God Help Us (26-27)

NATO

- 10 Western Euro nations had signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating a military alliance with the US and Canada - Senate overwhelmingly approved, ending the U.S. tradition of avoiding alliances - Truman ranked the Marshall Plan and Nato as his proudest achievements - U.S. then deployed troops to Europe and $1.3 billion to help the NATO allies

Marshall Plan

- 1947, Congress approved of the Administration's proposal for massive U.S. assistance for European recovery in 1947. Advocated by Secretary of State George C. Marshall - The ERP, European Recovery Plan, is aimed to stop: hunger, poverty, and desperation that spawned Communism - Truman correctly guessed that the USSR and its satellites would refuse to take part in the plan, because of the controls that are linked to it - Truman also saw the that the W. European economic recovery would expand sales of American goods abroad and promote prosperity in the US - It was very effective in Europe - The economic and social chaos that the Communists had exploited had been overcome in the sixteen nations that shared the $17 billion in aid provided by the ERP

Sputnik

- 1957, Oct 4, 184 pound satellite was sent to space and killed the American myth of tech superiority - November had Sputnik 2 holding a dog - December 6, Eisenhower launched Vanguard missile and it blew up 6 feet in the air - Eisenhower didn't like that and allowed to double the funding which helped created NASA - July 1958, Atlas ICBM was successfully tested by the Americans and space probes were launched

Church and School

- A lot of people went to church but the intensity of faith diminished as mainstream churches downplayed sin and evil and instead preached Americanism and fellowship - well rounded students were more prized than specialized, highly skilled, or intelligent students - Almost no one challenges the reigning thoughts of the day

U-2 Spy Incident

- A tougher blow came on May 1. 1960, two weeks before a scheduled summit conference between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, when Soviet air defenses shot down a US. spy plane far inside their border. - Khrushchev displayed the captured CIA pilot and the photos taken of Soviet missile sites. - Eisenhower refused to apologize, and the summit collapsed.

Togetherness

- After years of separation and loss, Americans yearned for emotional security as well as material success, and more than ever, they looked to family as a bastion of stability - In an insecure world. In 1954, McCall's magazine coined the term togetherness to generate the "ideal" couple: the man and woman who centered their lives on home and children. - Confident in continued economic prosperity and influenced by popular culture, Americans in mid century wed at an earlier age than their parents and also had more kids and faster - Vaccines and medicine created the baby boom generation - Home, schools, and colleges were built faster and more commonly for families, this caused the reinforcement of getting women to stay at home and raise the children, supported by Dr. Spock. - He wrote the Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, urged mothers to not work outside the home - This new postwar emphasis on togetherness renewed the ideal of domesticity in constraining the roles of women. - With the men back, marriage and parenthood was glorified, especially on TV. - Education reinforced these notions. Girls were encouraged to study typing and cooking and cautioned not to "miss the boat" of marriage by pursuing higher education. More men than women went to college in the 1950, - Women both embraced and repudiated the domestic ideal as profound changes accelerated - Most held so called "pink collar" jobs in the service industry secretary or clerk, waitress or hairdresser. Their median wage was less than half that for men. - Most women worked to augment family income. not to challenge stereotypes. - Late 1960s feminist movement came from the daughters of women who felt empowered as a result of their employment

George F. Kennan

- American diplomat in Moscow, wired a long telegram to the State Department - Truman Accepts Kennan's advice of getting tough with Russia, and put up Containment procedures - The U.S. should work to stop Soviet Expansion - Containment would guide U.S. Policy throughout the Cold War

Sunbelt

- Americans also moved South and West, into the Sunbelt, lured by job opportunities, the climate, and the pace of life. - Industry, too, headed south and west, drawn by low taxes, low energy costs, and anti-union right to-work laws. Senior citizens similarly headed to the easier climate. Both brought a conservative out look - Republican power in the south rose as the population of the south rose

Modern Republicanism

- Americans in the 1950s did not go far right, they wanted a moderate president and who gave them what they wanted, for quarter of century of upheaval, the populace was tired and craved stability and peace, Ike delivered. - North Africa and Western Europe victories showed Ike as a brilliant war planner and an efficient, diplomatic executive - His approach to the Presidency reflected his wartime leadership style - Concentrated on major matters, delegated authorities, and worked to reconcile contending factions - Democrats saw his restrained view of presidential authority and low key style made them see as a president who did very little - Reduce taxes and inflation - After the Democrats retook Congress in 1954, Eisenhower supported extending social-security benefits, raising the minimum wage, adding 4 million workers to those eligible for unemployment benefits, and providing federally financed public housing for low-income families. - He also approved construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean - Creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. - In 1956, Eisenhower backed the largest and most expensive public-works program in American history: the Interstate Highway Act, authorizing construction of a 41,000-mile system of expressways that would soon snake across America, accelerating suburban growth, heightening dependence on imported oil, and contributing to urban decay and air pollution. - won in 1956 election vs Adlai

