Entrance into WWI
• Submarine Warfare• Lusitania, Sussex Pledge, others.• Economic Links with Britain and France.• Public Opinion• Zimmerman Telegram, Russian Rev.• Mobilization
– War Boards– Espionage and Sedition Acts
Treaty of Versailles
• Terms- League of Nations
• Irreconcilable
• Reservationists led by Henry Cabot Lodge
• Wilson’s Tour and stroke
• Not Ratified
Social Events of the 1910s
• The Red Scare– Palmer Raids
• Labor Conflict– Strikes of 1919
• Race Riots in the North
Republican Control• Harding Administration- “return to normalcy”
– Pardon’s Debbs
– Scandals- Teapot Dome- bribes for oil leases
• Coolidge Administration
– Election of 1924
– Strong belief in limited government- vetos
• Election of 1928
– Hoover vs. Smith (Roman Catholic)
– Hoover wins a landslide. Even some southern states
Economy of the 1920s• Causes of business boom
– Productivity- Taylorism and Ford’s atomization– Energy Technologies- oil and electricity– Gov’t policy- corporate tax cuts and few regs.
• Farm Problems– Diminished market after WWI
• Labor Problems– Unions declined because of the open shop– John L. Lewis (UMW) lost several strikes
Culture of the 1920s• The Jazz Age• Consumerism
– Automobiles
– Entertainment- radio, movies
– Popular heroes- entertainment, sports, Lindbergh
• Gender Roles– “laborsaving devises”, flappers, divorce
• Religion
Arts and Literature
• Alienation- Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, T.S. Eliot, Eugene O’Neill
• Harlem Renaissance- poets: L . Hughes; music: Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong
• Marcus Garvey (UNIA) – Black Star, Back-to-Africa
Cultures in Conflict
• Fundamentalism and Scopes
• Prohibition- 18th Amend.
• Nativism- – Quota laws in 1921 and 1924– Sacco and Vanzetti case
• Ku Klux Klan
Fiction of Isolation after WWI
• Washington Conference (1921)-
– 5 Powers Treaty- ship ratios for US, B, J, F, I
– Four Power Treaty- respect territory in Pacific
– Nine-Power Treaty- respect Open Door policy
• Kellogg-Briand Pact
• Use diplomacy to advance business in L.A.
– Mexico and Troops in Nicaragua and Haiti
• War Debts: Dawes Plan establishes a cycle of Debts
Causes of the Great Depression• Uneven distribution of Income• Stock Market Speculation• Buying on Margin• Overproduction and under
consumption• Weak Farm economy• Little Regulation of Businesses• Global Economic Problems
Liberal vs. Conservative Responses
• Hoover
– Hawley-Smoot Tariff (1930
– Debt moratorium (suspension)
– Federal Farm Board- temporary hold surplus grain
– Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)
• Roosevelt
– New Deal
• Election of 1932- Bonus Army
American Isolationism• Revisionist History of WWI
Nye committee• Neutrality Acts
1935- prohibit arms and travel1936- forbade loans and credit1937- forbade aid to Spain
• America First CommitteeCharles Lindbergh
Arsenal of Democracy• Quarantine Speech• Rearmament• Neutrality Act of 1939 “Cash and Carry”• Selective Service• Destroyers-for-bases• Four Freedoms
want, fear, speech, worship
Arsenal of Democracy
• Lend-Lease
• Atlantic Charter
• Shoot on Sight
• Disputes with Japan
– US economic actions
– Negotiations
Historical interpretations of the nature of the Cold War
• Psychological
• Strategic
• Economic
• Political
Psychological
• The United States was looking for enemies to affirm its unique goodness.
-Britain from the Revolution to as late as 1895 (Cleveland in South America).
-Germany in WWI an WWII.
-Communists from 1917 to the end of the Cold War (two Red Scares).
Strategic• Soviet Empire was a threat to America’s
National SecurityPostwar Europe was in ruins and the Soviet
Army occupied half the continent.Communist parties vied for control of
governments in countries the Soviets did not control (did not matter if they took orders from the Kremlin or not)
Economic• The Cold War resulted from America’s
desire to export capitalism around the globe.Fear that another depression would destroy the
American way of life.To prevent this America needed to open up as
many markets as possible around the world.
This interpretation puts the Soviets on the defensive
Political
• The Cold War became a long running issue in American politics.
Since it was institutionalized it became difficult to end.
Joseph McCarthy to Ronald Reagan and beyond.
Geopolitical causes• Since 1783 the United States has been extending its
influence.
initially West but into European affairs with WWI and WWII
• Russia had been expanding in the other direction.
The two countries had bumped in Alaska but not again until 1945.
