Download The Cold War

The Cold War 1945-1960
USA vs. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union)
Democracy vs. Communist Dictatorship
Capitalism vs. Communism
Key Concept: How did the Cold War affect the domestic and
foreign policies of the United States?
Domestic Policies:
Foreign Policies:
•1.
McCarthyism
•1.
Korean War
•2.
HUAC
•2.
Arms Race
–House Un-American Activities
Committee
•3.
•4.
•5.
Loyalty oaths
Blacklists
Bomb shelters
Actors and writers protest the Hollywood Blacklist.
•3.
•4.
Truman Doctrine
Eisenhower
Doctrine
A 1950s era bomb shelter
Key Concept: What were the six major
strategies of the Cold War?
The six major strategies were:
•1.
Brinkmanship,
•2.
Espionage,
•3.
Foreign aid,
•4.
Alliances,
•5.
Propaganda,
•6.
Surrogate-Proxy
wars.
1.
3.
2.
4.
6.
5.
Post WWII/Cold War Goals for US
• Promote open markets for US
goods to prevent another
depression
• Promote democracy throughout
the world, especially in Asia
and Africa
• Stop the spread of communism
–“Domino Effect”
–Containment
Post WWII/Cold War Goals for USSR
•Create greater security for itself
– lost tens of millions of people in WWII and
Stalin’s purges
– feared a strong Germany
•Establish defensible borders
•Encourage friendly governments on its borders
•Spread communism around the world
Excerpt from Winston
Churchill’s “Iron Curtain
Speech.”
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic an iron curtain has descended
across the Continent. Behind that line lie
all the capitals of the ancient states of
Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw,
Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest,
Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these
famous cities and the populations around
them lie in what I must call the Soviet
sphere, and all are subject in one form or
another, not only to Soviet influence but to
a very high and, in some cases, increasing
measure of control from Moscow.”
What were the origins of the Cold War? Explain its
broad ideological, economic, political, and military
components.
Analyze and discuss America’s plans of containment
and economic aid and the consequent
events that characterized foreign affairs between
1945 and 1952.
What were the causes, conduct, and consequences of
the Korean War?
How did the Cold War affect domestic economic and
political affairs in the 1950s?
How and why did civil rights emerge as a national
domestic issue after 1954? THIS IS ON YOUR SHEET
Former Allies Clash
In the USSR the state controlled all
property and economic activity
In the Capitalist American system private
citizens controlled economic activity
In the USSR the Communist Party
established a totalitarian government
with one party
In the US voting by the people chose the
President and members of Congress with
competing parties
Spread of Capitalism and US trade?
World-wide Communist revolution?
Mistrust during the War
The US knew that Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler in 1939
Stalin resented the fact that the Allies took so
long to open a second front in Europe
Stalin resented that the US had tried to keep
the atomic bomb a secret from an ally the
USSR
The United Nations became arena of
competition
Truman did not have the diplomatic skills or
the personal relationship FDR had with Stalin
.
The wartime cooperation between the United
States and the Soviet Union ended largely
because they disagreed over the future of
Eastern Europe and the development of nuclear
weapons. At the end of World War II, the Allies
did agree to disarm Germany, dismantle its
military production facilities, and permit the
occupying powers to extract reparations.
However, plans for future reunification of
Germany stalled, leading to its division into
East and West Germany. As tensions mounted,
the United States came to see Soviet
expansionism as a threat to its own interests
and began shaping a new policy of containment.
Descent into Cold War, 1945–1946
Roosevelt had been able to work
with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin,
and in part as a memorial to
Roosevelt, the Senate approved
America’s participation in the
United Nations in 1945.
• Since the Soviet Union had been a victim
of German aggression in both world wars,
Stalin was determined to prevent the
rebuilding and rearming of its traditional
foe, and insisted on a security zone of
friendly governments in Eastern Europe for
protection.
• At the Yalta Conference, America and
Britain agreed to recognize this Soviet
“sphere of influence,” with the proviso
that “free and unfettered elections” would
be held as soon as possible, but, after
Yalta, the Soviets made no move to hold
the elections and rebuffed western
attempts to reorganize the Soviet-installed
governments.