The Iron Curtain Descends`

- As Truman's assertiveness deepened Stalin's mistrust of the West, the USSR tightened its grip of E. Europe by confiscating rss and factories while also telling the satellite states to close doors to US. trade and influence. - Winston Churchill called for an alliance of the English-speaking peoples and the maintenance of an Anglo-American monopoly of atomic weapons - As mutual hostility escalates, the USSR and US rushed to develop doomsday weapons. - In 1946, Congress established the Atomic Energy Commission to spur both nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry - Cold war waged by economic pressure, nuclear intimidation, propaganda, subversion, and proxy wars.

Politics of Anticommunism

- As the cold war worsened, Some Americans concluded that the roots of the nation's difficulties abroad lay in domestic treason and subversion, blaming scapegoats for the nation's problems - Second Red Scar lasted longer, affected more people, and had greater consequences - Created by the House un-American Activities Committee, in 1938 it singled out Fascists, now they do it to commies - People went under loyalty oaths and security investigations, the anticommunist extremism destroyed the left and discredited liberalism

National Securities Act

- Backs up the new international initiative - Unifies the armed forces under a single Department of Defense - creates the National Securities Council to advise the president on strategic matters - Establishes the Central Intelligence Agency, to gather information abroad and engage in covert activities in support of the nation's security.

CIA

- CIA soon began to carry out undercover operations to topple regimes friendly to communism - 1953, organized coup to overthrow the government of Iran - Fearing that the prime minister, who had nationalized the oil fields, might open oil-rich Iran to the Soviets, the CIA replaced him with the pro-American Shah Reza Pahlavi. The United States gained a loyal ally on the Soviet border, and Western oil companies prospered when the Shah made low-priced oil available to them. But Iranian hatred of America took root-a hostility that would haunt the United States into the twenty-first century. - The CIA also intervened in Philippine elections in 1953 to ensure a pro-American government. The following year, a CIA-supported band of mercenaries in Guatemala overthrew the elected communist! influenced regime, which had seized land from the American-owned United Fruit Company. The new pro-American government restored United Fruit's properties and trampled political opposition. `

Potsdam Agreement in 1945

- Divided Germany into four separate zones, 1 in France, 1 in UK, 1 in America, and 1 in USSR, a joint command of the German capital: Berlin, which lies 110 miles in the USSR border to the east. - Intensification of the Cold War lead to Western powers moving towards uniting their zones into an anti-Soviet West German state, and Stalin responded in June 1948 by blocking all surface traffic into Berlin

Downfall of Joseph McCarthy

- Eisenhower hated McCarthy but allowed him to grab "rope" and hopes he would hang himself - 1954, McCarthy accused Army officials of harboring commie spies and trying to blackmail his investigating committee, the resulting Army-McCarthy hearings- the first Senate hearings broadcasted internationally on TV brought McCarthy down - Senate voted 67 to 22 to censure his contemptuous behavior - He had uncovered no communists but made the US look fearful to him and ruined many lives

Truman's Domestic Program

- Employment Act of 1946 was his only major domestic accomplishment - Congressional eagerness to dismantle wartime controls worsened the nation's main problem of inflation - Consumer demand outran the supply of goods, intensifying the pressure on prices The Office of Price Administration tried to enforce price controls, but food producers, manufacturers, and retailers opposed wartime controls - Truman vetoed a bill that would extend the OPA life, killing all price controls, prices of foods rose very fast - Congress then passed a bill for price control that Truman signed and meat producers and farmers threatened to withhold meat, Truman relented and lifted the control on prices just before the midterm election - Truman failed to please the people (workers) and he threatened to draft workers, this caused him to anger major interest groups and the repubs won both houses of Congress

Executive Order 9835

- Establishes the Federal Employee Loyalty Program to root out the subversives in the government - Authorized the Attorney General to prepare a list of "subversive" organizations and made association with such groups grounds for dismissal - Drive for security overran civil liberties, accused cant see accuser and the evidence

Postwar Economy

- Fear that the economy would collapse after WWII: Would the GI's returning home find jobs available? Would the GD return? - Tremendous economic boom from 1950s and onward, U.S. is richest after WWII - Defense spending is a big reason for economic prosperity - much of the growth will take place in the Sunbelt - Baby Boom and people moved to the suburbs`

