Chapter 37 - The Cold War Begins 1945-1952

 

Major Themes

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• America emerged from WW II as the world’s strongest economic power and started a postwar economic boom that lasted two decades.
• A bulging population migrated to the suburbs and sunbelt leaving cities increasingly to minorities and the poor
• The end of WW II left the US and Soviet Union as the two dominant world powers. They became locked in a Cold War confrontation – a global ideological conflict between democracy and communism.

Major Questions

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• Was the primary threat from the Soviet Union a military or an ideological one?
  • The threat from the Soviet Union was more of an ideological threat than a military threat. It was an ideological threat because there really wasn't an actual military conflict between the US and the USSR, like physical combat or other military attacks taken against the United States. There were, however, a lot of threats from either side with a military build-up and an on going arms race to back up the threats.
• Assess the impact of each of these changes in American society: increased affluence, suburban growth, growing women’s presence in the workforce, the “baby boom”.

Outline

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Postwar Economic Anxieties

• Many Americans were still concerned with the Great Depression, and now the relations between them and the Soviets were degrading
  • There were many residual effects of the Depression
    • Increased suicide rate
    • Decreased Marriage/Birth Rates
    • Sexual Depression
• The economy was shaky to start
  • "Gross National Product" (how much the country produces) decreased from Wartime Production
  • Prices rose
  • Strikes rampaged
    • Strikers couldn't afford what they were making because of increased prices
• Organized Labor had issues with the conservatives
  • 1947- The first Republican Congress in 14 yrs. passed the Taft-Hartley Act
    • Killed "closed" all-union jobs
    • Unions became liable for damages
    • Union leaders had to take noncommunist oaths
  • The North had experienced a growth in numbers of Unions
    • Wanted to bring around the South and the West
    • However, the Southern textile/steel mills wouldn't be unionized due to residual racism
  • Union membership hit a top in 1950, and then kept decreasing
• Democrats tried to prevent the "economic downturn"
  • Sold war factories and government owned sections of industry
  • Made the Employment Act of 1946
    • Was now a gov't policy "to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power."
    • Act also made an Economic Advisors Council for prez. that would help him make this policy happen
  • Servicemen's Readjustment Acts of 1944
    • Also called GI Bill of Rights
    • Reacting to fear that the GI's wouldn't be able to find work at home
    • Hoped to send former soldiers to school
    • $14.5 billion was spent
    • Also allowed the Veterans Administration to guarantee $16 billion in loans
      • Vet's could use these loans to buy homes, farms, small businesses...
    • The GI Bill definetly made a huge contribution to keeping the economy afloat

The Long Economic Boom, 1950-1970

• GNP (gross nat'l prod.) started to get higher in 1948, and by 1950 was super strong (like Superman, but better)
  • National income doubled in the '50's, then doubled again in the 60's
  • Americans were 6% of planetary population, with 40% of wealth
    • This prosperity would later help the civil rights movement
    • Helped with welfare programs like Medicare
    • Allowed America to assert leadership during this time period
  • Those who had suffered during the Depression wanted to float to the top now
    • The Middle Class made up 60% of population now
      • Majority of people owned a car and washing machine
      • About 90% owned a TV (invented 1920's, used 1940's)
      • 60% owned their own homes (compared to >40% in the 20's)
  • Women got the most of the Postwar Prosperity
    • Urban offices and shops had places for women to work
    • The service area of the economy grew, and many jobs went to women
    • 25% of the workforce was women
    • However, tradition still held women responsible for keeping home and children
      • This tension would lead to the Feminist Movement of 1960's

The Roots of Postwar Prosperity

• Many things factored into the P.P.
  • WWII
    • USA used the war to help fix the economy, while other countries suffered fighting
    • Other countries couldn't "hold a candle" to the US
  • Military Budgets
    • Some feared a "permanent war economy"
    • Economic goodness of 50's was due to money laid out for Korean War
    • Defensive spending = 10% of GNP until 60's
    • Pentagon drained money into aerospace, plastics, and electronics industries
      • We were better in these areas than any one else
    • Scientific research and development also sparked by military $
  • Cheap Energy
    • America and Europe controlled petroleum in Middle East
      • Prices stayed low
    • America doubled oil consumption in 25 yrs after war
      • Made highways
      • Installed Air-conditioning
      • Electricity-Generating Capacity increased by 6x in 25 yrs.
    • Electrical cables also helped
      • The powers of oil, gas, coal, and water were used in the factories
      • Were carried by these cables
• Power of Nature (sounds like a Hippy theme song) helped productivity
  • Productivity increased at a rate of 3%/year for 20 years
  • Work force was becoming more educated
    • By 1970, 90% of school-age population (5-18 I'm guessing) was in a school setting
  • Standard of living rose significantly
• The Economic Structure of the economy changed and helped the postwar production
  • Work force moved out of farming
    • The gains in productivity here were the highest
    • Lumping of "family farms" allowed "agribusinesses" to use machinery
    • One farmer could now feed 50 people vs. 15 from the 40's
    • Only 2% of the population was farming now, but still fed most of the world