Ideological causes
• Capitalism vs. Communism (Socialism)
Beginning in 1917, Wilson launched a campaign to make the world safe for democracy. Lenin to make the world safe for socialism.
Fascism postpones the conflict for fifty years.
Early Cold War events- Truman
• Marshall Plan• Berlin Blockade• NATO• National Security Act – DOD, NSC,
CIA• Soviet A-bomb• NSC-68
Red Scare of the 1950s
• Un-American activities Committee (HUAC)
Hollywood 10- choices and outcome
Blacklists
• Alger Hiss
• Rosenbergs• The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy
Eisenhower and the Cold War• John Foster Dulles
advocates a “New Look”
Massive Retaliation
“Brinkmanship”
Concept of Deterrence (M.A.D.)
Covert Operations in the Third World
Iran and Guatemala
Ike in Asia
• Koreans Armistice (1953)
• Fall of Indochina
Dien Bien Phu (1954)
• Division of Vietnam
1954 Geneva Accords
• SEATO (1954)
Ike and US-Soviet Relations
• Spirit of Geneva• Hungarian Revolt (1956)• Sputnik Shock (1957)• Second Berlin Crisis• U-2 Incident
• Eisenhower‘s farewell address
Election of 1960• Nixon vs JFK (chooses LBJ to balance the
ticket)
• First televised debate- significance
• “missile gap”
• Very close election
• JFKs inaugural address
Foreign Affairs• Bay of Pigs (1961)• Berlin Wall (1961) Ich bin ein Berliner (‘63)• Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)• Change from Massive Retaliation to
Flexible Response. Green Berets in Vietnam
• Nuclear Test Ban Treaty• Peace Corps
John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier
• Spirit of Camelot
• JFK called for aid to education, federal support of health care, urban renewal and civil rights but languished in Congress.
• Assassination in Dallas
The Great Society• Shortly after taking office LBJ passes an
expanded version of JFK’s Civil Rights bill and JFK’s income tax cut.
• War on Poverty
influenced by Michael Harrington
Office of Economic Opportunity created and given a billion dollar budget.
Head Start, Job Corps, literacy programs, legal services.
Great Society Reforms• Medicare and Medicaid.• Elementary and Secondary School Act.• Abolish discriminatory immigration quotas from
the 1920s. Asian & Latin Americans immigrate.• Nat’l Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities.• Dept. of Transportation (DOT) and Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) are created.• Increased funding for higher education.• Increased funding for public housing and crime
prevention.
Warren Court-
• Gideon v. Wainwright (1963): required that state courts provide counsel for indigent defendants.
• Miranda v. Arizona (1966): extended Escobedo to include the right to a lawyer during questioning.
• Reapportionment
• Freedom of Expression and Privacy
Modern Civil Rights Movement
• barriers to integration
• Changing Attitudes about Race
• Influence of Demographics and the Cold War
Path to Equality• Warren Court: Brown v. The Board of Ed.
– NAACP and Kenneth Clark.– “The Southern Manifesto.”– Ike uses the 101st airborne to protect the black
students
• Montgomery Bus Boycott
• SCLC and SNCC
• The Sit-in Movement
• Freedom Rides
Path to Equality
• Birmingham, Alabama- JFK was forced to act
• March to Washington, 1963
• 1964 Civil Rights Act
• Freedom Summer of 1964
• Selma, Alabama. 1965
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
Alternative Civil Rights
• Malcolm X advocated Black Pride, Black Separatism and armed self defense.
• Stokely Carmichael calls for Black Power
• The Black Panthers
• Violence in the North
• The Kerner Commission
Escalation in Vietnam
• Gulf of Tonkin incident and resolution
• Hawks vs. Doves
• Soldiers Experience
Opposition to Vietnam
• The New Left
• Students for a Democratic Society- Hayden
• The Tet Offensive (1968)
Chicago 1968
• George Wallace- white backlash; American Independent Party
• Nixon Wins in 1968. Combined with Wallace for 57% of the National Vote. Time to heal.
• Chicago Seven- political radicals accused of conspiring to incite the riots that occurred during the Democratic National Convention.
Nixon and Vietnam
• “peace with honor.”
• “Vietnamization”
• Nixon Doctrine- Asian allies would receive US support without extensive ground troops.
• Cambodia. Four killed at Kent State and two at Jackson State.
• Senate (not the House) repeals the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Opposition Grows
• Nixon appeals to the Silent Majority.
• In 1969 Americans were shocked to hear about the My Lai massacre.
• Pentagon Papers in the New York Times. These had been leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department analyst.
Peace talks and bombings
• Kissinger had been conducting secret peace talks and announced “peace is at hand” in ‘72.
