A clue: You should consider the influence of the president’s advisers in addition to his own view of communism and Stalin. You should especially compare Truman with Franklin Roosevelt. Many believe that the Cold War could have been avoided had Roosevelt been alive. Of course, you should examine the Soviet side, too, to put Truman’s Cold War policy in context. More broadly, you should address ideological differences and the developments during World War II and in the latter half of the 1940s, including the historical context on both the U.S. and Soviet sides such as the Monroe Doctrine and German invasion of Russia through Eastern Europe.
