Chapter 36

“The Cold War Begins”

The Cold War [1945-1991]: An Ideological Struggle

Soviet & Eastern Bloc

Nations[“Iron

Curtain”]

US & the Western

Democracies

GOAL spread world-wide Communism

GOAL “Containment” of Communism & the eventual collapse of the Communist world.[George Kennan]

METHODOLOGIES:

1. Espionage [KGB vs. CIA]

2. Arms Race [nuclear escalation]

3. Ideological Competition for the minds and hearts of Third World peoples [Communist govt. & command economy vs. democratic govt. & capitalist economy]

4. Bi-Polarization of Europe [NATO vs. Warsaw Pact]

Postwar Economic Anxieties

• Post WWII fear was that the U.S. would sink back into another Great Depression.

• Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which outlawed “closed” shop, made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required that union leaders take non-Communist oaths.

• Congress passed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (GI Bill of Rights) which allowed all servicemen to have free college education once they returned from the war

GI Bill of Rights

• House authors Edith Nourse Rodgers of Massachusetts and John Rankin of Mississippi look on as President Roosevelt signs legislation popularly known as the "GI Bill of Rights."

Servicemen at North Carolina State

The Long Economic Boom, 1950-1970

• The middle class more than doubled while people now wanted two cars in every garage; over 90% of American families owned a television.

• Women also reaped the benefits of the postwar economy, growing in the American work force while giving up their former roles as housewives.

• Much of the prosperity of the 50s and 60s rested on colossal military projects.

• “Permanent war economy”

The Culture of the Car

The Culture of the Car

First McDonald’s First McDonald’s (1955)(1955)

America became a more America became a more homogeneous nation because of homogeneous nation because of the automobile.the automobile.

Drive-In Drive-In MoviesMovies

Howard Howard Johnson’sJohnson’s

Consumerism Consumerism

All babies were potential consumers All babies were potential consumers who spearheaded a brand-new market who spearheaded a brand-new market for food, clothing, and shelter.for food, clothing, and shelter. -- Life -- Life Magazine (May, 1958) Magazine (May, 1958)

Consumerism Consumerism

The Smiling Sunbelt

• Immigration also led to the growth of a fifteen-state region in the southern half of the U.S. known as the Sunbelt, which dramatically increased in population.

• In the 1950s, California overtook New York as the most populous state.

• Sunbelt had better climate, more jobs and less taxes

• People moved from the “rustbelt” to the “sunbelt”

Sunbelt States Rustbelt States

Dr. Spock

• With so many people on the move, families were being strained, which explained the success of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1945).

Rise of the Suburbs

• White Flight – Whites moved from the city to the suburbs leaving a segregated inner city

• Federal Housing Authority and the Veteran’s Administration, loan guarantees made it cheaper to live in the suburbs than in cramped city apartments but did not give loans to minorities

• Innovators like the Levitt brothers, with their monotonous but cheap housing plans, built thousands of houses in single projects

• Led to a construction boom in the 1950s and 1960s

Suburban Living:The Typical TV Suburban Families

Suburban Living:The Typical TV Suburban Families

The The Donna Donna Reed Reed ShowShow1958-1958-19661966

Leave It Leave It to Beaverto Beaver1957-19631957-1963

FatherFather Knows Knows BestBest

1954-19581954-1958

The Ozzie & Harriet The Ozzie & Harriet ShowShow

1952-19661952-1966

• This comparison of photos shows the brash distinction of roles developing in the post WWII time period. This first photo (top) was taken in Portland, Oregon during WWII (1940-1945) when the production of wartime goods was essential; essential enough to bring women out into the workplace. This photo shows a whole family, young and old, male or female, being brought into the workforce to help keep the economy and the wartime effort afloat. This hard-labor lifestyle was more a spot of necessity than actually a long-term plan for the nation’s success. This line of work is in direct contradiction to the post-war strategy of establishing the father figure as the breadwinner. Male veterans (below) had all the cards in their favor in this post-war world (1947) as they had the G.I Bill helping fund their education, positioning themselves in a favorable position to be a steady father figure (note the emphasis on children in fathers hands) with a chance to provide and lead a successful “American” family life.

Pennsylvania Levittowns

The Postwar Baby Boom

• Many soldiers returned after the war, then had babies, creating a “Baby Boom” that is still being felt today.

• As the children grew up collectively, they put strains on respective markets, such as manufacturers of baby products in the 1940s and 50s, teenage clothing designers in the 60s, and the job market in the 70s and 80s and later on the Social Security System

Baby Boom Generation

School children 1950s

Teenagers in the 1960s

Yuppie in the 1980s Elderly in the 2000s

Baby Boom Baby BoomIt seems to me that every other It seems to me that every other young housewife I see is pregnant.young housewife I see is pregnant. -- British visitor to America, -- British visitor to America, 19581958

1957 1957 1 baby born every 7 1 baby born every 7 secondsseconds

Harry S. Truman

• Took over after the death of FDR

• Often, Truman would stick to a wrong decision just to prove his decisiveness and power of command.

