QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (WEEK 5)

What was the outcome of the American debate over joining the League of Nations? Why did it play out as it did? What was the fate of the League of Nations in the interwar era? Why?

How did the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution treat the United States and American corporations after they came to power? Why did the United States intervene in Russia in 1918? In what ways did the United States seek a diplomatic settlement to the Russian civil war? What was American policy toward the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s? Why?

In what ways did the United States expand abroad economically and culturally in the years after World War I? In what ways did the Great Depression affect international relations? What was the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act? What is the Export-Import Bank?

In what ways did Americans individually or collectively agitate for world peace in the wake of World War I? What was the Kellogg-Briand Pact? What might we consider its limitations?

How did the United States and the major European powers respond to German and Italian militarism in the 1930s? What effect did this have on German expansion? What was American isolationism? Why did isolationists hold the views they did? How did World War I factor into American ideas about war in Europe in the late 1930s? What were the Neutrality Acts? What were their shortcomings?