• On the 4th of February 1945 the Big
Three (Roosevelt, Churchill and
Stalin) convened at Yalta, on the
Crimean Peninsula. It was the second
of the large war time conferences,
preceded by Tehran in 1943, and
succeeded by Potsdam (after
Roosevelt's death) later in 1945.
The Potsdam Conference
• In July 1945 the Big Three met in Potsdam
near Berlin
• Truman, Churchill/Attlee and Stalin
• By July 1945 the USSR had consolidated its
grip on Eastern Europe
• Truman took a tougher stance with Stalin
• Stalin was concerned about security and did
not keep his promise for free elections in
Poland, he wanted a buffer from the West and
a divided weak Germany
• The USSR wanted reparations from Germany,
the US wanted to trade in Eastern Europe and
Reunite Germany
• At Potsdam, the Allies agreed to
disarm Germany, dismantle its
military production facilities, and
permit the occupying powers to
extract reparations.
• Plans for future reunification of
Germany stalled, and the foundation
was laid for what would later become
the division of Germany into East and
West Germany.
Satellite Nations
•Stalin installed
Communist Gov. in
Albania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Romania, and
Poland
•Satellite Nation is a
country economically
or politically linked to
the USSR
Containment
• In February 1946 George F. Kennan an
American diplomat in Moscow proposed a
policy of containment
• Containment was the doctrine in which
military, economic, and diplomatic
strategies were to be used to turn back
communism
• Europe was divided into two political
regions a mostly democratic Western
Europe and a communist Eastern Europe
The Cold War
• The Cold War was an indirect state of conflict
between the US and USSR that would
dominate global affairs and US Foreign Policy
from 1945-1991
• In March 1947 Truman asked Congress for $400
million in aid for Greece and Turkey so they
could resist communist takeovers and
Communist influence – The Truman Doctrine
• The US would assist “free people who are
resisting attempted subjugation by armed
minorities or by outside pressures.”
Truman Doctrine •1947: British help Greek government
fight communist guerrillas.
–They appealed to America for aid,
and the response was the Truman
Doctrine.
– America promised it would
support free countries to help fight
communism.
– Greece received large amounts of
arms and supplies and by 1949 had
defeated the communists.
•The Truman Doctrine was significant
because it showed that America, the
most powerful democratic country, was
prepared to resist the spread of
communism throughout the world.
• For the next forty years, the
ideological conflict between
capitalism and communism
determined the foreign policy of the
United States and the Soviet Union
and, later, China. The United States
pursued a policy designed to contain
Communist expansion in Europe, the
Middle East, and Asia.
• Truman Doctrine was an early version
of the “Domino Theory”
The Marshall Plan
• After the war Western Europe was in
chaos, no fuel, no food, no shelter
• Many Refugees had to bear one of the
coldest winters in 1946-1947
• The US feared Communism would spread
to Western Europe
• In June 1947 Sec. of State George C.
Marshall proposed the US provide aid to
all European nations
• Between 1947 and 1951, 16 countries
• The reconstruction plan was
developed at a meeting of the
participating European states in July
12 1947. The Marshall Plan offered
the same aid to the Soviet Union and
its allies, if they would make political
reforms and accept certain outside
controls. In fact, America worried
that the Soviet Union would take
advantage of the plan and therefore
made the terms deliberately hard for
the USSR to accept.
• The Marshall Plan met with opposition in
Congress until a Communist coup occurred
in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, after
which Congress voted overwhelmingly to
approve funds for the program.
• Over the next four years, the United
States contributed nearly $13 billion
to a highly successful recovery;
Western European economies
revived, opening new opportunities
for international trade, while Eastern
Europe was influenced not to
participate by the Soviet Union.
• The United States, France, and
Britain initiated a program of
economic reform in West Berlin,
which alarmed the Soviets, who
responded with a blockade of the
city.
• Truman countered the blockade with
airlifts of food and fuel; the
blockade, lifted in May 1949, made
West Berlin a symbol of resistance to
communism.
The Berlin Crisis: June 1948-May 1949
• 1948: three western controlled zones of Germany united; grew in prosperity due
to the Marshall Plan
• West wanted East to rejoin; Stalin feared it would hurt Soviet security.
• June 1948: Stalin decided to gain control of West Berlin, which was deep inside
the Eastern Sector
– Cuts road, rail and canal links with West Berlin, hoping to starve it into
submission
• West responded by airlifting supplies to allow West Berlin to survive
• May 1949: USSR admitted defeat, lifted blockade
Map of Berlin divided
into zones after WWII
Map of Germany divided
into zones after WWII
A plane flies in supplies during the Berlin Airlift.
