Cold War Politicsin the Truman Years

1945-1953

6:00-6:10 quiz, roll6:10-7:25 Lecture/discussion: 7:30-7:40 Break7:40-9:00 Lecture, Part II

Quiz

Intro Atomic Cafe

From the Grand Alliance to Containment

A. The Cold War BeginsB. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall PlanC. Building a National Security StateD. Superpower Rivalry Around the Globe

The Cold War Begins

✦ Though they collaborated to win WWII, the mistrust and antagonism between the Soviet Union and the West resurfaced over their different visions of the postwar world.

✦ The Soviets had lingering doubts about the motivation for the delay in opening a second front inWestern Europe--a move that would have brought relief to Eastern front.

The Cold War Begins (2)✦ After the war, Stalin wanted to make Germany

pay for rebuilding the Soviet economy, and sought to expand Soviet influence. They had lost so much during the war--20 million citizen lives and vast portions of its economic capacity.

✦ In contrast, the US emerged with a vastly expanded productive capacity and a monopoly on atomic weapons. They lost 402,000 during the war, which is just 2 percent of the Soviet loss. The US was now the most powerful nation on the planet.

The Cold War Begins (3)

✦ Both leaders (Truman and Stalin) and citizens of these two countries regarded their new foreign policy stances not as a self-interested campaign to guarantee economic interests but as the means to preserve national security and bring freedom, democracy, and capitalism to the rest of the world.

✦ The first clash between the two powers occurred in Eastern Europe in 1946. The USSR installed Communist governments in Bulgaria and Poland.

The Cold War Begins (4)

✦ The US opposed the action arguing for freedom and democracy in the Eastern European block.

✦ The USSR accused the US of being hypocritical because in this stance because of the US support of “friendly” dictatorships to the American interests in Cuba and other Latin American countries.

The Cold War Begins (5)

✦ In March 1946, Truman traveled with Churchill to Fulton, Missouri, where the former prime minister denounced Soviet suppression of popular will in Eastern Europe and famously declared that an “iron curtain” had descended across the continent.

✦ In February 1946, career diplomat George F. Kennon wrote a comprehensive ratioale for a hard-line foreign policy.

The Cold War Begins (6)

✦ Kennon predicted that the Soviet Union would retreat from efforts to expand its influence worldwide “in the face of superior force.”

✦ Not all public figures accepted the rough line, but those who criticized the administration’s policy met still resistance from Truman’s cabinet.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

✦ In 1947, the US moved from words to action, implementing the policy of containment that would guide foreign policy for the next 40 years.

✦ The policy threatened military action--and more specifically the bomb--if the Soviets did not stay within the treaty lines.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (2)

✦ The Soviets were pressing Greece and Turkey toward Communism, and their weakened economy made their governments vulnerable.

✦ Truman responded with a warning that if these two countries fell to the Soviets, “confusion and disorder” would spread throughout the entire Middle East and threaten Europe. This became known as the domino theory.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (3)

✦ Truman’s response was to not only resist Soviet military power but also lend its support to countries resisting Soviet incursions. This became known as the Truman Doctrine.

✦ Congress authorized aid for Greece and Turkey.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (4)

✦ In March 1948, Congress approved the European Recovery Program — the Marshall Plan — and over the next five years, the US spent $13 billion to restore economies of Western Europe.

✦ While Congress debated the Marshall Plan, in February 1948, the Soviets staged a brutal coup against Czechoslovakia, and blockaded Berlin. In 1949, Berlin was divided into East Berlin, under Soviet control, and West Berlin, which became part of West Germany.

Building a National Security State

✦ In 1949, the Soviets successfully detonated an atomic bomb, thus ending the US monopoly on nuclear weapons and their upper hand.

✦ Truman proceeded to develop a deadlier weapon, the hydrogen bomb. From the 1950s to the 1980s, deterrence formed the basis of American nuclear strategy. The US sought to deter Soviet threats by having a larger and more deadly bomb and military.

✦ The policy of containment quickly acquired a military capacity to back it up. The plan was a 5-pronged defense strategy.

Building a National Security State (2)

The strategy was:

1. development of atomic weapons

2. strengthening traditional military power

3. military alliances with other nations

4. military and economic aid to friendly nations

5. an espionage network and secret means to subvert Communist expansion.