The Smiling Sunbelt

• For about 3 decades after 1945 an average of 30 million people changed residences every year.
• Families especially felt the strain as distance divided parents from children, and brothers and sisters from one another.
• One sign of this stress was the phenomenal popularity of advice books on child-rearing, especially Dr. Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care. It was first published in 1945 and it instructed millions of parents during the ensuing decades in the kind of homely wisdom that was once transmitted naturally from grandparent to parent, and from parent to child.
• In fluid postwar neighborhoods friendships were also hard to sustain.
• The Sunbelt - was a 15-state area stretching in a smililing crescent from Virginia through Florida and Texas to Arizona and California.
  • This region increased its pop. at a rate nearly double that of the old industrial zones of the Northeast.
• In the 1950s California alone accounted for one-fifth of the entire nation's population growth and by 1963 it had outdistanced New York as the most populous state.
• The South and Southwest were a new frontier for Americans after WWII. Modern pioneers came in search of jobs, a better climate, and lower taxes.
• They found jobs in abundance especially in the electronics industry of California, the areospace complexes in Florida and Texas and in the huge military installations that powerful southern congressional representatives secured for their districts.
• Federal dollars accounted for much of the Sunblelt's prosperity, though southern and western politicians led the cry against gov't spending.

The Rush to the Suburbs

• Most of the Americans fled from the cities to the suburbs
  • This movement was encouraged by government policies
    • The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) & The Vetrans Administration (VA)
      • Made owning a house in the suburbs economically atractive than an apt. in the cities
    • Tax deductions on mortgages also provided financial incentive
  • Highways allowed transportation to work in the cities
  • By 1960 one in four lived in a suburb
• This movement caused a boom in the construction industry
  • The Levitt Brothers revolutionized the housing industry
  • Builders...
    • Errected hundreds of houses in a single project
    • Specialized crews
    • Factory assembled framing
    • put on roofs
    • strung wires
    • plumbed
    • and made all aspects cost effective
• Blacks migrated to the North and moved to suburbs
  • Imported poverty to the Northern cities and suburbs
• Taxpaying business also fled to the suburbs and formed malls
• Sometimes there was segregation due to these policies
  • Blacks were denied loans due to the "risk"
  • Others strove to keep minorities out of their neighborhoods

The Postwar Baby Boom

• "Baby boom"- an increase in the birthrate in the decade & a half after 1945.
• Men and women "tied the nuptial knot" in record numbers at war's end and then began to "fill the nation's empty cradles."
• They added more than 50 million babies to the nation's pop. by the end of the 1950s.
• The birthrate reached its peak in 1957 & from there began to drop.
  • By 1973 fertility rates dropped below the point necessary to maintain existing population figures.
• If the downward trend continued, only further immigration would lift the U.S. population above its 1996 level of some 264 million.
• As the oversize postwar generation grew it was destined to change many aspects of American life.
  • Elementary-school enrollments increased to nearly 34 million pupils in 1970, then began a steady decline as that age group grew up, leaving schools closed & teachers unemployed.
• Babies and toddlers in the 1940s and 1950s made up a profitable market for manufacturers of canned food and other baby products.
• As they became teenagers in the 1960s, they spent an estimated $20 billion a year for clothes and recorded rock music.
• In the 1970s the consumer tastes of the baby boomers changed again and the most popular jeans maker began marketing pants with a fuller cut.
• In the 1980s the generation "bumped and jostled" each other in the job market, trying to secure a spot on the ladder of social mobility.
• In the 90s the began to enter middle age- raising its own "secondary boom" of children.
• Eventually, the children of the baby boom will retire(21st century/now) & put a huge strain on the Social Security system.

Truman: The "Gutty" Man from Missouri

• Truman was considered the "Accidental President"
  • Lacked confidence and looked inexperienced
    • "the average man's average man"
  • Lacked a college education
• Gradually gained confidence, to the point of cockiness
• Permitted his old associates of the "Missouri Gang" to gather in office
  • Truman was stubbornly loyal to "Missouri Gang"
• Tried to show off his decisiveness & power of command to a skeptical public by going off not completely prepared to a wrongheaded notion
  • "To err is Truman"
• Was often small on small things, but was also big on big things
  • Had old-fashioned characteristics: moxie, authenticity, few pretensions, & rock-solid integrity
  • Didn't dodge his responsibility

Yalta: Bargain or Betrayal?