•
NATO
• In May of 1949 The Federal Republic of
Germany was established ( West Germany)
• In April 1949, Ten Western European nations
joined with the US and Canada and formed the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO)
• It was a defensive military alliance in which an
attack ( by the USSR) on one was an attack on
all (500,000 troops in Western Europe)
• In 1955 the USSR formed The Warsaw Pact
with its allies to counter NATO
• The Soviets organized the Council for
Mutual Economic Assistance in 1949 and
the military Warsaw Pact in 1955.
• In September 1949, American military
intelligence had proof that the Soviets had
detonated an atomic bomb; this revelation
called for a major reassessment of
American foreign policy.
• To devise a new diplomatic and military
blueprint, Truman turned to the National
Security Council (NSC), an advisory body
established by the National Security Act of
1947 that also created the Department of
Defense and Central Intelligence Agency.
• The National Security Council gave a
report, known as NSC-68,
recommending the development of a
hydrogen bomb, increasing U.S.
conventional forces, establishing a
strong system of alliances, and
increasing taxes in order to finance
defense building.
• The Korean War, which began two
months after NSC-68 was completed,
helped to transform the report’s
recommendations into reality, as the
Cold War spawned a hot war.
• NSC-68 was a 58-page classified
report written in February-April 1950
by Paul Nitze and issued by the
United States National Security
Council on April 14, 1950 during the
presidency of Harry Truman. The
report, written in the aftermath of
the decision to build a hydrogen
bomb, was declassified in 1977 and
has become one of the classic
historical documents of the Cold War
era.
Containment in Asia and the
Korean War
• American policy in Asia was focused on the
region’s global economic importance as
well as the desire to contain communism
there. After dismantling Japan’s military
forces and weaponry, American occupation
forces began transforming the country into
a bulwark of Asian capitalism. At the end
of World War II, both the Soviets and the
United States had troops in Korea, which
was divided into competing spheres of
influence. In June 1950, North Korea
invaded South Korea. Truman ordered U.S.
troops to repel the invaders, leading to
three years of vicious fighting. An
armistice, brokered by President
Eisenhower, was signed in July 1953.
• American policy in Asia was based as much
on Asia’s importance to the world economy
as on the desire to contain communism.
• After dismantling Japan’s military forces
and weaponry, American occupation forces
drafted a democratic constitution and
oversaw the rebuilding of the economy.
• In China, a civil war had been raging
since the 1930s between Communist
forces, led by Mao Zedong and Zhou
Enlai, and conservative Nationalist
forces, under Chiang Kai-shek.
• For a time the Truman administration
attempted to help the Nationalists by
providing more than $2 billion in aid,
but in August 1949 aid was cut off
when reform did not occur; in
October 1949 the People’s Republic
of China was formally established
under Mao, and Chiang Kai-shek’s
forces fled to Taiwan.
• The “China lobby” in Congress viewed
Mao’s success as a defeat for the United
States; the China lobbies influence blocked
U.S. recognition of “Red China” leading
instead to U.S. recognition of the exiled
Nationalist government in Taiwan.
• The United States also prevented China’s
admission to the United Nations; for almost
twenty years U.S. administrations treated
mainland China, the world’s most populous
country, as a diplomatic nonentity.
• At the end of World War II, both the
Soviets and the United States had troops in
Korea and divided the country into
competing spheres of influence at the
thirty-eighth parallel.
• The Soviets supported a Communist
government, led by Kim Il Sung, in North
Korea and the United States backed a
Korean nationalist, Syngman Rhee, in
South Korea.
• On June 25, 1950, North Koreans invaded
across the thirty-eighth parallel; Truman
asked the United Nations Security Council
to authorize a “police action” against the
invaders.