Truman

- Had a rough time politically - He was the 1st President in the 20th century to use powers of the Presidency to challenge racial discrimination - Committee on Civil Rights in 1946 - Desegregated the armed forces - Congress was controlled by the Republicans and passed the Taft Hartley Act, made clossed shops illegal and wanted to reduce union power. - Democrats divided in the Election of 1948 such as the Liberals going for Henry Wallace (commies) and the southern Democrats going for Thurmond (Dixiecrats)

Hollywood

- Hollywood reflected the diminished interest in political issues, churning out westerns, musicals, and costume spectacles. - Most films about contemporary life portrayed Americans as one happy white, middle-class family. - Minorities and the poor remained invisible, and women appeared largely as "dumb blondes" or cute helpmates. - Still, as TV Viewing soared, movie attendance dropped 50 percent, and a fifth of the nation's theaters became bowling alleys and supermarkets by 1960.

The Election of 1952

- In 1952. public apprehension about the loyalty of government combined with the frustration of the Korean stalemate, sank the Democratic hopes to their lowest levels since 1920s. - Truman could not rerun as his approval rates were too low, so they elected Adlai Stevenson and John Sparkman - Stevenson speeches were for intellectuals and not for the common voter and could not overcome the sentiment that 20 years of Democrat rule was enough - The Republicans got the war hero Dwight D Eisenhower with Nixon as his running mate - Eisenhower claimed to end the Korean stalemate and accused Adlai as a coward and won both Houses

The Fair Deal

- Included civil rights, national health-care legislation, and federal aid to education - Was to extend Social Security Benefits - Increase Minimum wage - National Health Insurance - Counted on continual economic growth= more money for people=more taxes=more money to spend on welfare programs - Northern Republican and Southern Democrats rejected the Fair Deal and only extended existing programs like Social Security and minimum wage and building 800,000 low-income housing. - ONE EXCEPTION: increase minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour

At Home

- It weakened the nation's commitment to civil liberties while propelling research in medicine and science that made lives longer and better - made more than a quarter of a century of economic growth and prosperity, expansion of higher educati8on and allowed many Americans to become middle class - Expansion f the welfare state and diminished support for federal regulation of business

the Eisenhower Legacy

- Just before leaving office, Eisenhower offered Americans a farewell and a warning. The demands of national security, he stated, had produced the "conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry." - This combination of interests in the military as everything had to do with the arms race, Eisenhower believed, exerted enormous leverage and threatened the traditional subordination of the military in American life. - Ike avoided war but that lasting peace was not in sight - Avoided the Korean War, avoided direct intervention in Vietnam, - Initiated relaxing tensions with the Soviet Union - Suspended atmospheric nuclear testing. - At the same time, he presided over an accelerating nuclear-arms race and a Cold War that encircled the globe

The Korean War

- Korea was divided by the 38th parallel, where the DPRK is to the north, ran by the USSR while the ROK to the south was run by the US - June 25 in 1950, the NK troops swept across the thirty-eighth parallel to attack the Republic of Korea - This was seen as a test from USSR and by Congress in Truman's eyes, he was accused of selling out E. Europe and losing China, so he wanted to prove his resolve in the Korean war - He did not consult Congress before ordering air and naval forces to Korea from their bases in Japan - He appointed Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the leader of the UN security force - The U.S. troops were losing until MacArthur landed troops in Inchon, west of South Korea and pushed the NK north and proceeded to attempt in liberating all of Korea - November 25, 300,000 Chinese troops attacked the UN line off the Yalu River after warning the UN to stay away from the Chinese border and drove the UN troops back to the 38th Parallel. - MacArthur hated Truman for coming up with limited war, with a peace treaty to restore things back to what it was before. MacArthur wanted total victory, even at a chance of causing a full World War over Korea, the public supported MacArthur and so did the Republicans, so Truman fired him - A lot of Chinese, US, and Korean lives were lost, NK looked like a "moonscape" after the US carpet bombs - Korean War caused more implementation of NSC-68 and containment procedures - The U.S. went from $13 billion to $60 billion in defence spending. - The war preserved the precarious balance of power in Asia and commitment to containment, lead to the Vietnam War - Presidential powers were also raised, economic boom, and Second Red Scare

Computers

- Mark I Calc was used to break Axis codes, made by IBM - ENIAC was used to improve artillery accuracy, 5000 calcs a second - Next came the development of operating instructions, or programs, that could be stored inside the computer's memory; the substitution of printed circuits for wires; and in 1948, at Bell Labs, the invention of tiny solid-state transistors that ended reliance on radio tubes. - 1960 saw a lot of computers being sold and created - used by government to stimulate war-games, civs used them to track inventory, quality control, and monitor production lines - The development of the high-technology complex known as Silicon Valley began in 1951 as Stanford University utilized its science and engineering faculties to design and produce products for the Fairchild Semiconductor and Hewlett-Packard companies

