Download Taft-Hartley Act - Mr. Dunn`s History Class

Taft-Hartley
Act
“Permanent
War Economy”
Baby Boom
“Operation
Dixie”
“Sun-belt”
Employment
Act
Suburbs
GI Bill
Middle Class
Levit-towns
“White Fight’
Harry Truman
Cold War
United Nations
Containment
Doctrine
International
Monetary Fund
Truman
Doctrine
Marshall Plan
Postwar
Partition of
Germany
Israel
Yalta
Conference
Berlin Air-lift
NATO Pact
Post-War Japan
Fall of China
“H-Bomb”
National
Security Act
The Loyalty
Review Board
Fair Deal
HUAC
Alger Hiss
Korean War
NSC-68
Julius and Ethel 1948 Election
Rosenberg
Macarthur
Americans were nervous that the economic prosperity experienced during the war would
end. Fight between the labor unions and conservatives were brewing.
Taft-Hartley Act – was passed through a Republican controlled congress.
 It outlawed the “closed” shop, made unions liable for damages that resulted
from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required union leaders to
take a noncommunist oath.
It was only one of several obstacles that slowed the growth of organized labor in the
years after WWII. Unions membership had spread swiftly in the industrialized Northeast,
but were failing in the South.
“Operation Dixie” – aimed at unionizing southern textile workers and steelworkers,
failed miserably in 1948 to overcome lingering fears of racial mixing.
Union membership peaked in the 1950s and then begin a long unremitting decline.
To prevent economic downturn the Democratic administration sold war factories, and
other government installations to private businesses at fire-sale prices.
Employment Act – this act created a three member Council of Economic Advisers to
provide the president with the data and recommendations to make sure maximum
employment, production, and purchasing power was being realized.
GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) – was created out of fear that the
employment markets would never be able to absorb 15 million returning veterans at
war’s end, the GI Bill made generous provisions for sending the former soldiers to
school. It also enabled the VA to guarantee about 16 billion in loans for veterans to buy
homes, farms, and small businesses.
About 1950, the American economy surged onto a dazzling plateau of sustained growth
that was to last virtually uninterrupted for two decades. It did not enrich all Americans
and it did not touch all people evenly, but it transformed the lives of a majority of citizens
and molded the agenda of politics and society for at least two generations.
Middle Class -- The size of the middle class defined as households earning between
3,000 and 10,000 a year, doubled from pre-Great Depression days and included 60
percent of the American people by the mid-1950s.
“Permanent War Economy” – much of the glittering prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s
rested on the huge military budgets – some call it the permanent war economy.
Other reasons:
 Cheap Energy
 Increase in productivity and increase in education
 Shift of works out of agriculture
The convulsive economic changes of the post 1945 period shook and shifted the
American people, amplifying the population redistribution set in motion by WWII
“Sunbelt” – a fifteen state area stretching from Virginia through Florida and Texas
through California. This region increased its population at a rate nearly double that of
the old industrial zones of the Northeast.
 Federal dollars accounted for much of the Sunbelt’s prosperity
 Every elected occupant of the White House since 1964 had hailed from the Sun
Belt and the regions congressional representation rose as it population grew.
People were also moving to the Suburbs – Government policies encouraged this
movement.
 FHA Federal Housing Administration and the VA-- home loans guarantees made
it more economically attractive to own a home in the suburbs than to rent an
apartment in the city.
 By 1960s on of every four Americans dwelt in suburbia
Helping with this boom as well were the builders, who could build houses efficient and
cheap.
Levit-towns – The Levit brothers helped pioneered this idea in Long Island New York.
“White Fight’ – The majority of people leaving the city were white families. Migrating
blacks from the South filled up the urban neighborhoods that were abandoned.
Taxpaying businesses fled with their affluent customers from downtown shops to
suburban shopping malls.
 Government policies sometimes aggravated this. FHA citing the risk of making
loans to blacks and other unharmonious racial or nationality groups often refused
them mortgages for private home purchases.
Baby Boom – The huge leap in the birthrate in the decade and a half after 1945. 50
million babies were born by the end of the 1950s. The increased birthrate crested in 1957
and was followed by a deepening birthrate decline. The maturing babies of the postwar
boom sent economic shock waves through the decades.
Harry Truman –
 The average man’s average man
 The first president in many years without a college education, he had farmed,
served as an artillery officer in France during WWI
 Rose through Missouri politics from a judgeship to US Senate
 The Buck stops here
Yalta Conference -- was the wartime meeting from February 4, 1945 to February 11,
1945 between the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the
Soviet Union — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin,
respectively.
