own opinion. Do you believe that these individuals are guilty? Innocent? Give evidence to support your conclusion. **You will write a 1-1.5 page (total) summary of both cases and your argument. This will be collected Monday!**

Example of Evidence Chart.
 * Activity 2**- Viewing the video clips and links, Please define and state the significance of the following terms relating to the cold war (you will get a hard copy of this.) **You may work with a Partner for Activity Two only. We will go over these terms as a class on Thursday.**

[|The Space Race] [|McCarthy's telegram to Truman] [|Awesome Cold War site!] [|Post War America] [|Cuban Missile Crisis]

And don't forget your textbook! Good stuff in there. Check out Chapter 36 pages 874-875, Chapter 37 pages 888-890, 902, and Chapter 38 pages 913-918