Title of Lesson: Assessing Blame for the Cold War
Kelly Keogh
Normal Community High School

Focus/Summary:

It's vitally important that high school students start to understand and recognize the process of how history is written. Because the vast majority of students have only learned history through a text book, most do not understand how different historical interpretations of events help construct their knowledge of the past and that these interpretations are often accepted at face value. When examining the origins of the Cold War in Mel Leffler's Specter of Communism, it's obvious that the author recognizes there are distinct schools of thought surrounding it. By allowing students to learn the basis of the different schools and assessing their logic, it will facilitate their analyzing historical accounts in a more objective, analytical manner.

Vital Theme and Narrative: Conflict and Cooperation/Values, beliefs, political ideas.

Habit of Mind:

• Distinguish between the important and inconsequential

• Grasp the complexity of historical causation, respect particularity, and avoid excessively abstract generalizations

• Appreciate the often tentative nature of judgments about the past.

• Read widely and critically in order to recognize the difference between fact and conjecture, between evidence and assertion, and thereby to frame useful questions.

Objectives:

The objective of the lesson is for students to understand the three main schools of historiography concerning the origins of the Cold War and be able to assess the strength and weakness of each. After understanding the construct of each, students
will then be able to identify each and weigh their validity in different historical accounts.

Procedures or Activities:

• Spend a class period analyzing and explaining the three main schools of thought concerning the origins of the Cold War. While explaining each, make certain that you explain the historical setting of each school as that had a major influence on how they explained the event. For example, the historians writing before the Second World War versus during the Vietnam era saw the event through very different historical constructs. • Allow students to practice their understanding of the three schools of thought by assigning them an exercise where they have to read and identify what interpretation is represented in different historical quotes. This can be done as a homework or classwork assignment, but it is vital that the entire class participates in an analysis of
the groups' findings. By doing this further clarification and understanding of the three schools will be achieved.
• After completing the written assignment together, the use of political cartoons/propaganda posters as a means to assess what school is being represented
is another supplementary activity that will enhance their understanding of the three schools.
• As a culminating activity, you can assign students Book Critiques that will require them to deconstruct a work employing the three schools of thought as their guide.
The use of Mel Leffler's Specter of Communism in this activity is especially beneficial with its wide use of all three schools.

Sources:

Mel Leffler's Specter of Communism. Notes on Cold War Historiography as found by Michael Hunt's Crisis in U.S. Foreign Policy. U.S. Political Cartoons 1900-90, Foreign Policy Association.

Ideas for Assessment of Student Learning:

• Objective exam employing quotes that require students to identify the appropriate school.
• Book Critique
• Students construct an poster/cartoon in which they display one of the three schools of thought concerning the Cold War origins.

COLD WAR HISTORIOGRAPHY

I. Traditional/Orthodox

* Soviet Aggression/Eastern Europe
* Stalin Pursuit of Power
* Communist Ideology - "worldwide revolution"

II. Realist

* No Blame - ideology got in the way
* Balance of Power/Bi-polar World
* National Interests Pursued by Both

III. Radical/New Left

* United States was Responsible
* Capitalist Expansion in pursuit of Markets
* Atomic Diplomacy

Cold War Historiography Exercise

Name ______________________________

Read the following "blurbs" concerning the origins of the Cold War and decide which school of thought it best reflects.

A. Traditional
B. Realist
C. Radical

1. _______

"For the Soviet Union was a phenomenon very different from America or Britain; it was a totalitarian state, endowed with an all-explanatory, all-consuming ideology, committed to the infallibility of government and party, still in a somewhat messianic mood, equating dissent with reason, and ruled by a dictator who, for all his quite extraordinary abilities, had his paranoid moments."

2. ______

There is the question of the relevance and appropriateness of America's response to the Soviet policy of conciliation in Eastern Europe ... the answer, put simply and directly, is that the increasingly militarized holy war mounted by American leaders was grossly irrelevant to the situation and highly conducive to producing problems that were more dangerous than those the policy was supposed to resolve."

3. ______

"This is the sense in which it seems to me that ideology was enormously important for the origins of the Cold War. Because if one begins with a sense of a badly-shaken Soviet political system. and if one accepts. as I do. Stalin's consciousness of the need for absolute dictatorial power. and his being sixty-six years of age, it makes sense that he took the actions he took."

4. ______

"Thus the Cold War was a process of reciprocal, reinforcing imagery and mutual deterrence. After a quarter of a century both the old generation of American and Soviet leaders could claim their policies had been correct. There had been no great war."

5. ______

"...Surrounded by this vast upheaval (the Second World War) the United States found itself immeasurably enriched and, without rival. the strongest nation on the globe. It emerged from the war self-conscious of its new strength and confident of its ability to direct world reconstruction along lines compatible with its goals. And these objectives, carefully formulated during the war, were deceptively simple: Essentially, the U.S. aim was to restructure the world so that American business could trade, operate, and profit without restrictions everywhere."

6. ______

"Yet no plausible account of Soviet-American hostility can neglect to emphasize the significance of the structural causes of this hostility. What had been prior to the war the center of the international system had suddenly collapsed. By destroying the prewar balance of power - by creating a power vacuum in the heart of Europe - the war resulted in a situation that could not but have given rise to Soviet-American hostility."