 Finishing off the Germans
 Discussed boundaries of Poland, Germany
 Free elections for Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania
 UN
 Far East –
o Stalin needs to enter the War, he agrees to inter the war three months after
the collapse of Germany
o Stalin gains joint control over railroads in China
 The fact is that the big three at Yalta were not drafting a comprehensive peace
settlement at most they were sketching general intentions and testing one
another’s reactions.
Cold War – The tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union increase
 Communism and capitalism were historically hostile social philosophies
 Soviets did not like the fact the British and Americans took so long in opening
another front in the war.
 The US and the British froze the Soviets out of the project to develop atomic
weapons.
 US in 1945 ended the lend lease aid
 Different visions of postwar world
 In a fateful progression of events, marked often by misperceptions as well as by
genuine conflicts of interest, the two powers provoked each other into a tense
standoff known as the Cold War. Enduring for four and a half decades.
International Monetary Fund -- Meeting at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944
the Western Allies est. the International Monetary Fund IMF to encourage world trade by
regulating currency exchange rates. They also founded the World Bank to promote
economic growth in war-ravaged and underdeveloped areas. The stubborn soviets
declined to participate.
United Nations The UN was founded after the end of World War II by the victorious
Allied Powers in the hope that it would act to intervene in conflicts between nations and
thereby avoid war. The organization's structure still reflects in some ways the
circumstances of its founding. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security
Council, each of which has veto power on any UN resolution, are the main victors of
World War II or their successor states: People's Republic of China (which replaced the
Republic of China), the French Republic, the Russian Federation (which replaced the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), the United Kingdom, and the United States of
America.
As of 2007, there are 192 United Nations member states, encompassing almost every
recognized independent state. From its headquarters in New York City, the UN and its
specialized agencies decide on substantive and administrative issues in regular meetings
held throughout each year. The organization is divided into administrative bodies,
including the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council,
Secretariat, Trusteeship Council, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Additional
bodies deal with the governance of all other UN System agencies, such as the World
Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). The UN's
most visible public figure is the Secretary-General. The current Secretary-General is Ban
Ki-moon of South Korea, who assumed the post on 1 January 2007.
The UN had initial success, It helped preserve peace in Iran, and other troubled spots. It
played a role in creating the new Jewish state of Israel. Far less heartening was the
failure of the US to control the technology of the atom.
Postwar Partition of Germany – Beyond punishing the top Nazis the allies could agree
on little about postwar Germany.
 Along with Austria, Germany had been divided at war’s end into four military
occupation zones, each assigned to one of the Big Four powers. Before long it
was apparent that Germany would remain indefinitely divided.
 Berlin lying deep within the Soviet Zone was also cut into zones
 In 1948 following controversies over German currency reform and four power
control, the soviets abruptly choked off all rail and highway access to Berlin.
Berlin Air-lift – The Americans organized a gigantic airlift. For nearly a year,
American pilots ferried thousands of tons of supplies a day to the grateful Berliners. The
Soviet finally lifted their blockade in May 1949. In the same year the governments of the
two Germanies were formally established.
The Soviet Union seemed unwilling to continue the wartime partnership and continued to
challenge the democratic ideals of the West.
Containment Doctrine -- The policy was first laid out in George F. Kennan's famous
long telegram. It was then made public in 1947 in his anonymous Foreign Affairs article
"The Sources of Soviet Conduct," better known as the X Article.
Kennan argued that the primary goal of the United States should be to prevent the spread
of Communism to non-Communist nations; that is, to "contain" Communism within its
borders. The Truman Doctrine aimed at this goal, and containment was one of its key
principles. This led to American support for regimes around the world to block the spread
of communism. The epitome of containment may have been domino theory, which held
that allowing one regional state to fall to communism would threaten the entire region,
similar to a series of dominoes toppling. After the Vietnam War, Kennan asserted that his
ideas had been misinterpreted, and that he never advocated military intervention, merely
economic support.
Truman Doctrine -- The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy designed
to contain Communism by giving Greece and Turkey economic aid. Gaining the support
of the Republicans who controlled Congress, President Harry S Truman proclaimed the
Doctrine on March 12, 1947. It stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey
with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet sphere. The
Doctrine shifted American foreign policy towards the Soviet Union from Détente to, as
George F. Kennan phrased it, a policy of containment of Soviet expansion. It is often
used by historians as the starting date of the Cold War.
The Truman Doctrine has become a metaphor for emergency aid to keep a nation from
communist influence.
Marshall Plan -- The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European
Recovery Program [ERP]) was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding the
allied countries of Europe and repelling communism after World War II. The initiative
was named for United States Secretary of State George Marshall and was largely the
creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F.
Kennan.