North Korea Attacks
• On June 25th, 1950 North Korean forces
swept across the 38th parallel
• North Korean troops pushed South Korean
and US forces back to Pusan
• The UN security council voted to send
troops to aid South Korea, 16 nations
520,000 troops,(90% American) 590,000
South Korean troops all led by General
Douglas Mac Arthur
The US Fights in Korea
• On September 1950 MacArthur landed his
troops behind North Korean troops at Inchon
and forced them back to the 38th parallel
• MacArthur pushed deep into North Korea and
approached the Yalu River the border with
China
• In Nov. 1950, 300,000 Chinese troops poured
across the border and attacked UN troops
• The Chinese captured Seoul and both sides
fought to a stalemate around the 38th parallel
MacArthur Vs Truman
• In 1951 MacArthur called for extending the
war into China buy blockading China and using
atomic weapons
• MacArthur spoke to the press and to members
of Congress about expanding the war and he
was critical of President Truman
• On April 11th, 1951 Truman fired MacArthur
• He was welcomed home as a popular hero
• 69% of Americans favored MacArthur
Stalemate in Korea
• Peace Talks began at Pammunjom along the
38th parallel in July 1951
• In July 1953 an armistice was announced
• The DMZ was established at the 38th parallel
• The Korean war cost 54,000 American lives 2
million Koreans and Chinese and $67 - $100
billion “The Forgotten War”
• Many Americans turned toward the
Republican Party by 1952 “IKE”
• Two years after truce talks began, an
armistice was signed in July 1953;
Korea was divided near the original
border at the thirty-eighth parallel,
with a demilitarized zone between
the countries.
• Truman committed troops to Korea
without congressional approval,
setting a precedent for other
undeclared wars.
• The war also expanded American
involvement in Asia, transforming
containment into a truly global
policy.
• During the war, American defense
expenditures grew from $13 billion in
1950 to $50 billion in 1953; though
they dropped after the war, defense
spending remained at over $35 billion
annually throughout the 1950s.
• American foreign policy had become
more global, more militarized, and
more expensive; even in times of
peace, the United States functioned
in a state of permanent mobilization.
Eisenhower and the “New
Look” of Foreign Policy
• In foreign policy, Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles pursued a vigorous antiSoviet line even though the death of Stalin
had brought about a relative softening of
the Soviet stance toward the West. In
pursuit of containment, the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) assisted in the
overthrow of legitimate governments that
seemed to fall short of staunch
anticommunism. The arms race continued
with the development of new weapons
systems capable of “mutual assured
destruction” in case of a nuclear attack
Eisenhower Doctrine
President Eisenhower with his Secretary
of State John Dulles
• The Eisenhower Doctrine was announced
in a speech to Congress on January 5, 1957.
•It required Congress to yield its war-making
power to the president so that the
president could take immediate military
action.
•It created a US commitment to defend the
Middle East against attack by any
communist country.
• The doctrine was made in response to the
possibility of war, threatened as a result of
the USSR’s attempt to use the Suez War as
a pretext to enter Egypt.
– The British and French withdrawals from their
former colonies created a power vacuum that
communists were trying to fill.
• Eisenhower’s “New Look” in foreign policy
continued America’s commitment to
containment but sought less expensive
ways of implementing U.S. dominance in
the Cold War struggle against international
communism.
• One of Eisenhower’s first acts as president
was to use his negotiating skills in order
tobring an end to the Korean War.
• Eisenhower then turned his attention to
Europe and the Soviet Union; Stalin died in
1953, and after a struggle, Nikita S.
Khrushchev emerged as his successor in
1956.
• Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian
revolt showed that American
policymakershad few options for rolling
back Soviet power in Europe, short of
going to war with the Soviet Union.
• Under the “New Look” defense policy, the
United States economized by developing a
massive nuclear arsenal as an alternative
to more expensive conventional forces.
• To improve the nation’s defenses against
an air attack from the Soviet Union, the
Eisenhower administration developed the
long range bombing capabilities of the
Strategic Air Command and installed the
Distant Early Warning line of radar stations
in Alaska and Canada in 1958.
• By 1958, both the United States and the
Soviets had intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs), and they were competing
in the development of missile-equipped
nuclear submarines.
• The arms race curtailed the social welfare
programs of both nations by funneling
resources into soon-to-be-obsolete
weapons.
• The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
(SEATO) was created in 1954 to
complement the NATO alliance in Europe.
• U.S. policymakers tended to support stable
governments, as long as they were not
Communist; some American allies were
governed by dictatorships or repressive
right-wing regimes.
• The CIA moved beyond intelligence
gathering into active, albeit covert,
involvement in the internal affairs of
foreign countries.