• “The Buck Stops Here”• “If you can’t stand the

heat get out of the kitchen”

From the Truman Library

• "The Buck Stops Here" is a famous sign that is a part of American political folklore. It was given to President Truman in 1945.

• The saying derives from the expression "to pass the buck", which means to avoid responsibility. The sign came to express Truman's decisiveness and accountability

Yalta Conference• One of the many issues on the agenda for Franklin Roosevelt, Winston

Churchill and Joseph Stalin to discuss—and hopefully resolve—at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 was that of United Nations representation for the Soviet Union.  At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference just months before a Soviet Ambassador to Washington, proposed that all sixteen of the republics of the Soviet Union have a seat and a vote in the General Assembly of the soon to be established United Nations.  Initially rejecting the proposal as completely unacceptable, Roosevelt’s position as expressed at Dumbarton Oaks had changed by the time of the Yalta Conference. 

• Roosevelt’s ultimate objectives at Yalta were to ensure that the Soviet Union would participate in the U.N. and remain allied with the United States in finishing the war.  More specifically, Roosevelt wanted a commitment from Stalin that the Soviet Union would support the U.S. in the ongoing conflict with Japan.  In order to achieve his goals for the conference, Roosevelt was willing to compromise with Stalin on the issue of Soviet representation in the U.N.

Yalta Conference• A final conference of the Big Three had taken place at Yalta in

February 19451. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin pledged that Poland should have a

representative government with free elections, as would Bulgaria and Romania, but he broke those promises.

2. The Soviet Union had agreed to attack Japan three months after the fall of Germany, but by the time the Soviets entered the Pacific war, the U.S. was about to win anyway, as a result it seemed that the USSR had entered to the sake of taking some of the spoils of the war.

3. The Soviet Union was also granted control of the Manchurian railroads and received special privileges to Dairen and Port Arthur.

• Critics of FDR charged that he sold China’s Chiang Kai-shek down the river.

Churchill, FDR and Stalin at Yalta

U.S./USSR and Cold War Issues

1. Communism Vs Capitalism2. U.S. refusal to recognize Bolsheviks in Russia for first

16 years3. U.S./GB delay of opening second front in Europe

during WWII – USSR lost 20 million lives4. U.S./GB froze USSR out of nuclear secrets5. U.S. stopped Lend-Lease payments to USSR in 1945

and refused USSR’s request for a $6 billion loan6. USSR’s refusal to help aid post-war Europe7. USSR’s aggressive expansion – satellite countries• Led to 41/2 decades of tension between the two

countries

Shaping the Postwar World

• Meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, the Western Allies established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to encourage world trade by regulating the currency exchange rates.

• The United Nations opened on April 25, 1945 • The UN created the new Jewish state of Israel from

Arab-controlled Palestine• The UN also created UNESCO (U.N. Educational,

Scientific, and Cultural Organization), FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization), and WHO (World Health Organization), bringing benefits to people all over the globe.

United Nation

• The member nations drew up a charter similar to that of the old League of Nations, formed a Security Council to be headed by five permanent powers (China, USSR, Britain, France, and USA) that had veto powers, and was set up in NYC.

• The Senate overwhelmingly approved the UN by a vote of 89 to 2.

UN Headquarters

• The Headquarters of the World Organization is located on an 18-acre site on the East side of Manhattan. It is an international zone belonging to all Member States. The United Nations has its own security force, fire department and postal administration.

UN Creation of a Jewish State

• The seeds of Palestinian national consciousness sprouted in response to the British colonial presence and the expanding Jewish population. And in November 1947, the United Nations voted in favor of partitioning Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state, a defining moment for Palestinians who rejected division of the contested Holy Land

Nuremberg Trials

• Punished 22 top culprits of the Holocaust

• Herman Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Wilhelm Keitel in front row

National Archives and Records Administration

Post-War Germany

• America knew that an economically healthy Germany was indispensable to the recovery of all of Europe, but Russia, fearing another blitzkrieg, wanted huge reparations from Germany.

• Broke up Germany into 4 zones controlled by U.S., USSR, GB, and France

– West Germany – U.S., GB, France – democratic free market Capitalist country

– East Germany – USSR – Communist satellite of USSR

– Berlin also broken up into 4 zones

Postwar Partition of Germany

Berlin Blockade and Airlift

• In 1948 the USSR choked off all air and railway access to Berlin, located deep in East Germany,

• The Allies organized a massive airlift to feed the people of Berlin, and in May 1949, the Soviets stopped their blockade of Berlin

• 1st ever confrontation between the U.S. and the USSR in the Cold War – Stalin blinked

The Division of Berlin

Berlin Airlift

Containment Doctrine

• Crafted by Soviet specialist George F. Kennan - Stated that firm containment of Soviet expansion would halt Communist power.