A Different Beat

- Mass media focused on the sensational and superficial.and accounts of juvenile delinquency roe and portrayed high schools as war-zones, city streets as jungles etc, but in all truthfulness, teen crime had barely increased. - Young Americans embraced rock and roll, not liked by white parents who saw their white children dance to rhythm and blues from African Americans. - Bill Haley played R and R in The Black Board Jungle (a movie about juvenile delinquency, many parents saw a connection between crime and R and R). - Red Hunters aw it as a communist plot to corrupt youth - Segregationalists claimed it as a plot to mix races - Devil's music for the churches and psychitrists saw it as a mental disease - Elvis Presly was popular... that's pretty much it...

Jim Crow in Court

- Morgan v Virginia interstate bus transportation segregation was illegal - Shelley vs Kraemer outlawed restrictive housing covenants that forbade sale/rental of property to minorities - Eisenhower appointed Chief Judge Earl Warren reversed the judgment of Plessy vs Ferguson separate but equal doctrinn with Brown v Boards of Education - South rendered the court decision as null and void and made laws that allowed schools to separate the kids and closed down/ stop funding schools that desegregated - 100 members in Congress signed the Southern Manifesto, denouncing Brown V Boards of Education and no southern school had a black student with whites, and we all know of the Faubus stuff and Ike's soldiers helping the 9 black kids, watch Jocz

Cold War in Asia

- Moscow and Washington's hostilities also carved Asia into contending camps, the USSR created SoE in Manchuria while the U.S. took Japan and denied USSR a role to be in Japan, both fought for Korea - As head of the U.S. occupational forces in Japan, Gen. Douglas MacArthur oversaw that nation's transformation from an empire in ruins into a prosperous democracy. - As the occupation ended in 1952, but a treaty allowed the U.S. to keep Japanese bases and brought Japan under the American Nuclear Umbrella - U.S. also crushed a communist insurgency in the Philippines and reestablished French colonial rule in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, ironical as US supports self-determination

Latinos and Latinos

- New York Air Service brought many Puerto Ricans to Harlem for a better life with more money - Puerto Ricans faced the seam problems as Africans: inadequate housing, employment, and schools, along with police harassment - They could not enjoyed the same promises that the government had given to the whites and looked for societies like NCAA or SNCC and created Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs (PRACA) - A lot of Mexicans came into the US both legally, but mainly illegally, which the Gov't responded to by installing braceros - Braceros are temporary work programs for the newly built 7.5 million acre farmlands from the new irrigation system in the Southwest - Mendez 1947 and Delgado 1948 ruled segregation of Mexican Americans in schools as unconstitutional - Hernandez 1952 ended exclusion from jury duty

Television Culture

- No cultural medium has grown as fast as the television - TV stations ABC NBC and CBS were the main radio networks and made money by selling time to advertisers who wanted to reach out to the audience - Initially It was to showcase talent and creativity but when McCarthyism came along, they transformed it into a celebration of conformity and consumerism - Spread consumerism and reinforced gender stereotypes and racial stereotypes and popularized football and baseball - Helped politicians convey messages out in a more personal manner such as Kennedy - Made a more national, homogenized culture, diminishing provincialism and regional differences - Increased the cost of political campaigning - shortened attention spans and hid the reality of "the other America" as it constantly portrayed content people.

McCarthyism

- Nothing set off more alarms of a diabolic Red conspiracy than the matter of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers - Klaus Fuchs a German who worked on Manhattan project passed info to Soviets, conviction led to a man who named his brother in law and sister Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. - Hiss denied of being a Communist who passed info to the Russians, but in 1990s, it was found out that Hiss did pass secret information to the soviets and that Julius Rosenberg described himself as a soldier of Stalin and was part of a spy ring that gave the USSR data on America's atomic bomb project. - Ethel Rosenberg was a lever to pressure Julius in naming other spies - Both Julius and Ethel were sentenced to the Electric Chair - By 1950, when few Americans could separate fact from fantasy regarding the communist threat, the spy cases tarnished liberalism and fueled other loyalty investigations. - McCarthyism especially appealed to midwestern Republicans opposed to Democratic internationalism and restrictions on business. For many in the American Legion and the Chambers of Commerce, anticommunism was a weapon of revenge against liberals to regain republican dominance - Also supported by ethnic Catholics, blue collared workers, and people who hate liberals in the State Department

Taft-Hartley Act (Labor-Management Relations Act)

