In two critical ways, the postwar era marked a departure from America's past. For one, it ended the viability of isolationism as a doctrine of foreign policy. In an attempt to contain Communism and Soviet expansion, the United States entered into the sort of "entangling alliances" against which George Washington had once warned the nation. On the domestic scene, the country entered a period of economic growth that lasted nearly unabated for 25 years. Although dampened by occasional recessions, this economic expansion did not include the sort of boom-and-bust depressions that had characterized earlier business cycles. Despite these departures from the past, connections to earlier experiences remained critical. Chapter 26 discussed both the appeasement of Hitler at Munich and Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Those events helped determine the postwar generation's attitude toward national security. And when President Truman sought in his Fair Deal to extend the New Deal programs discussed in Chapter 25, a sharp national debate occurred over the legacy of the Roosevelt era.