Sourcing: Who Started the Cold War?
WORLD HISTORY PROJECTAP/ LESSON 8.1ACTIVITYSOURCING: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “Sourcing: Who Started the Cold War”, OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/1PurposeIn this final sourcing activity of the course, you’ll put all your sourcing skills to use by writing an essay that attempts to answers the question, who started the Cold War? You’ll complete all sections of the Sourcing Tool to analyze two primary sources that will enable you to identify the causes of the Cold War. This will help you determine whether you’ve mastered this historical thinking skill and are now able to evaluate the reliability of sources you encounter—a useful skill, not just in this course but outside of the classroom as well.PracticesComparison, contextualization, claim testingIn this activity, you’ll compare two documents from the same time and on the same topic but from two different perspectives. Therefore, you’ll have to use your contextualization skills to analyze these primary sources in order to understand the context in which these documents were written. In addition, you’ll employ your claim-testing abilities to decide which source is more credible.ProcessAs this is the final activity in the sourcing progression, your teacher may have you complete this activity in pairs or on your own. For this activity, you will read two primary sources that provide differing perspectives on who started the Cold War, complete the Sourcing Tool for both sources, and write an essay focusing on all rows of the tool. Note that the Sourcing Tool and the source excerpts are included in the Sourcing—Who Started the Cold War? worksheet.Your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Sourcing—Who Started the Cold War? worksheet. Read the excerpts, starting with the introductory paragraphs, and as you read, think about this question: To what extent were the causes of the Cold War similar in the US and USSR?After you’ve finished reading each source, complete all rows of the Sourcing Tool.After you’ve completed the tool for each of the primary source documents, answer these follow-up questions.1.How do the authors differ in their analysis of who was responsible for starting the Cold War?2.What are the similarities between the documents?3.How does each source try to convince the audience of his argument regarding this topic?4.How do these sources help you answer the Unit 8 Problem: How did the intertwined trends of the Cold War and decolonization impact societies around the world c. 1900 to the present?Be prepared to share your answers and the evidence you used to support these answers with the class.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT AP / LESSON 8.1ACTIVITYSOURCING: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?2Finally, write a four-to five-paragraph essay in response to this prompt: Develop an argument that explains the extent to which the causes of the Cold War were similar in the US and USSR. Be sure to make specific reference to each row of the Sourcing Tool. Remember to look over the WHP LEQ Writing Rubric, as this is what your teacher will use to assess your essays. Your essays should include the following elements:1.Introduction: A paragraph that includes a thesis statement and provides the historical context necessary to understand this event and how the thesis relates to this context.2.Body paragraph 1: An analysis of the first primary source document that includes information on how your reading of this text supports your thesis statement. This paragraph should focus on the point of view of the author.3.Body paragraph 2: An analysis of the second primary source document that includes information on how your reading of this text supports your thesis statement. This paragraph should focus on the point of view of the author.4.Body paragraph 3: An analysis of how understanding the differing perspectives of these sources helps you understand the importance of these sources and helps you respond to the prompt.5.Conclusion: A paragraph that synthesizes the information in your essay and explains how your conclusions support your thesis statement.Your teacher will collect your worksheets and essays to evaluate how your sourcing skills are progressing.
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT AP / LESSON 8.1ACTIVITYSOURCING: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?3Sourcing ToolDirections: Answer each of the questions below. If you are sourcing more than one document, provide responses for each.Name of document and/or source:Author’s name:Location and date source was written:Historical Context1.What was happening in the author’s location that might have influenced the document’s creation (for example, the location’s geography, demography, or the region’s political situation, religious influences, or industry)?2.What was happening at the time that might have influenced the document’s creation?3.What information that you’ve learned in this unit helps you understand this document?Audience1.Who was this created for (that is, was this written for anyone to read or was it private, for one specific person or group)?2.What were the readers of this source supposed to do or think once they read it?
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT AP / LESSON 8.1ACTIVITYSOURCING: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?4PurposeWhat was the author’s goal, and what evidence supports your answer?POV (Point of View)Can you identify anything about the author that might explain why they wrote this? For example, their economic class, occupation, religion, nationality, political group, ethnic group, or gender?WhY (Importance)1.What is the main idea of the source?2.What parts of this document are most valuable and why?3.What are the limitations of this document? In other words, where does it fall short?
