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COLD WAR: ORIGINS, 1945-53
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Bomb
HARRY TRUMAN
After WWII, US possessed largest navy/air force, the only atomic bomb, and
enormous industrial capacity.
US leaders believed security depended on stability/rebuilding economies in
Asia/Europe.
USSR: armies occupied Eastern Europe and Germany, communism poses
ideological threat.
DORIS DAY
WWII alliance between US/USSR collapses
Soviets occupy parts of middle east, install procommunist governments in
Poland, Romania, Bulgaria.
George Kennan and the Long Telegram: communism made USSR inherently
aggressive, only US could prevent or “contain” attempts to expand power.
RED CHINA
Churchill and the “Iron Curtain” speech reinforces sense of ideological
conflict.
March, 1947: the Truman Doctrine confirms US in global conflict with USSR.
Greece and Turkey: to rally support for US action, Truman uses rhetoric of
freedom and responsibility.
Creation of National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency.
JOHNNY RAY
George Marshall pledged the US to contribute billions to finance postwar
recovery of Europe.
Political and economic instability fosters communism.
Represents a kind of New Deal for Europe, establishing mass industry and
consumption to provide employment and high living standards.
SOUTH PACIFIC
United States supervises Japan’s economic recovery as well.
Strong Japanese economy was seen as key to creating an anti-communist
bulwark in Asia.
Allows United States to create security perimeter in Pacific.
WALTER MITCHELL
At end of WWII, each winning power occupied and administered part of
Germany, with the four powers sharing Berlin.
Soviets respond to creation of West German democratic government by
blockading all traffic from US/Britain/France to Berlin.
11 month airlift follows to break blockade—but East and West Germany take
shape and Berlin remains divided.
JOE DIMAGGIO
In 1949, Soviets successfully test atomic bomb, and Chinese communist Mao
Zedong wins civil war.
Both were seen as blows to US containment policy and prestige.
1949, creation of NATO pledges mutual defense between US, Canada, ten
Western European nations. In 1955, Soviets respond with the Warsaw Pact.
NSC responds to growing tensions in 1950 with policy of permanent military
armament, NSC 68. Policy defined the Cold War as conflict between idea of
freedom and the slavery of USSR.
JOE MCCARTHY
In June 1950, the North Korean army invaded the south, hoping to reunify
the country under communist control.
American troops led by Douglas MacArthur launched campaign that resulted
in US occupation of most of North Korea.
October, 1950: Chinese troops cross border and push US/UN forces back
down peninsular.
MacArthur demands right to use nuclear weapons, and his insubordination
towards Truman will result in his dismissal.
War stalemates, armistice signed in 1953.
RICHARD NIXON
Some (Walter Lippman) argue that approaching Cold War as struggle between
freedom and slavery was problematic.
Argued that ideological crusade led the US to ally with authoritarian anticommunist regimes and violated its own ideals.
Regimes such as the apartheid based one in South Africa were backed by US
because they professed to be anti-communist.
STUDEBAKER
Freedom becomes a prominent theme in academia, mass culture, media and
government.
Federal gov. pressed Hollywood to make anti-communist films, the CIA and
Defense Department help patronize the arts, using actors, dancers, and
musicians to promote superiority of American culture.
USSR becomes associated with totalitarianism, the antithesis of freedom.
TELEVISION
The idea that rights exist applicable to all members of the human family
originated in the 18 th century.
In 1948, the UN approved Declaration of Human Rights, which declared that
all people should have basic rights to freedom of speech and religion, free
from arbitrary rule, and enjoy social and economic entitlements.
Ambiguities: no enforcement mechanism in part because US fears outside
interference in domestic questions (race, for instance).
NORTH KOREA
Truman’s first domestic task was to preside over transition from wartime to
peacetime economy.
Moved to revive stalled New Deal by implementing the “Fair Deal,” a series
of programs centered around improving social security and raise living
standards.
Pressures Congress to raise minimum wage, create national health insurance
system, and increase public housing funding.
SOUTH KOREA
1946: AFL and CIO launch operation Dixie, a campaign to bring unionization
to the South.
End to overtime work for war production and inflation from end of price
controls means workers real wages drop. 5 million go on strike to demand
higher wages.
Truman fears strikes would disrupt economy, and he wins an injunction that
forced coal miners back to work.
MARILYN MONROE
In 1946 elections, middle class voters go Republican, while many workers stay
home.