• Much was unresolved between US and the Soviets about the postwar fates of Germany, Eastern Europe, and Asia
• The Big Three met at Yalta in Feb 1945
  • final plans were made for smashing and capturing Germany
  • Though he later broke this promise, Stalin had agreed that Poland, w/ revised boundaries, should have a representative gov't based on free elections
  • Bulgaria and Romania were also to have free elections, but in the end they also did not.
  • Plans were announced for est.ing the United Nations [not called that at the time]
• America was concerned about having major casulaties from the assult on Japan, so we asked Russia to put some troops in Manchuria and Korea to lighten the death load, but Moscow needed pursuations, i.e. troops, to bring them into the Far Eastern conflict
• Stalin finally agreed to attack Japan after Germany was defeated for 3 months, but of course we had to give a little to get a little
  • Soviets were promised:
    • Sakhlin Island [lost to Japan in 1905]
    • Japan's Kurile Islands
    • joint control over the railroads of Manchuria
    • special privileges in the 2 key sea ports: Dairen and Port Arthur
  • this would give Stalin control over v. important industrial centers of America's weakening Chinese ally
• Critics claimed that the conference gave Stalin a bunch of control over China and that this control seriously contributed to Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) 's fall to communists 4 yrs later
  • they also attacked Stalin for selling out on agreements about Poland and other Eastern European countries
• Roosevelt appologists said that Stalin's ambitions were really held back at the conference and obviously things would have been different if he had just kept his promise; plus a war w/ the spread out Europe-occupied "red army" was unthinkable
• The Yalta conference wasn't really a peace settlement but more of a testing of one another w. the other's intentions
• Despite broken promises, Roosevelt clamied that the agreement was "so elastic that the Russians can stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it."
• All were just waiting for peace

The US and the Soviet Union

• Mistrust btwn the 2 powers was ancient; communism and captialism never had warm and cozy feelings for each other
  • US had refused to recognize the Bolshevik revolutionary gov't until 16 yrs after it was est. [1933]
  • Soviets were skeptical about US and Britain's delay to enter the war, leaving Russia w/ WAY more casulaties
  • US and Britain didn't include the USSR in their project for developing atomic weapons
  • Washington gov't spontaneously terminated vital lend-lease aid to bruised USSR in 1945, making Moscow beg for $6 billion; at the same time Washington was approving a similar $3.75 billion loan to Britain in 1946
• Stalin's views were that the USSR's security was put above all
  • it had twice before been betrayed by surrounding countries and he had made it clear from the beginning of the war that he would have friendly gov'ts on the western border esp Poland
  • These spheres of influence would protect the soviets and help them strengthen its revolutionary base as the world's leading communist country
    • Americans saw this "sphere of influence" as an EMPIRE [Bolshevik call for world revolution]
    • Plus this clashed w. FDR's dream of an "open world", demilitarized, decolonized, democtratized and the UN
• America and the USSR acutally scarily resembled each other
  • both had been largely isolated b4 WW2 [Am. by choice, USSR was just left out]
  • both had history of "missionary"-like dipolmacy [give the whole world their revolutionary views (ideology) and say it's the best]
• Both wanted to influence the battered and broken Europe-after-WW2
• it seemed as tho confrontation was unavoidable
• the Big Three were only friends until their common enemy was destroyed
  • rivalry btwn Russia (communistic, despotic) and US (capitalistic, democratic) was inevitable
  • The Cold War had begun
• the following 4 1/2 decades shaped Soviet-American relations and overshadowed the postwar international order all over the world and molded societies, economies,and lives of individuals also all over the world

Shaping the Postwar World

• Meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, the Western Allies established the International Monetary Fund, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
  • encouraged world trade and economic growth in war-torn and under-developed areas
  • Soviets declined to participate
• United Nations opened on April 25th, 1945
  • Roosevelt choseboth Republican and Democratic senators for the U.S. delegation
  • representatives from 50 nations met at the San Fransisco War Memorial and made the UN Charter
  • had a Security Council, dominated by the U.S., U.K., the U.S.S.R., France, and China
    • each had a veto
  • Assembly which would be controlled by the smaller countries
  • Senate approved the document warmly on July 28th, 1945, by a vote of 89 to 2
  • set up in New York City
• Had some gratifying initial success
  • helped preserve peace in Iran, Kashmir, and other spots
  • played a large part in creating Israel
  • the U.N. Trusteeship lead former colonies to independence