• Firm and vigilant containment of Communism with a combination of military and political preparedness

Containment Doctrine• George F. Kennan,

"sovietologist" in the US State Department, advocated developing a global foreign policy for the first time in American history outside immediate war. He believed the USSR to be inherently expansionist because the Russian Empire under both the czars and the Communists had sought to expand. His warning that the US ought to prepare itself to meet postwar Soviet expansion with a coherent planned response formed the basis of the Truman Doctrine.

George F. Kennan, author of the

"Containment" doctrine, portrayed as

chess master(Smithsonian Institution

Truman Doctrine

• Truman asked for $400 million to bolster Greece and Turkey to keep them from falling to Communism

• “It must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure”

Greece and Turkey

Marshall Plan

• Provided for the formation of the European Community

• Plan was to help Europeans recover from the war.

• The plan sent $12.5 billion over four years to 16 cooperating nations to aid in recovery, and at first, Congress didn’t want to comply.

• Soviet-sponsored coup that toppled the government of Czechoslovakia finally convinced Congress to pass the plan.

Marshall Plan

National Security Act of 1947

1. Created the Department of Defense • Housed at the Pentagon• Headed by a civilian Secretary of Defense• Created the civilian secretaries of the Army, Navy

and Air Force (Joint Chiefs of Staff)

2. Created the National Security Council (NSC) to advice the president on security matters

3. Created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to coordinate the government’s foreign fact-gathering

NATO

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization • Started by the U.S. Britain, France, Belgium,

the Netherlands, and Luxembourg • An attack on one member an attack on all,

despite the U.S.’s traditionally not involving itself in entangling alliances.

• NATO’s membership grew to fourteen with the 1952 admissions of Greece and Turkey, and then to 15 when West Germany joined in 1955.

In response to NATO the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact, its own alliance system

Reconstruction of Japan

• General Douglas MacArthur, head of reconstruction in Japan, dictated a constitution that was adopted in 1946, and democratized Japan.

• Incredibly quick and successful recovery – 20 years

China and Communism

• In 1949 the communist forces, led by Mao Zedong, defeated the nationalist forces, led by Chiang Kai-shek

• With this defeat, one-quarter of the world population (500 million people) plunged under the Communist flag

Soviet Atomic Bomb

• September of 1949, Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded their first atomic bomb—three years before experts thought was possible, thus eliminating the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons.

• Led to concern, hysteria and fear of spies

Joe – 1 The First Soviet Atomic Bomb 1949

Hydrogen Bomb

• The U.S. exploded the hydrogen bomb in 1952, and the Soviets followed suit a year later; thus began the dangerous arms race of the Cold War

• In 1955, the Soviet Union dropped the world's first airborne H-bomb.  Americans reacted with civil defense strategies such as "Duck and Cover" exercises and bomb shelters

1946 Test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands

The Bikini Test images are from the papers of Edward Uhler Condon

Progress Through Science Progress Through Science

Atomic AnxietiesAtomic Anxieties::

““Duck-and-Cover Duck-and-Cover Generation”Generation”

Atomic TestingAtomic Testing:: 1946-1962 1946-1962 U. S. exploded 217 U. S. exploded 217

nuclear weapons over the nuclear weapons over the Pacific and in Nevada. Pacific and in Nevada.

Red Scare II

• The Loyalty Review Board was created which investigated more than 3 million federal employees.

• In 1949, 11 communists were brought to a New York jury for violating the Smith Act of 1940, which had been the first peacetime anti-sedition law since 1798.

• Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Bill, which let the president arrest and detain suspicious people during an “internal security emergency.” It passed over his veto

• House Un-American Committee (HUAC) – House group headed by Future president Richard Nixon

HUAC

HUAC member (Nixon, Investigator Robert Stripling, and Chairman

Thomas) with Hiss files

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg • Brought to trial, convicted, and

executed • Theirs was the first execution of

civilians for espionage in United States history.[

• Their sensational trial, electrocution, and sympathy for their two children began to sober America zeal in red hunting.

• Morton Sobell, who was tried with the Rosenbergs, served 17 years and 9 months. In 2008, Sobell admitted he was a spy and confirmed Julius Rosenberg was "in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information and what the American government described as the secret to the atomic bomb." Ethel and Julius Rosenberg leave a federal

courthouse in New York City in 1950 after being arraigned on charges of espionage. Both were later convicted of passing secret information about the construction of nuclear weapons to the Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics (USSR) and were executed in 1953.