• In 1953, the CIA helped to overthrow
Iran’s premier after he seized control of
British oil properties; in 1954, it supported
a coup against the duly elected govenment
of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in Guatemala
after he expropriated land held by the
United Fruit Company and accepted arms
The Cold War in the Middle
East
• The American policy of containment soon
extended to new nations emerging in the
Third World.
• The United States often failed to recognize
that indigenous or nationalist movements in
emerging nations had their own goals and
were not necessarily under the control of
Communists.
• The Middle East, an oil-rich area that was
playing an increasingly central role in the
strategic planning of the United States and
the Soviet Union, presented one of the
most complicated foreign-policy
challenges.
• On May 14, 1948, Zionist leaders
proclaimed the state of Israel; Truman
quickly recognized the new state,
alienating the Arabs but winning crucial
support from Jewish voters.
• When Nasser came to power in Egypt in
1954, he pledged to lead not just his
country but the entire Middle East out of
its dependent, colonial relationship
through a form of pan-Arab socialism and
• Unwilling to accept this stance of
nonalignment, John Foster Dulles abruptly
withdrew his offer of U.S. financial aid to
Egypt in 1957; in retaliation, Nasser seized
and nationalized the Suez Canal, through
which three-quarters of Western Europe’s
oil was transported.
• After months of negotiation, Britain and
France, in alliance with Israel, attacked
Egypt and retook the canal. Eisenhower
and the UN forced France and Britain to
pull back; Egypt retook the Suez Canal and
built the Aswan Dam with Soviet support.
• The Suez crisis increased Soviet influence
in the Third World, intensified antiWestern sentiment in Arab countries, and
produced dissension among leading
members of the NATO alliance.
• After the Suez Canal crisis, the Eisenhower
Doctrine stated that American forces
would assist any nation in the Middle East
requiring aid against communism.
• Eisenhower invoked the doctrine when he
sent troops to aid King Hussein of Jordan
against a Nasser-backed revolt and when
he sent troops to back a pro-U.S.
• The attention that the Eisenhower
administration paid to developments
in the Middle East in the 1950s
demonstrated how the access to
steady supplies of oil increasingly
affected foreign policy.
• Just as the Korean War had stretched
the application of containment from
Europe to Asia, the Eisenhower
Doctrine revealed U.S. intentions to
influence events in the Middle East as
well.
The Cold War at Home
Postwar Domestic Challenges
• Government spending dropped after the
war, but consumer spending increased,
and unemployment did not soar back up
with the shift back to civilian production.
• When Truman disbanded the Office of
Price Administration and lifted price
controls in 1946, prices soared, producing
an annual inflation rate of 18.2 percent.
• Inflation prompted workers to demand
higher wages; workers mounted crippling
strikes in the automobile, steel, and coal
industries and general strikes effectively
closed down business in more than a half
dozen cities in 1946.
• Truman ended a strike by the United Mine
Workers and one by railroad workers by
placing the mines and railroads under
federal control; Democrats in organized
labor were outraged.
• In 1946, Republicans gained control of
both houses of Congress and set about
undoing New Deal social welfare measures,
especially targeting labor legislation.
• In 1947, the Republican-controlled
Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, a
rollback of several pro-union provisions of
the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.
• Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act
countered some workers’ hostility to
his earlier antistrike activity and kept
labor in the Democratic fold.
• In the election of 1948, the
Republicans again nominated Thomas
E. Dewey for president and
nominated Earl Warren for vice
president.
• Democratic left and right wings split
off: the Progressive Party nominated
Henry A. Wallace for president; the
States’ Rights Party (Dixiecrats)
nominated Strom Thurmond.
• To the nation’s surprise, Truman won
the election handily, and the
Democrats regained control of both
houses of Congress.
Fair Deal Liberalism
• The Fair Deal was an extension of the New
Deal’s liberalism, but it gave attention to
civil rights, reflecting the growing
importance of African Americans to the
Democratic coalition, and extended the
possibilities for a higher standard of living
and benefits to a greater number of
citizens, reflecting a new liberal vision of
the role of the state.
• Congress adopted only parts of the Fair
Deal: a higher minimum wage, an
extension of and increase in Social
Security, and the National Housing Act of
1949.
