Cold War Dbq Essay

After World War Two the U.S. and Soviet Union had a long-lasting rivalry since the Soviets were communists and the U.S. was not. This period is known as the Cold War because it was a major conflict where the U.S. and Soviet Union fought indirectly. The Cold War impacted the U.S. domestic policy and American society because it created American fear of communism. This fear later led to losing rights and the government switching where their money was being spent in certain areas such as general education.

One of the major impacts that the Cold War had on American lives was people losing rights and the government beginning to ignore the Constitution. In Document 1, President Truman demonstrated a violation of rights when he created loyalty review boards to figure out if anyone had ties with communists, and if so he’d fire them from their government jobs. This was shown when he said, “There should be a loyalty investigation of every person entering civilian employment of any department or agency of the executive branch.” Truman paid

In Document 4, the federal budget graph showed that at the start of the Cold War military spending skyrocketed. For example, at the end of WW2 in 1940 the budget was 21%, and in 1955 which was the start of the Cold War it increased to 64%. This shows that the government was taking away money from other areas which many Americans did not like. A second example is in Document 6, another political cartoon by Herb Block. This document shows that the NDEA was too focused on science that general education was being pushed aside and wasn’t getting much attention. In Block’s cartoon, he drew general education at the bottom with a ladder going up to a science building that looked less old. This was implying that science was most important, therefore Americans had fewer opportunities to learn basic