The Problem of Germany

• The Allies wanted to completely eliminate Nazism and to punish those convicted of war crimes
  • Held the Nuremburg Trials, which were important to history because they were the first time that individuals were punished for specific war crimes and held responsible
  • Some of the crimes were Crimes Against Humanity or the Laws of War, Plotting Aggressions Contrary to Peace Treaties
• The Nuremburg version of justice was harsh
  • 12 people were sentenced to death, 7 to long term jail.
  • Many complained against it using the excuse that the crimes had not been defined at the beginning of the war
• The Allies were somewhat undecided as to what to do with Germany
• It was agreed by all the other Allies but the Soviets that Germany's industry should not be destroyed
  • The other Allies also thought that Germany should be reunited, but Stalin destroyed that idea by tightening his grip on Eastern Germany
• East Germany was one of many countrys that became the Soviet's satelites
• Berlin was deep in East Germany and the Soviets wanted the Allies out of it, so they tried to starve them out
  • They erected the Berlin Wall and enforced a blockeade
• Did not work:
  • America organized the Berlin airlift dropping thousands of supplies to Berliners

Crystallizing the Cold War

• In 1946 Stalin broke his agreement to remove troops from irans northern province
  • Truman protested this and Stalin backed off
• After many remarks from Truman to Stalin the Containment doctrine first evolved
• Truman accepted this doctrine and started to employ it in 1947
• His first move was to ask congress for 400 million dollars in aid for Greece and Turkey
  • He also said that the US must support free people who are being subjugated by an outside force
  • became known as the Truman Doctrine
• Another problem for Truman was the economic chaos that still engulfed western Europe
  • Communist parties could use this chaos against those countries to gain power
• Secratary of State Marshall proposed that the European nations make a joint recovery plan that would be helped by the US
• The Marshall plan ended up calling for about 12.5 billion dollars in aid
• Congress agreed to this in April 1948 after Czechoslovakia was rocked by a communist coup
• The Marshall plan was one of Trumans great accomplishments
  • It revived the European economy
  • It also made the communist parties in France and Italy lose ground
• In 1948 Truman made another decision as oil resources dwindled in the US
• He recognized the Jewish state of Israel which pissed off the Arabs
• THis decision severly complicated foreign policy with the middle east

America Begins to Rearm

• though the period of the cold war was not open war it was not truly peace either
• the constant soviet threat maintained a large military investment by the american government
• the National Security Act was passed creating the National Security Council and the CIA
• the Soviet threat also unified western Europe
  • the American gov't decided to join this pact (NATO)
  • this was very different from previous american forgien policy

Reconstruction and Revolution in Asia

• Reconstruction in Japan was much more smooth than reconstruction in Germany
  • run almost entirely by McArthur
  • introduced western democracy
  • japanese were very cooperative
  • quickly became a world industrial power
• Chinese reconstruction was a failure
  • America failed to fully support chinese nationalists who soon fell to communist revolutionaries
  • nearly one quarter of the population of the world became communist
• Soviets developed a nuclear weapon in 1949
• this began a dangerous arms race between the two superpowers that led to both sides developing weapons with the potential to destroy the world

 

Democratic Divisions in 1948

• In 1946 Republicans won control of Congress
• Republicans Nominated Thomas E. Dewey for president
• The Democratice party became extremely divided as Truman is renominated,
  • A states rights party is formed nominating J. Strom Thurmond
  • A new progressive party nominates Henry A. Wallace
  • So the Democrats are split 3 ways and victory seems certain for Dewey
• Dewey became very overconfident by the polls and really did not campaign effectively
• Truman Traveled the country by train to deliver many speeches and improved support by speaking on improving civil rights
• Somehow Truman wins the election and the democrats regain control of congress
• In his inagural address Truman calls for a new program
  • THe plan was to lend money to weaker peoples to keep them from becoming commis
  • This plan greatly assisted impoverished countries

The Military Seesaw in Korea

• September 15, 1950, MacArthur succeeded w/ launching an amphibious landing behind enemy lines at Inchon instead of fighting his way out of the southern Pusan perimeter
  • w/in 2 weeks, the North Koreans went back to the "sanctuary" of the 38th parallel
  • The UN authorized a crossing by MacArthur (as long as there was no Chinese/Soviet intervention)
• Americans now considered Korea to be another potential enemy
• Chinese communists already publicly warned that they would take action if hostile troops approached the strategic Yalu River boundary between China & Korea
  • MacArthur dismissed the Chinese threats
• November 1950, Chinese "volunteers" came across MacArthur's overextended lines & sent the UN's forces back down the peninsula
  • fighting became a stalemate near the 38th parallel
• MacArthur pressed for retaliation
  • He wanted a blockade of the Chinese coast & bombings on Chinese bases in Manchuria
  • Washington policy makers refused to enlarge the expensive conflict
    • the Joint Chief of Staff decided that a bigger clash in Asia would be all wrong
      • Europe, not Asia, was the 1st concern of the administration & the USSR, not China, was the biggest threat
• MacArthur felt restricted & hated the concept of a "limited war"
  • April 11, 1951, Truman removes MacArthur from command
• July 1951, discussions for a truce began near the firing line but the issue of prisoner exchange caused the discussion to drag on for almost 2 years while men kept dying