The Cold War Begins

Harry S. Truman

• VP in the Dark

• Background

• April 12, 1945: Roosevelt dies; Truman sworn in

• April 1945: Creation of the UN

• Potsdam: July 1945

Return to Normalcy?

• Demobilization Fear: 12 million soldiers come home to need work

• Shortages

• Strikes

• New Government Role: Economic Regulation

• Employment Act of 1946

Return to Normalcy? II

• GI Bill of Rights:– Home or Business Loan: 2000 dollars– Higher Education Grants: 80% of Gis go back

to school– But women pushed out of colleges

• Many Women Back to the Home– Eventually leads to Feminism in 50s and 60s

The Quest for Housing

• Levittowns

• Federal Loans

• Suburbia

• The Baby Boom

Civil Rights

• Committee on Civil Rights: 1946

• NAACP initiates a wave of lawsuits vs. Discrimination

• Executive Order 9981: July 1948 desegregation of the military

• End of Sports Discrimination– Jackie Robinson--Brooklyn Dodgers 1947

Jackie Robinson

Truman, 1948 Election, and the Fair Deal (I)

• 1946 Midterms

• Taft-Hartley Act of 1947

• Taxes

• Thomas Dewey: Liberal Republican

Truman, 1948 Election, and the Fair Deal (II)

• Democrats Divided– Main party chooses Truman and his Fair Deal

• States Rights Party: Dixiecrats: Strom Thurmond

• Henry Wallace and Progressive Party

Truman, 1948 Election, and the Fair Deal (III)

• The Whistlestop Campaign

• Truman’s Civil Rights Program

• The Election– “Dewey Wins” mistake– Truman: 24.18 million, 303 EV– Dewey: 22 million and 189 EV– Thurmond: 1.176 million and 39 EV– Wallace: 1.16 million and 0 EV

Truman, 1948 Election, and the Fair Deal (IV)

• Conservative Resistance

• Extend social security

• Increase minimum wage

• Subsidize Housing

• Reform and trim the Bureaucracy, following recommendations by ex-President Hoover's commission.

Atomic Diplomacy

• Brief Monopoly

• Partition of Germany

• Baruch Plan

• Iron Curtain Speech: Churchill, Fulton Missouri

• Containment

Crisis in Europe

• Truman Doctrine

• Marshall Plan: 17 billion in aid (120 billion in today’s money. By contrast, US spent 21 billion in aid in 2006)

• Rise of Soviet Bloc

• Berlin Airlift

Collective Security

• 1947 National Security Act--CIA and National Security Council

• NATO

– 1949: United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and the United Kingdom

– 1952: Greece and Turkey

• ANZUS

• Warsaw Pact

• A New Era of Engagement

Japan

• McArthur in Japan– Suppressing Militarism– Build a Democratic, Capitalist Society– Educational Changes– New Constitution– Abolishing the Military

Fall of China: 1945-9

• The KMT (Chiang Kai-Shek) vs. Chinese Communists (Mao Tsetung)

• KMT was very corrupt

• Communists seen as patriots due to WWII

• KMT Collapses; US too busy in Europe

• KMT flees to Taiwan

• US looks for scapegoats

The Bomb Spreads

• September 1949: Russian Atomic Bomb

• Hydrogen bomb

• National Security Council Paper #68: George McKennan and Containment

• Conservatism Shifts

HUAC in Hawaii

The Red Scare II (1945-55)

• No Normality

• American Communism Weak

• House Un-American Activities Committee– Private Persecutions– The Hollywood Ten

• The Hiss Case

• Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Senator Joseph McCarthy

Senator Joseph McCarthy

• Drunken Bully from Wisconsin

• The List of Subversives

• One Man Reign of Unsubstantiated Terror

• Truman and Eisenhower Do Nothing

• The Army-McCarthy Hearings (1954)

• Senate Censures McCarthy

• McCarthy drinks himself to death by 1957

The Korean War Begins

• Syngman Rhee (South); Communists (North)• War Begins: June 25, 1950• Truman Responds• UN Peacekeeping: 590,000 South Koreans,

480,000 Americans, 26,000 Canadians, 15,000 UK, 7,000 Phillipinos, and thousands from 12 other countries, vs. 260,000 NK and 780,000 Chinese

The Korean War, 1950-2

• MacArthur’s Counterattack

• Chinese Counterattack

• Truman vs. MacArthur

The Election of 1952

• Second Term Self-Destruct

• Dwight D. Eisenhower / “Ike”

• Adlai Stevenson

• Election Day: Eisenhower: 55% popular, 442 EV, Stevenson: 45% and 89 EV (Most of South)

• Consensus Settles In