• The activities of certain interest groups —
Southern conservatives, the American
Medical Association, and business lobbyists
— helped to block support for the Fair
Deal’s plan for enlarged federal
responsibility for economic and social
welfare.
Senator Joe McCarthy (1908-1957)
• McCarthy, a Republican senator from
Wisconsin, did the most to whip up anticommunism during the ‘50s.
• On February 9, 1950, he gave a speech
claiming to have a list of 205
Communists in the State Department.
• No one in the press actually saw the names on
the list.
• McCarthy continued to repeat his
groundless charges, changing the number
from speech to speech.
• During this time, one state required pro
wrestlers to take a loyalty oath before
stepping into the ring.
• In Indiana, a group of anti-communists
indicted Robin Hood (and its vaguely socialistic
message that the book's hero had a right to rob
from the rich and give to the poor) and forced
librarians to pull the book from the shelves.
• Baseball's Cincinnati Reds renamed
themselves the "Redlegs."
Cincinnati Redlegs primary
logo in use from 1954-1959
The Great Fear
• As American relations with the Soviet
Union deteriorated, a fear of
communism at home started a
widespread campaign of domestic
repression, often called
“McCarthyism.”
• In 1938, a group of conservatives had
launched the House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC) to
investigate Communist influence in
labor unions and New Deal agencies.
• In 1947, HUAC intensified the “Great
Fear” by holding widely publicized
hearings on alleged Communist activity in
the film industry.
• In March 1947, Truman initiated an
investigation into the loyalty of federal
employees; other institutions undertook
their own anti subversive campaigns.
• Communist members of the labor
movement were expelled, as were
Communist members of civil rights
organizations such as the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) and the National
• In early 1950, Alger Hiss, a State
Department official, was convicted of
perjury for lying about his Communist
affiliations; his trial and conviction fueled
the paranoia about a Communist
conspiracy in the federal government and
contributed to the rise of Senator Joseph
McCarthy.
• McCarthy’s accusations of subversion in
the government were meant to embarrass
the Democrats; critics who disagreed with
him were charged with being “soft” on
communism.
• McCarthy failed to identify a single
Communist in government, but cases
like Hiss’s and the 1951 espionage
trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
lent weight to McCarthy’s allegations.
• McCarthy’s support declined with the
end of the Korean War, the death of
Stalin, and when his hearings as he
investigated subversion in the U.S.
Army were televised revealing his
smear tactics to the public.
McCarthy’s Downfall
Movie poster for the 2005 film Good
Night and Good Luck about the fall
of Joseph McCarthy
• In the spring of 1954, the tables turned on McCarthy
when he charged that the Army had promoted a
dentist accused of being a Communist.
• For the first time, a television broadcast allowed the
public to see the Senator as a blustering bully and his
investigations as little more than a witch hunt.
• In December 1954, the Senate voted to censure him
for his conduct and to strip him of his privileges.
• McCarthy died three years later from alcoholism.
• The term "McCarthyism" lives on to describe antiCommunist fervor, reckless accusations, and guilt by
association.
Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible was
on the surface about the Salem Witch
Trials. It’s real target, though, was
the hysterical persecution of innocent
people during McCarthyism. (poster
for 1996 film version)
Modern Republicanism
• In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower secured
the Republican nomination and asked
Senator Richard M. Nixon to be his
running mate.
• The Eisenhower administration set the
tone for “modern Republicanism,” an
updated party philosophy that emphasized
a slowdown, rather than a dismantling, of
federal responsibilities.
• The Democrats nominated Governor Adlai
E. Stevenson of Illinois for president and
Senator John A. Sparkman for vice
president.
• Eisenhower was popular with his “I Like
Ike” slogan, his K1 C2 (Korea, Communism,
Corruption) formula, and his campaign
pledge to go to Korea to end the
stalemate.
• As president, Eisenhower hoped to
decrease the need for federal intervention
in social and economic issues yet
simultaneously avoid conservative
demands for a complete rollback of the
New Deal.
• The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) was founded in
1958, the year after the Soviets launched
Sputnik, the first satellite.
• To advance U.S. technological expertise,
Eisenhower persuaded Congress to
appropriate funds for college scholarships
and for research and development.
• The creation of the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare in 1953
consolidated government control of social
welfare programs.