Superpower Rivalry around the Globe

✦ Efforts t implement containment moved beyond Europe to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

✦ Leaders of many liberation movements impressed with the rapid economic growth of Russia, adopted socialist or Communist ideas, although few had formal tied to the USSR.

✦ In Asia, civil war raged in China, where Communists led by Mao Zedong fought the official Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek.

Superpower Rivalry around the Globe (2)

✦ Some in Congress pushed Truman to do something about China, but he was advised it would be a fruitless mission. In October 1949 Mao established the People’s Republic of China.

✦ The US reconsiders its postwar plan for Japan in light of the situation in China.

✦ By 1948, U.S. policy had shifted to focus on economic recovery.

Truman and the Fair Deal at Home

A. Reconversion and the Postwar Economic Boom

B. The Fair Deal FloundersC. The Domestic Chill: A Second Red Scare

Reconversion and the Postwar Economic Boom

✦ World War II brought steady work to most of the country, and Americans enjoyed a higher standard of living than ever before.

✦ Truman wanted to provide jobs and keep the economy moving after the war, so he asked Congress to enact a program of social and economic reforms.

✦ Congress approved only one of Truman’s key proposals—full employment legislation.

Reconversion and the Postwar Economic Boom (2)

✦ Inflation, not unemployment, turned out to be the most severe problem in the early postwar years.

✦ Labor relations were another thorn in Truman’s side as workers saw their wartime wages decline.

✦ Unions sought to preserve wartime gains with the one weapon they had relinquished during the war — the strike.

✦ Although most Americans approved of unions in principle, they became fed up with labor stoppages, blamed unions for rising prices and shortages of goods, and called for more government restrictions on organized labor.

Reconversion and the Postwar Economic Boom (3)

✦ Despite these problems, by 1947 the nation had survived the strains of reconversion and avoided a postwar depression.

✦ The nation’s gratitude to its returning soldiers provided yet another economic boost, resulting in the only large welfare measure passed after the New Deal, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill). It offered job training and education, unemployment compensation, and low-interest loans to purchase homes, farms, and businesses.

The Fair Deal Flounders

✦ Republicans capitalized on public frustrations with economic reconversion in the 1946 congressional elections.

✦ The Republican led Eightieth Congress weakened some reform programs and enacted tax cuts favoring higher income groups over Truman’s veto.

✦ Organized labor took the most severe attack, when Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which reduced the power of unions and made it more difficult to organize workers, over Truman’s veto in 1947.

The Fair Deal Flounders (2)

✦ As the 1948 elections approached, Truman faced not only a resurgent Republican Party headed by Thomas E. Dewey but also two revolts within his own party.

✦ Nearly alone in believing he could win, Truman crisscrossed the country by train and gained supporters, stunning the country with his election victory.

✦ Truman failed to turn his victory into success for his Fair Deal agenda, however,

Red Scare

A Second Red Scare✦ Truman’s domestic program also suffered from a

wave of anti-Communist hysteria that weakened left and liberal forces.

✦ Warnings about subversion and attacks on Communists and other radicals went back to the 1920s, but the cold war greatly intensified them.

✦ Records opened in the 1990s showed that the Soviets did receive secret documents from the Americans, but at most, such information may have marginally hastened Soviet development of nuclear weapons. Notable among those who did Alger Hiss, and Julius Rosenberg--though not Ethel.

A Second Red Scare (2)✦ Senator Joseph McCarthy’s influence as a “red baiter”

was so great that McCarthyism became a term synonymous with the anti-Communist crusade.

✦ In March 1947, President Truman issued Executive Order 9835 requiring investigation of every federal employee.

✦ The domestic cold war spread beyond the nation’s capital to state and local governments, which took on investigations demanded loyalty oaths, fired individuals suspected of disloyalty, banned books from public libraries, and more

✦ McCarthyism caused untold economic and psychological harm to individuals innocent of breaking any law.