Alger Hiss• Alger Hiss, formerly a high

official in the U.S. Department of Justice, denies charges that he engaged in espionage. In 1948 in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which investigated Communism in the United States, magazine editor Whittaker Chambers accused Hiss of transmitting secret government information to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Although Hiss denied the charge, he was convicted of perjury (lying under oath) and sentenced to a five-year prison term.

Globe Photos, Inc

Joseph McCarthy

• Charging that there were scores of unknown communists in the State Department.

• He couldn’t prove it, and many American began to fear that the red chase was going too far; after all, how could there be freedom of speech if uttering communist ideas got one arrested

Election of 1948

• Republicans – Thomas Dewey• Democrats – Harry Truman

– Truman’s nomination split the Democratic Party • Dixiecrats – Strom Thurmond• Progressive Party – Harry Wallace

**Dewey seemed destined for an easy victory, and on Election Night, the Chicago Tribune even ran an early edition proclaiming “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN,” but Truman shockingly won, getting 303 Electoral votes to Dewey’s 189, and to make things better, the Democrats won control of Congress again.**Truman received critical support from farmers, workers, and blacks

Chicago Daily Tribune

Election of 1948

Truman’s Fair Deal

• Improved housing, full employment, a higher minimum wage, better farm price supports, new Tennessee Valley Administrations, and an extension of Social Security.

• the only successes came in raising the minimum wage, providing for public housing in the Housing Act of 1949, and extending old-age insurance to more beneficiaries with the Social Security Act of 1950.

Point Four Program

• Point Four Program – 4th point in his inaugural speech – spend money on underdeveloped countries to keep Communism out. 1949 Inaugural Speech

during which President Truman proposed the Point 4

Program. Source: Truman Library.

Korean War

• On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces suddenly invaded South Korean, taking the South Koreans by surprise and pushing them dangerously south toward Pusan.

• Truman sprang to action, remembering that the League of Nations had failed from inactivity, and ordered U.S. military spending to be quadrupled, as wanted from National Security Council Memorandum Number 68, or NSC-68

• Truman asked for and mysteriously was granted unanimous UN approval for military action in Korea (USSR and China?)

Korean War• Douglas MacArthur put in charge of UN forces• No declaration of war in US in spite of almost all of the UN troops

being American• General MacArthur landed a brilliant invasion behind enemy

forces on September 15, 1950, and drove the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel, towards China and the Yalu River.

• In November 1950, Chinese volunteers flooded across the border and pushed the South Koreans back to the 38th parallel

• MacArthur wanted to blockade China and bomb Manchuria, but Truman didn’t want to enlarge the war beyond necessity

• MacArthur criticized Truman publicly and was removed for insubordination

Stage 1• North Korean army crossed

the 38th parallel -- the border between the two Koreas at the end of World War II.

• As MacArthur biographer, D. Clayton James describes it, "North Korean artillery and mortar barrages began hitting South Korean positions along the 150-mile width of the peninsula, shortly followed by invasion forces totaling over 90,000 troops and 150 Soviet-built tanks that struck in smoothly coordinated assaults into South Korea."

Info and maps from pbs.org

Stage 2

• By the end of July, the North Koreans had pushed the U.N. forces to the southeast corner of the peninsula, where they dug in around the port of Pusan.

• over the next six weeks a desperate, bloody struggle ensued as the North Koreans threw everything they had at American and ROK (South Korean) forces in an effort to gain complete control over Korea.

Info and maps from pbs.org

Stage 3• MacArthur completely changed

the course of the war overnight by ordering -- over nearly unanimous objections -- an amphibious invasion at the port of Inchon, near Seoul.

• The Americans quickly gained control of Inchon, recaptured Seoul within days, and cut the North Korean supply lines. American and ROK forces broke out of the Pusan Perimeter and chased the retreating enemy north.

• MacArthur received permission to pursue the enemy into North Korea. ROK forces crossed the 38th parallel on October 1

Info and maps from pbs.org

Stage 4• Despite warnings from the

Communist Chinese through an Indian diplomat that "American intrusion into North Korea would encounter Chinese resistance," MacArthur's forces continued to push north

• The Chinese army, which had been massing north of the Yalu River after secretly slipping into North Korea, struck with considerable force

• MacArthur was now worried enough to press Washington for greater latitude in taking the fight into China.

Info and maps from pbs.org

Stage 5

• MacArthur's "all-out offensive" to the Yalu had barely begun when the Chinese struck with awesome force on the night of November 25

• MacArthur's men fought courageously and skillfully just to avoid annihilation, as they were pushed back down the peninsula.

Info and maps from pbs.org

Stage 6

• Stalemate at the 38th Parallel

• General MacArthur had been steadily pushing Washington to remove the restrictions on his forces. Not only did Truman decline for fear of widening the war, but he fired MacArthur, who had been publicly challenging him for months, for insubordination on April 11. Info and maps from pbs.org