About This Lesson
This activity has students play the role of either Stalin or Truman. They will read about several events of the 1940s (Soviet Spies, the Iron Curtain Speech, Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine, the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift and formation of NATO, and the Soviet Nuclear Bomb, but their readings are based on their perspectives - one of them will always have a reason to be mad at the other. Then they discuss the event and after 2 minutes of discussion, they explain if their discussion made them trust the other one more or less. Based on what actually happened and how each man actually reacted, the students will end up acting like them and mistrusting each other more and more. This shows how tensions only rose during the early years of the Cold War.
This looks fantastic. My compliments!