Download see Drift towards World War II handout

Pre-war attitudes
(see Drift towards World
War II handout)
Isolationism
Neutrality Act (1935)
Gradual shift
toward involvement
Cash and Carry
Destroyer Deal
Lend-Lease Act
(repealed Neutrality Act)
Relations with Japan
Japanese fears
concerning resources,
etc.
Pearl Harbor
U.S. Enters War
The Home Front
Some important
wartime agencies
War Production Board
Organized and coordinated
industries to make quick, efficient
transition to production of war
materials.
No consumer autos were built during
war.
Office of War Information
Responsible for maintaining
morale – positive propaganda
Office of Price
Administration
Set prices, rationed goods,
fought inflation and black
market – assured military
needs were met
War Labor
Board
Settled disputes between business
and labor
Avoided strikes and maintained
morale
Fair Employment
Practices Committee
Prevented employer
discrimination against workers
Foundation for the civil
rights movement of the
1950s
Conduct of war
Two front war for the U.S.
Europe first
(See War Strategy H/O)
World War II Allies
Included Great
Britain, Free France,
the USSR, and
nationalist China.
Conferences
Casablanca, Cairo, Teheran:
Planned war strategy
Yalta: (1945) planned
post-war strategies
Postwar Period
Service men’s readjustment act of 1944
(GI Bill)
The United Nations
Post-War
Organization favored big winners
The Cold War
The Truman Doctrine
Pledged aid to Greece and
Turkey
Containment policy
Intended to keep communism
within its original borders
Marshall Plan
Offered recovery assistance to
all European countries
Communist countries declined
Berlin Blockade
Soviets block land access
U.S. responds by air
NATO
Designed to block or contain
Communists, especially
Soviet, expansion
Ignored George Washington’s
advice against permanent
alliances
Cold War
Communist victory in China
Nationalists flee to Taiwan
Government there recognized as
China by the United States and the
U.N. until Nixon
Korean War
Communist North Korea attacks South
Korea, the U.N. responds
Armistice terms restore status
quo
SEATO
Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization is the Pacific
equivalent to NATO
France, Dien Bien Phu,
and our involvement in
Vietnam
Antiwar demonstrations and Jane Fonda
Hungarian Revolt
Soviets crush
Hungarian revolution
Aswan Dam
Soviets assist Egypt in
building the dam
U.S. and Britain offered
first but withdrew the
offer
Suez Canal seizure
Egypt takes control, France,
Britain and Israel invade, U.S.
and Soviets stop them
Superpower “diplomacy” at work
Eisenhower Doctrine
Offers aid to Middle Eastern
countries who feel threatened
by communism
U-2 incident
U.S. spy plane shot down
over Soviet territory
Independence of
African nations
Civil Wars break out all over
Cuban Revolution
Castro takes over, announces
communist regime, relations
with the U.S. deteriorate
Bay of Pigs
Cuban refugees, backed by
the United States fail to
overthrow Castro
Berlin Wall
Soviets seal off East Berlin with
physical Wall
Cuban Missile Crisis
Soviets attempt to
place missiles in
Cuba. The U.S.
blockades
The “Hotline”
Direct link between U.S.
and USSR intended to
divert nuclear disaster
First used during six day war
Nuclear test ban treaty
Allowed only
underground testing
Outer Space treaty
Banned the military bases
weapons and weapons tests in
outer space
Nuclear
nonproliferation treaty
Banned the spread of nuclear
weapons among signatory
nations
VIETNAM, 1946-75
(the 10 000 Day War)
• PHASE 1 - A WAR OF
COLONIAL INDEPENDENCE
AGAINST THE FRENCH
• Vietnam had been a French
colony under the name of
French Indochina (along with
Cambodia and
Laos)
• Vietnam began to fight for its independence from
France during WW II ( when France was
preoccupied with European conflict)
• the Vietnamese revolutionary leader was Ho Chi
Minh, a Communist
• wanted to be the leader of
an independent, communist Vietnam; Ho received
support
from both the USSR and “Red” China
• this colonial war raged from 1946-54,
culminating in the French defeat at
Dienbienphu
• Fr. decided it wanted out and called a peace
conference in Geneva, Switzerland (attended by
France, Vietnam, the US, and the USSR)
• the decision of the conference was to partition
Vietnam into a communist North led by Ho and
a “democratic” South Vietnam led by Ngo Dinh
Diem
• the settlement was an outgrowth of basic Cold
War tensions between the Americans and
Soviets and clearly reflected the US policy of
containment with respect to Soviet communist
expansionism
• the US had come to see South Vietnam as a
“domino” that they couldn’t afford to lose
PHASE 2 – AMERICAN ESCALATION AND MILITARY
INVOLVEMENT
• this phase originated with Ike” and JFK but was
intensified under Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ),
who assumed the presidency afterJFK’s
assassination
• The U.S. never formally issued a declaration of
war, but after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, where
2 American destroyers were apparently fired
upon by the North Vietnamese, Congress passed
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolutions (August 1964)here Congress gave LBJ their support in sending
American personnel and materiel
• in spite of ongoing escalation throughout the
1960s, the US experienced a lack of success
against the Vietnamese guerrilla forces in S.