The Cold War Becomes Hot: Korea

A. Korea and the Military Implementation of Containment.

B. From Containment to Rollback to Containment

C. Korea, Containment, and the 1952 ElectionD. An Armistice and the War’s Costs

Korea and the Military Implementation of Containment✦ The war grew out of the artificial division of Korea at the

thirty-eighth parallel after WWII into two occupation zones: the north supported the Soviets, and the south, supported by the US.

✦ Skirmishes between the North and South Korean troops had occurred since 1948, with both sides crossing the thirty-eighth parallel.

✦ In June 1950, however ninety thousand North Koreans swept into South Korea.

✦ On June 30, six days after learning of the attack, Truman decided to commit ground troops, believing that Korea was “the Greece of the East” and that the US must fight Communism.

Korea and the Military Implementation of Containment (2)

✦ Sixteen nations, including many NATO allies, sent troops to Korea, but the US furnished most of the personnel and weapons, deploying almost 1.8 million troops and essentially dictating military strategy.

✦ By mid-October, UN forces had pushed the North Koreans back to the thirty-eighth parallel; the US now had to decide whether to invade North Korea and seek to unify Korea under UN supervision.

From Containment to Rollback to Containment

✦ Popular sentiment and wisdom in the State Department favored transforming the military objective from containment to elimination of the enemy and unification of Korea.

✦ With UN approval, US forces moved beyond the thirty-eighth parallel.

✦ With Chinese help, by Dec. 1950, the North Koreans had recaptured Seoul.

✦ Under the leadership of General Matthew b. Ridgeway, the Eighth Army turned the tide again, pushing North Korean forces back to the thirty-eighth parallel.

✦ Truman favored a negotiated settlement, but McArthur, UN commander, challenged his plan.

From Containment to Rollback to Containment (2)

✦ MacArthur took his plan to the public, in effect challenging the president’s authority to make foreign policy and violating the principle of civilian control over the military.

✦ Fed up with MacArthur’s insubordination, Truman fired him in April 1951.

✦ Many Americans sided with MacArthur, however, reflecting American frustration with containment.

Korea, Containment, and the 1952 Election

✦ Popular discontent with Truman’s war gave the Republicans a decided edge in the election battles of 1952.

✦ Eisenhower defeated Robert Taft in the Republican Primary, but the old conservative guard prevailed on the party platform.

✦ Eisenhower’s choice of Richard M. Nixon for his running mate helped to appease the Republican right wing and ensure that anticommunism would be a major theme of the campaign.

✦ Truman decided not to run, but recruited Adlai E. Stevenson, governor of Illinois to run for the Democrats.

✦ Eisenhower won.

An Armistice and the War’s Costs✦ Eisenhower made good on his pledge t end the Korean War.✦ The war took the lives of 36,000 Americans and wounded

more than 100,000.✦ The nature of the war and the unpopularity of the South

Korean government made it difficult for soldiers to distinguish between friends and enemies, since civilian populations sometimes harbored North Korean agents.

✦ The Truman administration judged the war a success for its containment, since the US had supported the promise to help nations that were resisting Communism--thus defining victory.

✦ The war had an enormous effect on defense policy and spending.

✦ The war also induced the Truman administration to expand its role in Asia--paving the way for Vietnam.

The Politics and Cultureof Abundance

1952-1960

Eisenhower and the Politics of the Middle Way

A. The President and McCarthyB. Moderate RepublicanismC. The 1956 Election and the Second Term

The President and McCarthy

✦ The new president attempted to distance himself from the anti-Communist fervor that had plagued the Truman administration.

✦ Eisenhower correctly predicted that McCarthy would destroy himself.

✦ With the end of the Korean War, popular frustrations over containment abated, and the anti-Communist hysteria subsided.

Moderate Republicanism✦ In contrast to the Old Guard conservatives in his

party who wanted to repeal much of the New Deal and preferred unilateral approach to foreign policy, Eisenhower preached “moderate Republicanism.”

✦ Despite his claim to be above interest group politics, Eisenhower turned for advice almost exclusively to business leaders and chose wealthy executives and attorneys for his cabinet.

✦ He sometimes echoed conservative old-guard Republicans’ conviction that government was best lest to the states and economic decisions to private business.

Moderate Republicanism (2)✦ Nevertheless, the welfare state actually grew during

his administration, and the federal government took on new projects.

