History Assignment-docx

HISTORY ASSIGNMENT
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Question 1: McCarthyism and the Nature of American Anxiety
The fact that McCarthyism was so powerful and widespread reveals to us that American anxiety was extreme. After the Second World War, the U.S. emerged victorious as well as the Soviets. So, the two great political and economic powers were experiencing ideological differences, something that could be termed as communist versus capitalist propaganda. Apart from protecting the American way of life and capitalist ideology, McCarthyism tried to prove that anyone who was not for it was in fact against it. Consequently, McCarthyism declared enemies everywhere, installing paranoia and fear into every citizen. In the process of developing the cultural notion of “American Dream,” the discourse of the red anti-capitalist was not welcome and had to be abolished.
Question 2: How the Cold War Affected the Movement Toward Nationhood.
The 1945- 1961 decolonization process could be associated with the New Cold War that existed between America and the Soviet Union and the establishment of the United Nations. Ideally, decolonization was influenced by the competition for domination and had a notable influence on the development of competition. While the U.S. encouraged national self-determination, it had firm links with its European counterparts who possessed imperial dominance and claims on their colonies. As such, the Cold War acted solely to complicate America’s position on decolonization.

Most of the U.S. allies believed that after recovering from the Second World War, they would receive a ready market and raw materials from their colonies. However, the alternative idea of freeing their overseas territories was not welcome by every European State. Although America did not insist on this issue, it started to encourage negotiations with European powers for early withdrawal of colonies. This saw several countries achieve independence between 1945 and 1961. For instance, the Philippines was granted independence by the U.S. in 1946.
Question 3: The Change in Historians’ Questions Regarding the Cold War
In 1945, the Soviet Union and the U.S. were close allies who jointly triumphed in the Second World War. Within a few years, American and Soviet forces became mortal enemies. This sparked questions among Historians on who started the enmity between the Americans and the Soviets. In the initial stages, American historians held that the Soviets began the Cold War as Joseph Stalin was a strong dictator driven by a communist belief to dominate the world. In the 1960s, a pool of revisionist historians, preoccupied with the Vietnam War held a different view that although Stalin was a Machiavellian despot, he was a conservative. Currently, John Lewis, supported by other historians, have proposed a post-revisionist analysis, which entails many features of the revisionism ideas while maintaining a view that Joseph Stalin is to blame for the Cold War. However, because the Second World War destroyed all other rivals of America and Soviet power, the USSR and the U.S. emerged as the only two States in the world that could hope to propagate their political and social systems globally. It has, therefore, become unnecessary to ask about who started the world war, but rather to concentrate more on when the rivalry began between the Soviet Union and the United States. Examining the fallout between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would give more ideas on how the Cold War was propagated. Today, most historians may be tempted to ask some specific questions like how Joseph Stalin contributed to the Cold War and how fear and distrust between the U.S. and the Soviet Union resulted in the Cold War.
Bibliography
Lorenzo, William. “McCarthyism and the Id:” Forbidden Planet”(1956) as a Veiled Criticism of McCarthyism in 1950s America.” (2016).
Petersen, Klaus. “The early Cold War and the Western Welfare State.” Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy 29, no. 3 (2013): 226-240.
White, Nicholas. Decolonization: the British Experience since 1945. Routledge, 2014.