- Officially the Labor-Management Relations Act -it barred the closed shop, a workplace where all employees had to join a union - Outlawed secondary boycotts (strikes against suppliers of the targetted industry, like steel plants to a car manufacturer) - required union officials to sign anti-communist loyalty oaths - permitted the president to call a cooling off period to delay strikes that might endanger national safety or health - Weakened organized labour as a force for social justice - Truman vetoed it, Congress overrode the Veto - Truman then went to woo ethnic voters of eastern European descent by roasting Soviets and court Jewish Americans by being sympathetic to the Holocaust and greeting Isreal's creation by recognition. - Southern segregationalists voted for Thurmond of the Dixiecrat/State's Rights party - Leftwing Democrats joined the communists to launch a new Progressive Party headed by Henry A Wallace - Republicans elected Dewey and he ran a very lax and non-offensive campaign - But Truman won like a champ cuz Progressives and Dixiecrats were very radical and pushed the moderates to the Democrtatic fold - The Roosevekt coalition of unions, farmers, urban ethinics, balcks, and white southerners held together for one more time

Containment

- Policy uniting military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to curb, or "contain," any further Soviet Communist expansion- became Washington gospel - Britain couldn't help Turkey and Greece in their fight against communist insurgents. Western European economies came to a near halt with famine and TB plagued the continent. - Euro colonies in Africa and Asia went on full rebellion mode - Cigs and candy became currency in Germany - Communist parties in Italy and France are nearly able to topple the democratic governments - Truman resolved to fix all of this, and Congress said yes if Truman could "scare hell out of this country" by using the Truman Doctrine - Helped stop the Greek and Turkish insurgents

Politics in Race

- Racists fear of the black assertiveess in seeking fr vote and mobilization of grassroot forces, they began to repress the blacks and did more violence - Truman was horrified by the Columbia white riots that were against blacks who insisted on their rights to vote, leading to 70 arrests and 2 jailhouse lynches - Truman realized that this is bad for the U.S. reputation and the need for Democrats to get the black vote - He establishes the President's Committee on Civil Rights to investigate race relations - The committee wrote a report: To Secure These Rights, and it called for end of discrimination, segregation, poll-taxes, and lynching, Truman went to Congress to support such ideals, even going to talk about the Armed Forces

The Eightieth Congress 1947-1948

- Repubs in this Congress interpreted the 1946 elections as a mandate to reverse the New Deal - Congress defeated Democratic Bills to raise the minimum wage and to provide federal funds for education and housing and, capitalizing on the national consensus for curbing labour union power generated by the waves of postwar strikes, passed the Taft-Hartley Act -

Leaders in CRM

- Rosa Park - MLK - Montgomery Bus Boycott: disproved the myth that Africans approved of segregation - SNCC diner sit-ins, 126 facilities desegregated - Freedom riders by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and it got international attention and gov't the Interstate Commerce Commission to desegregate the interstate carriers and terminals

H-Bombf

- Stung by the charges that he was soft on communism in Jan 1950, Truman ordered the development of the fusion-based hydrogen bomb - a thousand times more destructive than an atom bomb - and they blew it up, wiping a marshall island off the face of the Earth - 9 months later, the USSR blew up their own - Colorado, Washington, Nevada, and Utah, soldiers and Pacific Islanders were ill-affected by the nuclear tests

Latin America and Cuba

- Such interventions intensified anti-American feelings in Third World nations. Angry crowds in Peru and Venezuela spat at Vice President Nixon and stoned his car in 1958. - In 1959, Fidel Castro overturned a dictatorial regime in Cuba and confiscated American properties Without compensation. - He then established close economic and military ties with the Soviet Union. - If the United States dared intervene. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev warned, he would defend Cuba with nuclear weapons.

Portents of Change

- Teens made a lot of different things different from adults to stand out from them - Beats: Nonconformist writers expressed a more fundamental revolt against middle class societies. - They are very rebel-like and supported civil rights

Yalta Conference

- The Big Three met in Yalta in early 1945 - FDR and Churchill think Stalin agrees to allow for free election and representative government - STalin refuses to remove the red army from E. Europe and rigged election to bring Soviet power into the puppet countries - U.S. and U.K saw this as a spread of communism and wanted self determination, democracy, and free trade was - Stalin gets part of Manchuria, and the U.S. have to break China's promises, Russia also gets the territories they have lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese war - Agreed on creating the UN in 1945, April - Stalin takes over Poland to prevent a chance of invading Russia -

Loyalty and Security

- The U.S. Communist Party had around 80,000 members and mid-1945 raid on the offices of pro-communist magazines showed that classified documents have been stolen, 10 months later, the Canadian gov't exposed a major spy network that passed US atom bomb secrets to the Russians during WWII -