• The Highway Act of 1956 authorized $26
billion over a ten-year period for the
construction of a nationally integrated
highway system and was an enormous
public works program that surpassed
anything undertaken during the New Deal.
The Emergence of Civil Rights as
a National and International
Issue
Civil Rights under Truman
• Truman offered support for civil rights not only because
he wanted to solidify the Democrats’ hold on African
American voters but also because he was concerned
about
• America’s image abroad.
• Lacking a popular mandate on civil rights, Truman turned
to executive action; he appointed the National Civil
Rights Commission in 1946, ordered the Justice
Department to prepare a brief for Shelley v. Kraemer
(1948), which ruled against discrimination in home
buying, and signed an executive order to desegregate the
army in 1948.
•
•
•
The Kraemers were a white couple who owned a residence in a Missouri neighborhood
governed by a restrictive covenant. This was a private agreement that prevented
blacks from owning property in the Kraemers' subdivision. The Shelleys were a black
couple who moved into the Kraemers neighborhood. The Kraemers went to court to
enforce the restrictive covenant against the Shelleys.
Question Presented
Does the enforcement of a racially restrictive covenant violate the Equal Protection
Clause of the 14th Amendment?
Conclusion
State courts could not constitutionally prevent the sale of real property to blacks even
if that property is covered by a racially restrictive covenant. Standing alone, racially
restrictive covenants violate no rights. However, their enforcement by state court
injunctions constitute state action in violation of the 14th Amendment.
• Southern conservatives blocked Truman’s
proposals for a federal antilynching law,
federal protection of voting rights, and a
federal agency to guarantee equal
employment opportunity.
Challenging Segregation
• Legal segregation of the races still
governed southern society in the early
1950s; whites and blacks were segregated
in restaurants, waiting rooms and toilets at
bus and train stations, and all forms of
public transportation were rigidly
segregated, with even drinking fountains
being labeled “White” and “Colored.”
“Whites Only” Waiting Room
A black man is ordered out of a “whites
only” waiting room. Separate facilities for
blacks and whites were maintained
throughout the South from the end of the
" A rest stop
for
Greyhound
bus
passengers on
the way from
Louisville,
Kentucky to
Nashville,
Tennessee,
with separate
accommodati
ons for
colored
passengers."
• The first significant civil rights
victory came in 1954. In Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka (1954),
the Supreme Court overturned the
long-standing “separate but equal”
doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896).
• 3. Over the next several years, the
Supreme Court used the Brown case
to overturn segregation in public
recreation areas, transportation, and
housing.
• Does segregation of children in public
schools solely on the basis of race, even
though the physical facilities and other
"tangible" factors may be equal, deprive
the children of the minority group of equal
educational opportunities? We believe that
it does.
• Over the next several years, the Supreme
Court used the Brown case to overturn
segregation in public recreation areas,
transportation, and housing.
• In the Southern Manifesto of 1956,
southern members of Congress denounced
the Brown decision as an abuse of judicial
power and encouraged their constituents
to defy the ruling; White Citizens’ Councils
in the South sprouted up dedicated to
blocking school integration and other civil
rights measures and the ranks of the Ku
Klux Klan (KKK) swelled.
• In response to the Little Rock schoolintegration incident, Eisenhower, though
showing little interest in civil rights,
became the first president since
Reconstruction to use federal troops to
enforce the civil rights of blacks.
• President Eisenhower ordered the 101st
Airborne Division into Little Rock to insure
the safety of the "Little Rock Nine" and
that the rulings of the Supreme Court were
upheld.
Little Rock Police work to keep protesters
behind barricades at Central High on Sept. 27,
1957.
• Students wait beside Arkansas National Guard
troops blocking their admission to Little Rock
• Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat
to a white person prompted the 381-day
1956 Montgomery bus boycott, which
ended only when the Supreme Court
declared bus segregation unconstitutional.
• Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was catapulted
into national prominence after the bus boycott;
in 1957, he and other black clergy founded the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
in Atlanta.
• While the SCLC and the NAACP achieved only
limited victories in the 1950s, that laid the
organizational groundwork for the dynamic civil
rights movement of the1960s.
