The outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 posed a serious challenge to U.S. neutrality. On the one hand, Americans' sympathies lay overwhelmingly with Great Britain and its allies; on the other hand, public sentiment overwhelmingly favored staying out of the war. Through a study of contemporary documents, students learn about the difficult choices faced by the Roosevelt administration during the first fifteen months of World War II, culminating in the decision to provide direct military aid to Great Britain.

In this lesson of the curriculum unit, students reconsider the events leading to U.S. entry into World War I through the lens of archival documents.

By the beginning of 1944, victory in Europe was all but assured. The task of diplomacy largely involved efforts to define the structure of the postwar world. Why and how did the United States attempt to preserve the Grand Alliance as American diplomats addressed European issues?

Although the campaign in the Mediterranean was successful in forcing Italy out of the war, Allied military planners by late 1943 had concluded that it would not be enough to defeat Nazi Germany. This lesson plan will focus on the overall strategy pursued by the Allies in the final months of World War II in Europe.

This lesson shows students how broadly the Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 empowered the federal government"”particularly the President"”and asks students to investigate how FDR promoted the program in speeches and then in photographs.

For American diplomacy, the war against Japan was not just about the destruction of Japanese supremacy in the Pacific, China, and Southeast Asia. The ultimate issue was just what would replace Japan's imperial design of a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." This lesson plan focuses on two major postwar problems"”the future of China and (using French Indochina as a test case) the future of Western imperialism in Southeast Asia.

The U.S. victory over the Japanese Navy at Midway succeeded in stopping the Axis advance in the Pacific, and by early 1943 the Marines had driven the Japanese from Guadalcanal. This lesson will guide students through the military campaigns of the Pacific theater, tracing the path of the Allied offensives.

This lesson from the Smithsonian has students taking the roles of Japanese Americans who faced internment during WWII. Students will read, sythesize and respond to first-hand accounts of internment and publish their responses on a Smithsonian blog page.

Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Soviet leaders had been claiming that communism and capitalism could never peacefully coexist. Agreements regarding the postwar world were reached at Yalta and Potsdam, but the Soviets wasted no time in violating them. Harry Truman believed that the proper means of responding to an international bully was a credible threat of force.

A chapter from The American Yawp open source history textbook focusing on, "The Recent Past."

In this lesson, students will use political cartoons to become familiar with the issues of nativism and protectionism, specifically in regard to the era of the Red Scare.

In this extensive, PDF unit focused on the Red Scare, Palmer raids, and civil liberties, the lessons will root the events of 1919-1920 in the disruptions generated by the First World War. The rise of Soviet Russia after 1917, as well as the wave of labor strikes that reverberated across the United States following the Armistice, serve as an entry point for this unit’s analysis of attacks on civil liberties during this period. Students will examine the American state’s suppression of dissent in the name of domestic security. It introduces students to the popular discourse that framed social critics like Emma Goldman as dangerous agitators. It also discusses legislation (such as the Sedition Act of 1918) and statements by American government officials (A. Mitchell Palmer’s “The Case Against the Reds”) that justified the arrest and deportation of individuals whom the United States deemed “undesirable.” Red Scare! encourages students to analyze and debate the often tenuous nature of constitutionally-protected freedoms in times of civil distress.

This inquiry includes four related formative performance tasks that collectively enable students to build up their knowledge of the issues and events related to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the resulting lawsuit, Korematsu v. United States, which challenged the constitutionality of the internment policy. In this inquiry, students consider policies, opinions, and perspectives as they work with sources to investigate multiple sides of the internment issue.

In this activity, students examine and analyze a series of primary source documents that relate to the Spanish American war.

In this lesson, students will identify important information from a variety of document types relating to the United States' participation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Secondly, students will focus on sequencing and rating the importance and/or usefulness of the documents to the overall theme. Finally, students will work in a small group setting to create a proposal for Woodrow Wilson as to what should be done with Alsace-Lorraine. The final objective allows students to compare their proposal to the actual Treaty of Versailles.

America’s involvement in WWI left most Americans exhausted--in more ways than one. Soldiers returning home had suffered huge emotional distress from the war itself as well as from the physical injuries that many had suffered. Americans at home were deeply divided over the issues at the forefront of the League of Nations debate and the impact that the war had on thousands of immigrants with relatives overseas, many suffering in war-torn lands. Many Americans wished to return to what President Harding described as “normalcy.” Because of this desire by the American public, three trends in American society began to develop, both in rural towns and in urban areas across the country

The goal of this inquiry is to help students understand the various factors that caused the United States to be on the winning side in World War II. The compelling question “Why was the US on the winning side of World War II?” engages students with both the economic and military factors that contributed to a successful war effort. Students start with an examination of the home front before looking at military factors in the wars in Europe and the Pacific. Students should be able to articulate a variety of factors that caused the Allied victory.

In this lesson, students will use political cartoons to become familiar with the role of the United States in the Post-World War One Era.

In this activity, students examine and analyze a series of primary source documents that relate to World War II.

A chapter from The American Yawp open source history textbook focusing on, "World War I & Its Aftermath."