Dems lose both houses of Congress, while Operation Dixie’s is destroyed by
opposition from southern employers and white Southern workers.
Congress turns aside the Fair Deal.
Taft-Hartley allows for “right to work” in the South.
ROSENBERG’S
Immediately after the war, the status of blacks enjoys a prominence in
national affairs.
Many states establish FEPC and pass laws to end discrimination in jobs and
public accommodations.
1947 Commission on Civil Rights issues To Secure These Rights, calling on fed.
Gov. to end segregation and guarantee equal treatment in housing,
employment, education, and criminal justice.
Truman presents civil rights program to Congress, but it gets rejected.
In summer of 1948, Truman desegregates the military and goes onto
construct progressive civil rights plank in Democratic platform.
H-BOMB
Southern delegates walk out of 1948 convention because of civil rights plank,
form Dixiecrat party and nominate SC gov. Strom Thurmond.
Left wing critics led by Henry A. Wallace form the Progressive Party.
Republican challenger is Thomas A. Dewey.
Truman campaigns furiously, blasts Congress for inaction, and warned
Republicans wanted to end Social Security.
Huge upset victory for Truman.
SUGAR RAY
The Cold War, like WWI, created a culture that sharply differentiated the loyal
from the disloyal and eroded civil liberties.
In 1947 Truman created a loyalty review system, where federal employees had
to prove their loyalty without the right to face their accuser, or learn the basis
of the accusations.
House Un-American Activities Committee holds hearings about communist
influence in Hollywood. A group called the Hollywood Ten went to jail for
contempt and were blacklisted by the industry.
PANMUNJOM
Alger Hiss case: charged with passing along secret documents to the Soviets.
Hiss is convicted for perjury and sentenced to 5 yrs in prison.
1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiring to pass secrets
about the A-bomb to Soviets during WWII. The evidence against them was
deemed too secret to be revealed. Both were executed.
BRANDO
In 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy delivers a speech in which he
claimed to have a list of 205 communists who worked at the State
Department.
The charge was false, but McCarthy used his position to hold hearings and
and allege disloyalty at the Defense Department. McCarthy’s downfall comes
during 1954 televised hearings alleging disloyalty in the army.
THE KING AND I
Anticommunism was as much a local as national phenomenon.
Many states create HUAC inspired committees to ferret out communists, and
require loyalty oaths from teachers, pharmacists and other professionals.
Local anticommunist groups forced public libraries to pull un American books
from their shelves.
The courts did nothing to halt these violations of civil liberties.
AND THE CATHER IN THE RYE
Republicans invoked communism to stymie Truman’s political program.
Truman became alarmed by excesses of anticommunism, and he seemed to
retreat from it in policies in government. In 1950, he vetoed a measure that
required “subversive” groups to register with the government, denied
passports to their members, and authorized the president to deport or detain
them. But Congress overrode his veto and enacted it. In 1954, the federal
government’s Operation Wetback resulted in the military deportation of
about 1 million Mexican-Americans alleged to be illegal aliens.
EISENHOWER
All political and social groups had to comply with anticommunism or be
destroyed, and this severely damaged the labor and civil rights movements that
had benefited from dedicated communist organizers.
After the 1947 passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which withdrew bargaining
rights and legal protections from unions whose leaders refused to swear that
they were not communist, the CIO expelled left-wing unions with nearly 1
million members.
Unions began to support Cold War U.S. foreign policies. Since left-wingers
were often the most militant advocates of women’s rights and civil rights,
their expulsion left unions unable to respond to the civil rights
VACCINE
Major civil rights groups at first protested Truman’s loyalty program and
criticized anticommunists for not defining racism as “un-American,” nearly all
black leaders and civil rights organizations were pressured into joining the
anticommunist crusade.
Black organizations adopted Cold War language to argue that segregation and
racism in the United States gave credence to Soviet criticisms of America, and
thus helped solidify Cold War understandings of freedom.
ENGLAND’S GOT A NEW QUEEN
In a climate of anticommunism and McCarthyism, criticisms of American
policy, domestic or foreign, invited a harsh response. Truman’s civil rights
program faltered. But the booming economy of the 1950s, which produced
an “affluent society” in America for the first time, produced a widening
gap between white affluence and black poverty and disenfranchisement
that would help inspire a civil rights resurgence in the 1960s.