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT AP / LESSON 8.1ACTIVITYSOURCING: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?5SOURCING EXCERPTS: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?Source 1: Excerpt from Novikov TelegramNikolai Novikov (1903–1989) was the Soviet ambassador to the United States from April 1946 to October 1947. This telegram was written in response to two 1946 communications: American ambassador to the Soviet Union, George Kennan’s, “long telegram”; and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “iron curtain” speech. This document was sent to Joseph Stalin (the leader of the Soviet Union) and othertop officials at the Kremlin in 1946.1.a) US foreign policy is being pursued right now in a situation quite different from that which existed in the prewar period. ...2.The increase in peacetime military potential and the organization of a large number of naval and air bases both in the US andbeyond its borders are clear indicators of the US desire to establish world domination.For the first time in the country’s history in the summer of 1946 Congress adopted a law to form a peacetime army not of volunteers but on the basis of universal military conscription. The size of the Army, which is to reach 1 million men as of 1 July 1947, has been considerably increased. ...The colossal growth of expenditures for the Army and Navy, comprising $13 billion in the 1946-1947 budget (about 40% of the entire budget of $36 billion) and is more than 10 times the corresponding expenditures in the 1938 budget, when it did not even reach $1 billion.These enormous budget sums are being spent along with the maintenance of a large Army, Navy, and Air Force and also the creation of a vast system of naval and air bases in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. According to available official plans, in the coming years 228 bases, support bases, and radio stations are to be built in the Atlantic Ocean and 258 in the Pacific Ocean. The majority of these bases and support bases are located outside the United States....All these facts clearly show that their armed forces are designed to play a decisive role in the realization of plans to establish American world domination.b)The current policy of the American government with respect to the USSR is also directed at limiting or displacing Soviet influence from neighboring countries. While implementing it the US is trying to take steps at various international conferences or directly in these very same countries which, on the one hand, manifest themselves in the support of reactionary forces in former enemy or allied countries bordering the USSR with the object of creating obstacles to the processes of democratizing these countries but, on the other, in providing positions for the penetration of American capital into their economies. ...e) All these steps to preserve the great military potential are not an end in itself, of course. They are intended only to prepare conditions to win world domination in a new war being planned by the most warlike circles of American imperialism, the timeframe for which, needless to say, no one can determine right now.Source: “Telegram from Nikolai Novikov, Soviet Ambassador to the US, to the Soviet Leadership,” September 27, 1946, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AVP SSSR, f. 06. Op. 8, p. 45, p. 759, published in Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn’ #11, 1990, pp. 148-154, translated for CWIHP by Gary Goldberg. http://digitalarchive. wilsoncenter.org/document/110808
WORLD HISTORY PROJECT AP / LESSON 8.1ACTIVITYSOURCING: WHO STARTED THE COLD WAR?6Source 2: Excerpt from US National Security Council ReportThe following report was written by the US National Security Council and presented to the Executive Secretary for National Security under President Harry S. Truman in 1950. The National Security Council was a relatively new agency within the executive branch of the United States government. Created by an act of Congress in 1947, the council’s directive was to coordinate defense and foreign policy. The president was the chair of the council with the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State acting as key members.II. Backgrounds of the Present World Crisis... the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants [contenders] to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical [opposite] to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. Conflict has, therefore, become endemic [common] and is waged, on the part of the Soviet Union, by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the dictates of expediency [convenience]. With the development of increasingly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, every individual faces the ever-present possibility of annihilation [total destruction] should the conflict enter the phase of total war.On the one hand, the people of the world yearn [long] for relief from the anxiety arising from the risk of atomic war. On theother hand, any substantial further extension of the area under the domination of the Kremlin would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin with greater strength could be assembled. It is in this context that this Republic and its citizens ... stand in their deepest peril.The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilizationitself. They are issues which will not await our deliberations. With conscience and resolution this Government and the people it represents must now take new and fateful decisions. ...III. Fundamental Design of the KremlinThe fundamental design of those who control the Soviet Union and the international communist movement is to retain and solidify their absolute power, first in the Soviet Union and second in the areas now under their control. In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority.The design, therefore, calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structureof society in the countries of non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient [obedient] to and controlled from the Kremlin. To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass. The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark [barrier] of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.Source: National Security Council (1950), “A Report to the President Pursuant to the President’s Directive of January 31, 1950,” Wilson Center: Digital Archive International History Declassified. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116191