Confrontation in Germany

- The USSR reacted to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan by tightening its grip on Eastern Europe. - Hungary and Czechoslovakia was added to the Soviet Bloc in 1947 and 1948. - Stalin then set his eyes on Germany

Resource usage

- The chemical industry continued its wartime growth. As chemical fertilizers and pesticides contaminated ground water supplies, and as the use of plastics for consumer products reduced landfill space - Electricity consumption tripled in the 19505, and electronics became the fifth-largest American industry, as factories automated and consumers purchased electric washers and dryers, freezers, blenders, television sets, and stereos. Cheap oil fueled expansion. - Cheap oil fueled expansion. Domestic oil production and foreign imports rose steeply, and by 1960 oil had replaced coal as the nation's main energy source. - Plentiful, cheap gasoline fed the growth of the automobile and aircraft industries. The nation's third-largest was aerospace and depended on federal defense spending and research funds and the worker count drop as machines take over.

Anticommunism and Containment

- The shotgun-wedding that joined the US and USSR in an alliance to defeat Hitler dissolved into a struggle to fill the power vacuums left behind by the defeat of the Axis, the exhaustion and bankruptcy of Western Europe, and the crumbling of colonial empires in Asia and Africa - Misperception and misunderstanding mounted as the two powers sought greater security, each feeding the other's fears, causing a cycle of distrust and animosity. - Ideological conflict between capitalism and communism - Wilson supported the White Army, which sought to stop the Bolshevik Revolution - Stalin was a brutal dictator and signed a Non-Agg Pact with Hitler in 1939 - Stalin was also angry at the delays in opening the 2nd front until 1944 - Soviets were not included in the creation of the Atom Bomb - The U.S. and Soviets had very different visions for Eastern Europe (free election v.s. "free election")

The Anticommunist Crusade

- The very existence of a federal loyalty probe fed fears of domestic subversion. It promoted hysteria about communist infiltrators and legitimated a witch-hunt for subversives. - By the end of Truman's term, thirty nine states had created loyalty programs. Few had any procedural safeguards. Schoolteachers, college professors, and state and city employees throughout the nation had to sign loyalty oaths or lose their jobs. No one knows for sure how many were dismissed, denied tenure, or drifted away, leaving behind colleagues too frightened to speak out. - (HUAC) held widely publicized hearings to expose communist infiltration of Hollywood. When some prominent film directors and screenwriters, the Hollywood Ten, refused to testify about past political associations,saying that the 1st amendment protected them, HUAC had them cited for "contempt of Congress" and sent them to federal prison. Despite HUAC's failure to prove that Hollywood had produced "flagrant communist propaganda films," blacklists in the motion picture industry and in radio broadcasting quickly followed. - They barred the employment of those with a questionable past or those who had associated, however remotely, with others deemed "subversive" or "un-American" - Unions went to focus on better wages and benefits, cuz they were scared - . Truman lambasted Wallace as a Stalinist dupe and the GOP dubbed the Democrats "the party of treason." To blunt such accusations, Truman's Justice Department prosecuted eleven top leaders of the American Communist Party

The Costs of Bigness

- The wealthiest companies became oligopolies, swallowing up weak competitors. - Industries become monopolized and became multinational as as they acquired oversea facilities. - David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd, people don't have much independence now. Also said that Americans were conformists shaped by the opinion of their peers and lack inner resource to be different. - Farming became a business/an enterprise or a factory

Poverty/Urban Blight

- There were still a lot of poor people living in America - the bulk of the poor huddled in decaying inner-city slums: southern blacks, Appalachian whites, immigrant Hispanics, and native Americans crowded into inadequate city facilitates. - Michael Harrington wrote "The Other America: Poverty in the United States" - Poor stayed poor, students that were poor had low morale and were quickly left behind and dropped out, the poor bred more poor -Harlem had a lot of bad houses and illegitimate births

Native Americans

- They remained the poorest in society with 3x the death rate of the national average - 1950s, Congress went back to assimilation instead of sovereignty - But this caused tribes to sell land and pushed them off the reservations and lowered federal services, it was a disaster - Voluntary Relocation Program: to lure Indians off the land and into urban areas for sale of the land to contractors. It gave the indians movement costs, help in finding jobs and houses, and living expenses until they got a job

