"American foreign policy leading up to involvement in the Second World War was greatly influenced by the continuing debate over the 'lessons' of the 1914-1929 period." Assess the validity of this statement by considering the issues of American foreign policy in the period from 1914-1929 and the appropriateness of the "lessons" to the period from 1930-1941.

help help help please!
i cant even formulate a thesis
i need help figuring out what the question is even asking
any ideas, even bad ones, will be helpful!

thanks

wow - did the AP guys write this?

well i think our teacher copied it out of an ap review book, but it is rumored to be the toughest dbq of the year.

what documents did you get w/ it?

14 doc.
lots of text, one political cartoon
the text is long and hard for me to analyze...
Doc A basically says that WWI killed many men and that no one really knows what would have happened if germany won
Doc. B is saying that during after WWI Eyrope borrowed too much money off us
Doc C is the cartoon...i have no clue how it even relates...it shows a man looking into his closet at a uniform that says "grand exalted savior of the world!" and his wife is in the other room shouting "Samuel! You're not going to another lodge meeting!"
Doc D and E are exerpts from the 2 sides of "Pro and Con: Should we act to curb aggressor nations?" one being cons and the other being pros
Doc F and G are both exerpts from"1939 is not 1914" one relating the differences and comparisons of the 1939 to 1914 and the other predicting what might happen if America enters the war (WWII)
Doc H and I are from "America looks at the war" and discuss Americas response to the war at first, describing attitudes of the liberals and the tradition views on war
Doc J state that the new war is nothing but a continuation of past wars and that great powers cannot be made to make peace when they dont want it
doc K is criticizing US neutrality when we clearly favor one side over the other
doc L states that if great britain falls, then we would be at risk of falling; thus, we should fight with great britain so that we continue defending america
doc. M assesses the american opinion on WWI, whether or not it was a mistake: in a 1937 poll 64% thought WWI was a mistake, in 1940 only 39% thought that is was
and finally...doc n is an exerpt from the Atlantic Charter... it just kinda lists the different agreements that US and Britain made with each other

the documents just confuse me! i dont know where to begin, how to tie it all together...

okay, never was the DBQ girl, so this'll be interesting ;) - - - just know that I'm learning here too! - - -

hmmmm.... now that we've looked at the documents, why don't we reword what the question is saying? (because, I'm sorry AP guys, but this wording sucks!) So, what I'm getting from it is that America learned significant foreign-policy-related "lessons" (interpret as you wish) from 1914-21. We're supposed to discuss the relevence those "lessons" had in the next 10-12 years, correct me if I'm wrong . . .

and that's about as far as it goes, folks!!!

let me think about it for a little bit, because right now I'll just be tempted to waste "post-space" (w/e the technical term would be) I'm just as overwhelmed by this question as you are ;) . . .

yea, thats what i am basically getting out of it too...
our teacher told us that the way "he would set it up" would be 3 body paragraphs, one on foreign policy from 1914-1929 and one on foreign policy from 1930-1941 and one discussing whether or not we "learned" and utilized the lessons from the first period in dealing with the second...

thanks for the help, i really appreciate it!

hmmmm.... well, the first thing that comes to mind during the 1st time period would definately be isolationism and quotas, quotas, quotas!

with doc B, I would be tempted to talk about how after WWI we said we wouldn't lend $ to anyone who still owed us old loans . .

you could talk about the League of Nations in the 1st time period/what roles it played, and then compare that to the Atlantic Charter . . .

idk if any of that is relevent - i'm goin on about 2 hours of sleep right now. I'll get back to you later

good luck! (hope it wasn't entirely "bad advice!" :P )

its not bad! thank you so much!