✦ In 1954, Eisenhower signed laws expanding Social Security and continuing the federal government’s modest role in financing public housing.

✦ His greatest domestic initiative was the Interstate Highway and Defense System Act of 1956.

✦ He also restrained federal activity in favor of state governments and private enterprise, stubbornly resisting a larger federal role in health care, education, and civil rights.

The 1956 Election and the Second Term

✦ While not all people in the US were living the American dream, with the nation at peace and economy booming, Eisenhower easily defeated Adlai Stevenson in 1956, losing only seven states.

✦ The Democrats, however, won significant gains in the midterm election of 1958.

✦ In part because of the Democratic resurgence, Eisenhower faced more serious leadership challenges in his second term.

✦ In the end, the first Republican administration after the New Deal left the size and functions of the federal government intact, though it tipped policy somewhat more in favor of corporate interests.

Liberation Rhetoric and the Practice of Containment

A. The “New Look” in Foreign PolicyB. Applying Containment to VietnamC. Intervention in Latin America and the Middle

EastD. The Nuclear Arms Race

The “New Look” in Foreign Policy✦ To meet his goals of balancing the federal budget and cutting

taxes, Eisenhower determined to control military expenditures.

✦ Reflecting Americans’ confidence in technology and opposition to a large peacetime army, his defense strategy concentrated U.S. military strength in nuclear weapons along with planes and missiles to deliver them.

✦ This was Eisenhower’s “New Look” in foreign policy.✦ Nuclear weapons could not stop a Soviet nuclear attack, but

in response to one, they could inflict enormous destruction on the USSR.

✦ Nuclear weapons were useless, however, in rolling back the iron curtain because they would destroy the peoples that the US had promised to liberate.

Applying Containment to Vietnam

✦ A major challenge to the containment policy came in southeast Asia, where in 1945 a nationalist coalition called the Vietminh, led by Ho Chi Minh, had proclaimed Vietnam’s independence from France.

✦ Ike viewed communism in Vietnam much as Truman had regarded it in Greece and Turkey, a view that came to be known the “domino theory.”

✦ Although the US was contributing 75 percent of the cost of France’s war, Eisenhower resisted a larger role.

✦ The Vietminh defeated the French in 1954.✦ Two months later, France signed a truce that divided

Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel, separating the country between North and South.

Applying Containment to Vietnam (2)

✦ The truce prohibited both Vietnamese governments from joining a military alliance or permitting foreign bases on their soil.

✦ Some officials warned against US involvement in the region.

✦ Nevertheless, between 1955 and 1961, the US provided $800 million to the South Vietnamese army.

✦ Unwilling to abandon containment, Eisenhower handed over the deteriorating situation— along with a firm commitment to defend South Vietnam against communism — to his successor.

The Nuclear Arms Race✦ While Eisenhower’s foreign policy centered on

countering perceived communist inroads abroad, a number of events encouraged the president to seek reduction of superpower tensions and accommodation with the Soviet Union.

✦ Eisenhower and Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, met in Geneva in 1955 at the first summit conference since the end of WWII.

✦ By 1960, the two sides were within reach of a ban on nuclear testing.

✦ The US defense budget enormously increased the US nuclear capacity, more than quadrupling the stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The Nuclear Arms Race (2)✦ In August 1957, the Soviets test-fired their first ICBM

and two months later beat the US into space by launching Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to circle the earth.

✦ Eisenhower insisted that the US possessed nuclear superiority, but in 1957, he could not reveal the reason for his confidence, the top-secret U-2 surveillance of the USSR.

✦ American nuclear superiority did not guarantee security because the Soviet Union possessed sufficient nuclear weapons to devastate the US.

✦ As he left office, Eisenhower warned about the growing influence of the “military industrial complex” in American government and life

New Work and Living Patterns

A. Technology Transforms Agriculture and Industry

B. Burgeoning Suburbs and Declining CitiesC. The Rise of the Sun BeltD. The Democratization of Higher Education

Technology Transforms Agriculture and Industry

✦ Between 1940 and 1960, the output of American farms mushroomed, while the number of farmworkers declined nearly one-third.

✦ The decline of the family farms and the growth of agribusinesses were both causes and consequences of mechanization.

✦ As in agriculture, new technology increased industrial production.

