what is so nifty about the 50s? by the light of the atomic bomb better dead than red!
TRANSCRIPT
What is so nifty about the
50s?
By the light of the atomic bomb
Better dead than Red!
•1945 -1989
•Promise and Menace
•Baby boomers
•Fantastic standard of living
•Welfare state (elderly)
•Opportunities for women
•Welcome immigrants
•Civil rights and AAs
•Activist foreign policy PLASTICS! - great new inventions
1945
End of WWII
1950
Korean WarMcCarthyism
1958-1970s
Vietnam WarGreat Society
FeminismCivil RightsWatergate
1980s
ConservatismRepublicanismTechnologiesComputers
Berlin Wall comes downDisco
20 years of economic success!
Write this down!
What you should be aware of:
• By raising educational levels and stimulating construction of the housing industry the GI Bill profoundly shaped the entire industry of postwar America
The Montgomery GI Bill
This Century With Peter Jennings
What you should be aware of:
We made $ in WWII
Permanent war economy -Military budgets - Military Industrial Complex - R and D
Deals in the Middle East: Israel (Palestine) vs. Arabs (read Leon Uris’ Exodus)
Highway systems, air conditioning, electricity
Agricultural machinery and production levels
Population and therefore political shifts: *broke historic grip of the North
Yalta Conference• February 1945 “Big Three” Churchill, Stalin
and FDR met to create a post war agreement.
• Agreed to divide Germany into 4 zones controlled by allies.
• Berlin also divided into 4 zones (located in Soviet Zone)
• Poland – US and GB wanted the people of Poland to choose their government.
• Compromise – US agreed to recognize soviet government provided they include non- communist members and that free elections be held as soon as possible.
• Stalin never holds free elections
Cold War•Quietly behind the battles and bombs, American diplomats were working hard to make sure that when the war ended American economic power would be second to none....we would penetrate areas where England had been dominating....our massive economic machine needed more than just domestic
markets... the world markets would be ours
•Case in point: Middle East and oil
Howard Zinn A People’s History of the United States
Iron Curtain
United Nations was to promote cooperation to prevent future wars...but it was dominated by Western imperialist countries
Was the war fought to correct Hitler’s claim of white race supremacy?
• African Americans: “The Army jim-crows us. The Navy only lets us serve as messmen. The Red Cross refuses our blood. Employers & unions shut us out. Lynchings continue. We are the disenfranchised, jim-crowed, spat upon.. What more could Hitler do than that?”
Howard Zinn
Truman Doctrine• 1st application of foreign policy of containment and 1st time US strayed from G. Washington’s Farewell Address on maintaining peacetime isolation
Events that led to the Truman Doctrine:
•George Kennan’s analysis of Soviet behavior•Soviet reluctance to leave Iraq•Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech in Fulton, Missouri•England announces she can no longer provide aid to Greece & Turkey
Marshal Plan 1948
$16 BILLION in economic aid to Western European countries in 4 years -
• economic aim -
• political motive -
• *yeah, humanitarian aid but even more...a matter of national self-interest
Berlin crisis convinced Americans that they needed a Military alliance with Western Europe.
1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO members agreed to come to the aid of one another if one was attacked.
1955 – US and NATO members agreed to let West Germany rearm
Prompted the Soviet Union to create the Warsaw Pact – a military alliance of Soviet Union and other Eastern European nations.
Korean War 1950-1953After WWII Korea was split between the North (Soviet influenced) communist and the South (American sphere) right-wing dictatorship
North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel into South Korea – UN retaliates
The American army became the UN army
Howard Zinn
McCarthyism
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
1950(shades of Sacco and
Vanzetti)Large-circulation newspapers
have articles like:“How Communists Get That Way”“Communists are After Your Child”MoviesI Married a CommunistI Was a Communist for the FBI
McCarthyismMickey Spillane published in 1951 One Lonely Night (3 million copies sold) in which the hero, Mike Hammer, says:
“I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it...They were Commies...red sons-of-bitches who should have died long ago....”