• Nixon increases bombings of North Vietnam to force talks- “Christmas bombings”
• The Paris Accords of 1973 called for the US to withdraw its troops and get back over 500 POWs. It called for a cease fire and free elections.
• North Vietnamese remained in South Vietnam.
Fall of Saigon, 1975
• Cease-fire collapsed
• On April 30, 1975 North Vietnamese tank rolled into Saigon and captured the city.
• South Vietnam surrenders to North Vietnam afterwards.
The Counterculture
• “hippies” went with the New Left.• Dress, music, drug use, communal living.• Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Beatles Rolling Stones,
Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin.• Woodstock (1969) was the high point (no pun
intended).• Somewhat idealistic but turned off older
Americans. Ended in the 1970s due to excess and economic uncertainty.
The Sexual Revolution
• Alfred Kinsey’s research begins to change norms in the 1940s and 1950s.
• Birth Control Pill in 1960.
The Women’s Movement
• Increased education, employment and the civil rights movement contributed.
• Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963)
• Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• Friedan helped to found NOW in 1966.
• Roe v. Wade (1973)- a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy.
The Women’s Movement- ERA
• Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972:
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
• There was a conservative reaction to feminism in the 1970s and it was not ratified.
Nixon’s Domestic Issues
• New Federalism
• Southern Strategy
• The Burger Court
• Stagflation in the 1970s.
Watergate• The Imperial Presidency-“dirty tricks”
conducted by CREEP.
• White House lawyer John Dean links the president to cover-up.
• VP Agnew resigns in 1973.
• United States v. Nixon 1974
• Woodward and Bernstein- Washington Post
• Impeachment and Resignation
Ford- Domestic• Pardons Nixon
“Our long national nightmare is over.”
• Congress investigates the CIA
Assassinations, etc.
• George Bush appointed to reform the CIA.
• Inflation continues
Ford- ForeignHelsinki Accords- promise greater
cooperation between the nations of Eastern and Western Europe.
• Mayaguez incident
• Bicentennial celebrations in 1976 restore some pride
Carter’s Domestic Agenda- Energy Crisis
Carter urges Americans to cut their consumption of oil and gas.
Reps from gas producing states and auto lobbyists resist
• National Energy Act- tax on gas-guzzling cars, remove price controls on domestic fuels, and provides tax credits for the development of alternative energy supplies.
Economic Crisis worsens in 1979
• Violence in the Mid. East and OPEC price increases deepens the crisis in America.
• Carter tries a variety of measures that don’t work.
• “malaise” speech fuels uncertainty about his leadership
• By 1980 inflation was 14% and US standard of living went from first to fifth in the world.
The economy had changed
• Manufacturing jobs had been lost to automation and foreign competition.
• Service sector expanded but this required more education.
• “Rustbelt” of deteriorating industries from Detroit to New York.
Civil Rights under Carter• Administration included more African
Americans and women than any other.
• However, backlash continued:
Regents of the Univ. of CA v. Bakke- affirmative action policies of the university’s medical school were unconstitutional.
Foreign Policy• Emphasis on Human Rights.
• Return Panama Canal- 12/31/99
• Collapse of Détente over human rights. SALT II never signed.
• Afghanistan in 1979 and Summer Olympic boycott in 1980.
Carter’s Middle-East Triumph• The Camp David Accords- Peace between
Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem begin.
• First break in hostilities since ’48.
Middle-East Crisis• Revolution overthrows the American
supported and brutal shah of Iran in 1979.
• US embassy seized and 52 hostages were taken. Demand that the shah be returned to Iran from the US.
• Failed rescue attempts
Growing demands for minority rights
• Mexican AmericansCesar Chavez
• Native AmericansAIM
Alcatraz 1969, Wounded Knee 1973
• Asian Americans• Gay Liberation
Environmental Activism• Silent Spring, Rachel Carson ’62
• 1963 Clean Air Act and the US gov’t outlaws DDT in 1972.
• Nixon and Carter are active
• First Earth Day April 22, 1970
• Nixon creates the EPA
• AK Oil Pipeline but conservation.
• Nuclear power and Three Mile Island
Election of 1980
• New Right- an alliance of conservative special interest groups stressing cultural, social and moral issues.
• Conservative coalition- alliance of some intellectuals, many business leaders, frustrated middle class voters, disaffected Democrats, and fundamental Christian groups
• Moral Majority- evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who interpret the Bible literally. Jerry Falwell, Jim Baker, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson.
“Reaganomics”
• Reduce money spent on social programs
• Cut taxes for the wealthy- supply side economics
• Deregulation• Increase military spending- Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI)
Reagan’s Foreign Policy
• Supports right-wing dictators in Central America.
• The Iran-Contra Affair
• Middle East Setbacks- Beirut/Lebanon