AP® United States History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/us-history/units/8/8-1)
Unit 8 · Topic 8.1
8.1 Contextualizing Period 8
Period 8 runs from 1945 to 1980. The United States came out of World War II as the world's richest and most powerful nation, locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. A long economic boom, movements for civil rights, and fierce debates over the role of government, the Vietnam War and American values shaped these decades.
Key terms
- contextualization
- superpower
- Cold War
- containment
- baby boom
The starting point in 1945
World War II left Europe and Asia in ruins, while the U.S. mainland was untouched. The U.S. made about half of the world's manufactured goods and alone had the atomic bomb (until 1949). The New Deal had made the federal government responsible for regulating the economy and providing a basic safety net, and the war had made it far bigger still.
At the same time, wartime service and work had raised the hopes of African Americans, women, Mexican Americans and others for equal treatment at home.
Three big threads
- The Cold War: the U.S. tried to contain communism around the world, through alliances, aid, an arms race, covert operations and wars in Korea and Vietnam. Fear of communism also shaped politics at home in the Second Red Scare.
- Prosperity and its limits: a long boom built suburbs, the Sun Belt and a huge middle class, but poverty, discrimination and, in the 1970s, inflation, oil shocks and factory closings limited who shared in it.
- Rights and liberalism: the civil rights movement and movements for women, Latinos, American Indians and gay Americans demanded equality. Liberals expanded government in the Great Society, and a growing conservative movement pushed back.
A timeline to anchor you
| Years | Key developments |
|---|---|
| 1945–1953 | Truman: containment, Marshall Plan, NATO, Korean War, Second Red Scare begins |
| 1953–1961 | Eisenhower: suburban boom, Brown v. Board, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Sputnik |
| 1961–1969 | Kennedy and Johnson: Cuban Missile Crisis, Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Great Society, Vietnam escalation, protest |
| 1969–1980 | Nixon, Ford and Carter: détente, Vietnamization, environmental laws, Watergate, stagflation, rise of the New Right |
Where it ends
By 1980 many Americans had lost faith in government after Vietnam, Watergate and a decade of economic trouble. The liberal consensus that had dominated since the New Deal was breaking apart, and Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 opened a more conservative era (Period 9). Civil rights had advanced enormously in law, though inequality remained, and the Cold War, after a period of détente, was heating up again.
Keep the period's population shifts in mind, too. Between 1945 and 1980, millions of Americans moved to the suburbs and to the Sun Belt states of the South and West, and the Immigration Act of 1965 opened the door to newcomers from Asia and Latin America. Both trends reshaped American politics and culture in Period 9.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Contextualizing a 1960s prompt
Write contextualization for this prompt: Evaluate the extent to which the Great Society changed the role of the federal government.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Reach back before the Great Society: what earlier developments made it possible?
- Step 2: Good choices: the New Deal's precedent of a federal safety net, postwar prosperity that made poverty seem fixable, and the civil rights movement.
- Step 3: Finish by linking those developments to the prompt.
Answer: Model paragraph: Since the New Deal of the 1930s, Americans had come to expect the federal government to regulate the economy and provide a basic safety net through programs like Social Security. After World War II, a long economic boom made the U.S. the richest country in history, yet writers like Michael Harrington showed that tens of millions of Americans still lived in poverty, while the civil rights movement exposed deep racial inequality. These conditions encouraged President Lyndon Johnson to use federal power more broadly than ever through his Great Society programs.
Common mistakes
- Treating the 1950s as purely calm and the 1960s as purely chaotic. Civil rights activism and Cold War fear marked both decades.
- Forgetting that the U.S. lost its atomic monopoly in 1949, which intensified the arms race and the Red Scare.
- Ignoring the rise of conservatism. It was building throughout the period, not only after 1980.
On the exam
- Period 8 carries 10–17 percent of the exam weight and falls inside the DBQ's 1754–1980 range, so it can anchor a DBQ or long essay on civil rights, the Cold War or the role of government.
- Strong context for any Period 8 essay usually mentions the Cold War and postwar prosperity.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 8.1 Contextualizing Period 8. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
At the end of World War II in 1945, the United States differed from the other major powers mainly in that
"At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. . . . I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes."
Source: President Harry S. Truman, address to a joint session of Congress requesting aid for Greece and Turkey, March 12, 1947.
Truman's speech was most directly a response to
"The Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world. . . .
[What is needed is] a rapid and sustained build-up of the political, economic, and military strength of the free world."
Source: National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), a secret policy study prepared by the State and Defense Departments for President Harry Truman, April 1950.
NSC-68 was written in the context of
"It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale."
Source: President Harry S. Truman, Executive Order 9981, July 26, 1948.
The order best reflects which broader development after World War II?
0 of 4 answered