✦ Labor unions enjoyed their greatest success during the 50s, and real earnings for production workers shot up 40 percent.

✦ The growing clerical and service occupations swelled the demand for female workers.

Burgeoning Suburbs and Declining Cities

✦ Although suburbs had existed since the nineteenth century, nothing symbolized the affluent society more than their tremendous expansion in the 1950s

✦ While private industry built the suburbs, the government subsidized home ownership with low-interest mortgage guarantees through the FHA and VA and by making interest on mortgages tax deductible.

✦ As white residents joined the suburban migration, blacks moved to cities in search of economic opportunity, increasing their numbers in most cities by 50 percent during the 1950s.

The Rise of the Sunbelt

✦ Americans were on the move westward as well as to the suburbs.

✦ A warm climate and a pleasant natural environment drew new residents to the West and Southwest, but no magnet proved stronger than the promise of economic opportunity.

✦ The surging populations and industries brought with them needs that soon raised environmental concerns.

✦ Free of the discrimination faced by minorities, white Americans reaped the fullest fruits of prosperity in the West.

Democratization of Higher Education

✦ California’s system of community colleges was oly the largest element in a spectacular transformation of higher education.

✦ The GI Bill made college possible for thousands of African Americans, the majority of whom attended black institutions.

✦ For a time, the democratization of higher education increased the educational gap between men and women.

✦ The large veteran enrollments also introduced a new feature of college life—the married student.

✦ Some observers in the 1950s termed college students a “silent generation,” pointing to their apparent passivity, caution, and conformity.

The Culture of AbundanceA. Consumer CultureB. The Revival of Domesticity and ReligionC. Television Transforms Culture and PoliticsD. Countercurrents

Consumer Culture✦ Consumer items flooded American society in the 1950s.✦ Although the purchase and display of consumer goods

had always been a part of American life, by the 1950s, consumption had become a reigning value, vital for economic prosperity and essential to individuals’ identity and status.

✦ The consumer culture rested on a firm material base.✦ Several forces, including a population surge and

consumer borrowing, spurred this unparalleled abundance.

✦ Advertising dollars tripled between WWII and 1959.✦ Women’s presence in the labor force helped secure some

of this new abundance.

The Revival of Domesticity and Religion

✦ Even though married women took jobs in unprecedented numbers, the dominant ideology celebrated traditional family life and conventional gender roles.

✦ The emphasis on home and family life reflected to some extent anxieties about the cold war and nuclear menace.

✦ Writer and feminist Betty Friedan gave a name to the idealization of women’s domestic roles in her book The Feminist Mystique.

✦ Along with a renewed emphasis on family life, the 1950s witnessed a surge of interest in religion.

✦ Religion offered reassurance and peace of mind in the nuclear age, while ministers like Billy Graham turned the cold war into a holy war, labeling communism as a plot from Satan.

Television Transforms Culture and Politics

✦ Just as family life and religion offered a respite from cold war anxieties, so too did the new medium of television.

✦ Television kept people at home more but did not necessarily enhance family relationships.

✦ Viewers especially turned in to situation comedies, which projected the family ideal and the feminine mystique into millions of homes.

✦ Television began to affect politics in the 1950s, as viewers tuned in to debates and candidates had to spend huge sums of money for TV spots.

Television Transforms Culture and Politics (2)

✦ Unlike government-financed television in Europe, private enterprise paid for American TV.

✦ In 1961, Newton Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called television a “vast wasteland.”

Countercurrents

✦ Pockets of dissent underlay the complacency of the 1950s.

✦ Some intellectuals took exception to the politics of consensus and to the materialism and conformity celebrated in popular culture.

✦ Less direct challenged to mainstream standards appeared in the everyday behavior of large numbers of Americans especially youth.

✦ Just as rock and roll’s sexual suggestiveness violated norms of middle-class respectability, Americans’ sexual behavior often departed from the family ideal of the postwar era.

Beats

Countercurrents (2)

✦ The most blatant revolt against conventionality came from the self-proclaimed figures based in New York City’s Greenwich Village and in San Francisco.

✦ Bold new styles in the visual arts also showed the 1950s to be more than a decade of bland conventionality.

NY in the 50s