Vietnam (the Vietcong) as the US Army was
unprepared for their tactics and mentality
 The US was also never entirely successful in
shutting down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a
supply line that ran between North and South
Vietnam via difficult jungle terrain,
often underground and through neighboring
nations like Cambodia
• the war definitely turned against the US
in 1968, when the NVA’s General Giap
began the Tet Offensive, a surprise
offensive on a major Vietnamese holiday
that saw attacks all over the country,
including in Saigon itself
• ongoing US casualties and losses saw an
increase in antiwar sentiment on the
American Home Front,
in large part because Vietnam was a TV
War where American audiences saw the
brutality of war firsthand
• this included American
atrocities at My Lai
(Lieutenant Calley)
• they also witnessed the
usage of weapons like
napalm and Agent Orange,
which devastated the
environment
• as the Counterculture gathered momentum
(Hippies, Flower Children, etc.), protests
became widespread and began to polarize the
nation
• this was intensified after the Kent State
Massacre
– National Guardsmen opened fire on student
protestors in Ohio, killing four, and by
Senator William Fulbright’s (Chairman of
the Senate Armed Forces Committee)
admission that the war was a “mess”
• increasingly the American people
came to perceive the “Credibility
Gap”, i.e. they no longer
believed that LBJ was telling
them the truth about events in the
war
 in 1968, LBJ chose not to run for
president, and Republican
Richard M. Nixon was elected on
a platform of “Peace with
Honour”
• Nixon wanted the South Vietnamese to
play a greater role in the war, a policy
he labeled Vietnamization
• in spite of that, he continues carpet
bombing Hanoi and orders a secret
invasion of Cambodia
• He relied on the diplomacy of Henry
Kissinger to achieve peace and/or an
American withdrawal
• the US does manage to extricate itself by
Jan. 27, 1973
PHASE 3 – VIETNAMESE CIVIL
WAR, 1973-75
• the NVA easily defeated the South by 1975; the
South had appealed to Nixon for aid, which
had been promised, but by 1975 Nixon was
embroiled in the domestic Watergate Crisis,
and he was in essence a “lame duck”
• 1975 – the US abandoned its embassy in
Saigon, which was renamed
Ho Chi Minh City in the newly unified and
communist Vietnam
1969. Nixon’s visit to China
Communist China had already
become the U.N. member, now
President Nixon’s visit opened new
friendly relations with this huge
nation
Detente
1972-President Nixon visited Moscow
and signed several agreements
including the anti-ballistic missile
treaty
The Cold War eased
The Reagan Revolution
The West wins the Cold War
The Gorbachev influence
The I.N.F. Treaty
1980 Election
Issues
Debates
Hostage crisis
Reagan and Communism
Evil Empire
Nicaragua
Latin America
Granada
1988 Election
Candidates and issues
Bush policies
Desert Storm and Middle East policy
economics
civil rights
William Jefferson Clinton
All of this review to
present will be done in
the classroom
Civil Rights – rights guaranteed
to all Americans by the
constitution
Civil Rights movement – struggle
to achieve equal rights in the
1950’s through 1970’s by
changing laws
Plessy vs. Ferguson – in
1896 Supreme Court
ruled that “separate but
equal” was ok,
segregation is ok
NAACP – National
Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People founded in 1909
by W.E.B. DuBois
Brown vs. Board of
Education
• In 1952 Oliver Brown
sued the school so his
daughter could go to a
closer school
Went to Supreme Court
• In 1954 Supreme Court
ruled that “separate but
equal” was not ok in
the schools
1955 – Montgomery,
AL
• Rosa Parks arrested for
not giving up her seat
to a white passenger
1955 – Montgomery, AL
• Rosa Parks arrested for not
giving up her seat to a white
passenger
• African Americans boycotted
Montgomery buses, very
effective
• Martin Luther King, Jr. arrested
for blocking a bus
1960 – Greensboro, NC
• Sit-in at Woolworth’s
• 4 African American students
were ignored sitting at the
counter
• Came every day from open
to close to protest
1963 – Birmingham, AL
• led by Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. who was put in
jail
• protests in stores,
restaurants, and
workplaces
1963 – Birmingham, AL
• led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
who was put in jail
• protests in stores, restaurants, and
workplaces
• police chief “Bull” Conner ordered
fire hoses and police dogs to stop
protest, the attacks were televised
1963 – Washington D.C.
•200,000 people march
to Washington
•Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. gives “I have a
Dream” speech
1964 Civil Rights
Act
1965 Voting Rights
Act