The Impact of the Cold War
Nuclear Proliferation
• The escalating nuclear arms race between the
United States and the Soviet Union brought
Eisenhower to the United Nations on December
8, 1953. In his "Atoms for Peace" speech before
the United Nations, Eisenhower sought to solve
"the fearful atomic dilemma" by finding some way
by which "the miraculous inventiveness of man
would not be dedicated to his death, but
consecrated to his life." Since Hiroshima, the
destructive power of nuclear weapons had
increased dramatically.
• The Cold War extended to the most distant
areas of the globe, but it also had powerful
effects on the domestic economy, politics,
and cultural values of the United States.
• It permeated domestic politics, helped to
shape the response to the civil rights
movement, and created an atmosphere
that stifled dissent.
• The postwar expansion of the military
produced a dramatic shift in the country’s
economic priorities, as military spending
took up a greater percentage of national
income
• One of the most alarming aspects of the
nation’s militarization was the dangerous
cycle of nuclear proliferation that would
outlive the Soviet-American conflict that
spawned it.
• The nuclear arms race affected all
Americans by fostering a climate of fear
and uncertainty; bomb shelters and civil
defense drills provided a daily reminder of
the threat of nuclear war.
• Federal investigators documented a host of
illnesses, deaths, and birth defects among
families of veterans who had worked on
weapons tests and among “downwinders,”
and later reports showed that many
subjects used in the Atomic Energy
Commission’s experiments in the 1940s
and 1950s did not know that they were
being irradiated.
• By the late 1950s, public concern over
nuclear testing and fallout had become a
high profile issue; antinuclear groups such
as SANE (the National Committee for a
Sane Nuclear Policy) and Physicians for
• Eisenhower also had second thoughts about
a nuclear policy based on the premise of
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and
found spiraling arms expenditures a serious
hindrance to balancing the federal budget.
Arms Race
• Cold War tensions increased in
the US when the USSR
exploded its first atomic bomb
in 1949.
• Cold War tensions increased
in the USSR when the US
exploded its first hydrogen
bomb in 1952. It was 1000
times more powerful than
the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
Space Race
• Cold War tensions increased in the US
when the USSR launched Sputnik I, the
first artificial satellite into geocentric
orbit on October 4, 1957.
– The race to control space was on.
• April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin became
first human in space and first to
orbit Earth.
• US felt a loss of prestige and
increased funding for space
programs and science education.
• On May 25,1961, Kennedy gave a
speech challenging America to
land a man on the moon and
return him safely by the end of
the decade.
• Apollo 11 landed on the moon on
July 16, 1969.
The U-2 Incident
• USSR was aware of American U-2 spy missions
but lacked technology to launch
countermeasures until 1960.
–May 1, 1960: CIA agent Francis Gary Powers’ U2, was shot down by Soviet missile.
• Powers was unable to activate plane's selfdestruct mechanism before he parachuted to
the ground, right into the hands of the KGB.
• When US learned of Powers' disappearance
over USSR, it issued a cover statement
claiming that a "weather plane" crashed after
its pilot had "difficulties with his oxygen
equipment." US officials did not realize:
– Plane crashed intact,
– Soviets recovered its photography equipment
– Captured Powers, whom they interrogated
extensively for months before he made a
"voluntary confession" and public apology for
his part in US espionage
• Eisenhower tried to negotiate an arms
limitation agreement with the Soviet Union,
but in 1960, progress was cut short when an
American spy plane piloted by Francis Gary
Powers was shot down over Soviet territory.
• The Department of Defense evolved
into a massive bureaucracy that
profoundly influenced the postwar
economy; federal money underwrote
90 percent of the cost of research on
aviation and space and subsidized the
scientific instruments, automobile,
and electronics industries.
• Pentagon spending created a
powerful defense industry, with
companies such as Lockheed and
Boeing becoming dependent on
government orders.
• Increased defense spending put
money in the pockets of the millions
working in defense-related
industries, but it also limited the
resources available for domestic
needs
• In his final address in 1961,
Eisenhower warned against the
growing power of what he termed the
“military-industrial complex,” which
by then employed 3.5 million
Americans, but had the potential to
threaten civil liberties and
democratic processes.
• At the end of his administration
Eisenhower invited President-elect John F.
Kennedy to come to the White House to
see how things worked in the Executive
Offices. On that visit Eisenhower warned
Kennedy of a hard truth that accompanied
the nation's highest office, "No easy
matters will ever come to you ... If they're
easy they will be settled at a lower level."