Ike and Dulles

- To ease Cold War Hostilities, Ike had to stop the right Wing urge to fight the Reds. - He chose as his secretary of state John Foster Dulles, a rigid, humor-less Presbyterian who advocated a holy war against "atheistic communism," including "instant, massive retaliation" with nuclear weapons. - Dulles called for "liberation" of the captive peoples of Eastern Europe and for unleashing Jiang Jieshi against communist China. Believing that the Soviet Union under~ stood only force, Dulles insisted on the necessity of "brinksmanship," the art of never backing down in a crisis---even at the risk of war. - He proposed "atoms for peace," whereby both superpowers would contribute fissionable materials to a new UN agency for use in industrial projects. In the absence of a positive Soviet response, the government constructed an electronic air defense system to provide early warning of a missile attack. - In 1955, Eisenhower and Soviet leaders met in Geneva for the first East-West conference since World War II. - In March 1958, Moscow suspended atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons, and the United States followed suit. - But the Cold War continued. Dulles negotiated mutual-defense pacts with forty-three nations, and created SEATO in 1954, extending collective security agreements between the United States and Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand. Rather than trying to match the communists "man for man, gun for gun," Eisenhower's "New Look" defense program reduced conventional forces and emphasized nuclear weapons - Proxy wars rise up

China

- U.S. efforts to block Communism fails, $3 billion in funds could not stop the defeat of the Nationalists - China's fall to Communism shocked the Americans, the most populous nation in the Word, seen as a counterforce to communism and a market for U.S. goods became Red China - Conservatives then treated the People's Republic of China as invisible lead to Taiwan to become the legitimate gov't of China with PRC having no place in the UN. - Nationalists in Chiang Kai Shek v.s. Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong - Two Chinas, 1949 Mao declares China to be a communist country and nationalists flee to Taiwan - Republicans blame Truman for the "loss of China" to - Contributes to the growing fear because USSR also got a bomb in 1949fsmith

Polarization and Cold War

- Wanting to end the USSR's vulnerability to invasions from the West, Stalin insisted on a demilitarized Germany and a buffer zone of nations friendly to Russia along its western flank. - Considered a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe is essential to Russian security, a reward for bearing the brunt of the war against Germany, similar to the US. SoE in Japan and L. America. - He claimed that Churchill and Roosevelt allow the Eastern European countries to become part of Stalin's Soviet Red Zone. - Installed pro-Soviet puppet governments in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Albania, and Yugoslavia. - Ignoring the Yalta Conference of Liberated Europe, Stalin stopped the free election in Poland and crushed democratic parties - Stalin saw this as Russian Security while Truman saw this as a violation of national self-determination, betrayal of democracy, and cover for communist aggression. - Truman said that the nations rescued from Hiler's dictatorship is passed to another one. - Truman wanted the 6 million Polish-American vote, so he went against Communism, eager to demonstrate his command, he tried to challenge Stalin's control of Poland by demanding Poland to have free elections.

National Defense Education Act

- Was to improve American education, direct federal funding to higher education to improve the teachings of sciences, Math, and foreign languages

Eisenhower Doctrine

- a proclamation that the United States would send military aid and, if necessary, troops to any Middle Eastern nation threatened by "Communist aggression." - Determined to guarantee the flow of oil to the West from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, which had some 60 percent of the world's known reserves, the president announced the Eisenhower Doctrine in 1957 -

Employment Act of 1946

- committed the federal government to ensuring economic growth and established the Council of Economic Advisors to confer with the president and formulate policies for maintaining employment, production, and purchasing power. - Congress killed it though, destroying the goal of full employment and the enhanced executive powers to achieve that objective.

National Security Paper 68

- emphasized the USSR's aggressive intentions, territorial greed, and military strength - Urged massive increases in America's nuclear arsenal, vigorous covert action by the CIA, and open-ended increases in the defence budget to resist communist expansion US now approached the Cold War as a military confrontation

Suburbs

- government policy spurred white Americans' exodus to the suburbs - Federal spending on highways skyrocketed from $79 million in 1946 to $2.6 billion in 1960, putting once-remote areas within "commuting distance" for city workers - he income tax code stimulated home sales by allowing deductions for home mortgage interest payments and for property taxes. - Both the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) offered low-interest loans; and both continued to deny loans to blacks who sought to buy homes in white neighborhoods. In 1960, suburbia was 98 percent white.

Consensus and Conservatism

- intellectuals have found their audience fr their attack on "organization men," no self thought and are bent on getting ahead by getting along and are on "status seeking" mode and go for external rewards to cover up inner insecurities - This social criticism oversimplified reality. It ignored ethnic and class diversity, the acquisitiveness and conformity of earlier generations, and the currents of dissent swirling beneath the surface. - But it rightly spotlighted the elevation of comfort over challenge, and of private pleasures over public affairs. - The decade was, in the main, a time of political passivity and preoccupation with personal gain.

McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952

- maintained the quota system that severely restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and from Asia, but did end the ban on Japanese immigration and made issei (1st gen Japanese immigrants) eligible for naturalized citizenship - Attorney General can now deport homosexual or Communist immigrants who are "undesirable"

Smith Act of 1940

- outlawed any conspiracy advocating the overthrow of the government. - The Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act's constitutionality (Dennis v. United States, 1951), declaring that Congress could curtail freedom of speech if national security required such restriction. Ironically, the Communist Party was fading into obscurity at the very time politicians magnified its threat. By 1950, its membership had shrunk to fewer than thirty thousand.

Civil Rights Act f 1957

- permanent Commission on civil rights on civil rights with broad investigatory Powers - Got blacks to have a renew fight in the laws, showed them that the country's gov't is changing their views

Truman Doctrine 1947

- pictured the matter as a global struggle, pitting "freedom" and "liberty" against "oppression" and "terror." - This policy of the US would be to support free people everywhere - It endured long after the crisis in the Mediterranean. - It proclaimed the nation's intentions to be a global policeman, everywhere on guard against the USSR advances - laid the foundation for American foreign policy for much of the next four decades - Greece and Turkey get 400 million in military and economic aid to fight off the communists

McCarran Internal Securities Act

- required organizations deemed communist by the attorney general to register with the Department of Justice. It also authorized the arrest and detention during a national emergency of "any person as to whom there is reason to believe might engage in acts of espionage or sabotage.

Truman's response to the isolation of Berlin (Berlin Airlift)

- resolved neither to abandon Berlin nor shoot his way into the city and cause WWIII, but ordered a massive airlift of supplies to the city, The Berlin Airlift. - American cargo planes landed in W. Berlin every 3 minutes to bring fuel and food to the populace - From June 1948 to May 1949, the blockade lasted - It heightened the anti-soviet feelings in the West as people see that Stalin was willing to use innocent people as pawns and showed the West's technological prowess. - In the same time, France, America, and GB all ended their occupation of Germany and proposed to create the Federal Republic of Germany (W. Germany).

McCarthyism Definition

- synonym for personal attacks on individuals by means of indiscriminate allegations and unsubstantial charges

USSR Response to NATO

- they created the German Democratic Republic in 1949 - exploded their own atom bomb in that year - in 1955 they made the Warsaw Pact, an Eastern bloc military alliance

Problems with the Third World

-Ike faced his greatest crisis, however, in the Middle East. In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power in Egypt, determined to modernize his nation. To woo him, the United States offered financing for a dam at Aswan to harness the Nile River. - But when Nasser purchased arms from Czechoslovakia. John Foster Dulles canceled the loan, and Nasser nationalized the British-controlled Suez Canal. - Britain, in alliance with France, which feared Arab nationalism in their Algerian colony, and with Israel, which feared the Egyptian arms buildup, attacked Egypt to retake the canal in October. - Angered that America's three closest allies had not consulted him, and fearful that such military action would drive the Arab world and its precious oil to the Russians, Eisenhower forced his allies to Withdraw their troops - Given gas-hungry Americans' need to avoid alienating the Arab world, the United States did nothing as Egypt retook the Suez Canal and built the Aswan Dam with Soviet support,

Bretton Woods Conference in 1944

-International finance agreements established at the conference in 1944 sought to establish a stable global economy - International Monetary Fund: stabilized exchange rates by valuing (pegging) other currencies in relation to the U.S. Dollar - World Bank was intended to help rebuild the war-torn world and help promote international trade - General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): break up closed trading blocs and expand international trade - Many nations were ruined, so imports were cheap and foriegn competition was nonexistenet so exports were in high demand. - Soviets reject it because they thought it was a tool to promote capitalism and rejected membership

Which of the following does NOT accurately describe the presidential election of 1968

Both major-party candidates campaigned as Washington outsiders

The incident that began a chain of events that became one of the most infamous presidential scandals in American history and eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon was the

Break-in and attempted bugging of the Democratic Party's national headquarters

Loyalty oaths, blacklists, and Alger Hiss are all associated with the

Red Scare

John F. Kennedy was unable to accomplish much of his civil rights agenda during his lifetime primarily because

Southern opposition to the civil rights movement made any association with it politically untenable

Gi Bill of Rights Servicemen Act

helped veterans by providing tuition assistance for school and low interest govt loans

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the Warren Court was often criticized for

in effect, enacting "judicial legislation" through its rulings on individual rights

All of the following threatened Harry Truman's chances for re-election in 1948 EXCEPT

public dissatisfaction with the Korean War

Inflation throiughout the 1970s was driven in large part by

rapidly increasing gasoline and oil prices

John Foster Dulles, secretary of state under Eisenhower, intensified Cold War rhetoric with Washington's New Look defense program that emphasized

threatening Moscow with "massive retaliation"