The reconstruction plan was developed at a meeting of the participating European states
on 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. The plan
was in operation for four years beginning in July 1947. During that period some $13
billion of economic and technical assistance was given to help the recovery of the
European countries that had joined in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development.[1]
By the time the plan had come to completion, the economy of every participant state,
with the exception of Germany, had grown well past pre-war levels. Over the next two
decades, many regions of Western Europe would enjoy unprecedented growth and
prosperity. The Marshall Plan has also long been seen as one of the first elements of
European integration, as it erased tariff trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate
the economy on a continental level. An intended consequence was the systematic
adoption of American managerial techniques.
Israel -- A resolute Truman made another fateful decision in 1948. Access to Middle
Eastern oil was crucial to the European recovery program and increasingly to the health
of the US economy, as domestic American oil reserves dwindled. Yet the Arab oil
countries adamantly opposed the creation of the Jewish state. Truman defies the advice
of everyone and officially recognized the state of Israel on the day of its birth May 14,
1948. Humanitarian sympathy for the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust ranked high
among his reasons, as did his wishes to preempt Soviet influence in the Jewish state and
to retain the support of American Jewish voters
The cold war continued to affect the economy and policy
National Security Act -- Congress pass in 1947, creating the Department of Defense
and the building of the Pentagon. The National Security Act also est. the National
Security Council to advise the president on security matters and the CIA to coordinate the
government’s foreign fact-gathering.
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) PACT – In 1948 Britain, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg signed a path-breaking treaty of defensive
alliance at Brussels. The Truman administration decided to join them. The senate
approved the treaty on July 21st 1949 by a vote of 82 to 13.
 The NATO pact was epochal. It marked a dramatic departure from American
diplomatic convention, a gigantic boost fro European unification, and a
significant step in the militarization of the cold war.
 NATO became the cornerstone of all cold war American policy toward Europe
Post-War Japan – The occupying American army, under Douglas MacArthur.
Following the pattern in Germany top Japanese war criminals were tried in Tokyo from
1946-1948. The Japanese cooperated to an astonishing degree. They saw that good
behavior and the adoption of democracy would speed the end of occupation.
Fall of China – The opposite will be true for China. Civil war raged between the
nationalist and the communists the US supported Jiang Jieshi and the nationalists.
Slowing the Chinese people lost faith in the nationalists leader and turned to Mao
Zedong. Jiang Jieshi was forced in exile.
 Fall of China became a huge partisan issue
More bad news came in Sept. 1949 when President Truman announced that the Soviets
and exploded the A-bomb.
H-bomb – To outpace the Soviets in nuclear weaponry Truman ordered the development
of the H-bomb, many times more deadly then the a-bomb. First test in 1952. Not to be
out done the Soviets exploded their first H bomb in 1953.
Many nervous citizens feared that communist spies, paid, with Moscow gold were
undermining the government and treacherously misdirecting the government and
treacherously misdirecting foreign policy.
The Loyalty Review Board – In 1947 Truman launched a massive “loyalty” program.
The loyalty board investigated more than 3 million federal employees, some 3,000 of
whom either reigned or were dismissed, none under formal indictment.
Professions starting taking loyalty oaths.
HUAC – The House of Representatives in 1938 and established the Committee on UnAmerican Activities to investigate treason.
In 1948 committee member Richard M. Nixon , led the Chase after Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss – Part of the Roosevelt administration. He was accused of being a communist
agent in the 1930s, by Whittaker Chambers senior editor at Time magazine and a former
Communist spy turned government informer. Hiss denied everything but was caught in
embarassing falsehoods, convicted of perjury in 1950, and sentenced to five years in
prison. Chambers provided the court with the so called Pumkin Papers. four rolls of
microfilm of State Department documents, which Chambers had hidden in a hollowedout pumpkin on his Maryland farm and gave to Richard Nixon on December 2. One strip
was about Japanese troop movements and another one was a "strictly confidential"
message for Secretary Hull, both from 1938. Chambers also produced in November four
handwritten notes about military and intelligence matters which Hiss acknowledged that
he had written.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – Notorious among those who had allegedly “leaked”
atomic bomb data to Moscow were two American citizens. They were convicted in 1951
of espionage and, after prolonged appeals, went to the electric chair in 1953 the only
people in American history ever executed in peacetime for espionage.
Election of 1948 –
 Republican – Thomas E. Dewey
 Democrates wanted Eisenhower, but he would not except, so Truman was
nominited
o Split the Democratic party – The South opposed him because of his
strong stand in favor of civil rights.
o The Dixiecrats nominiated Strom Thurmond of S. Carolina on a States’
Rights party ticket.
o Also former vice President Henry Wallace threw his hat in the ring. – New
Progressive Party
 With the Democrates ruptured three ways and the Republican congressional
victory of 1946 just past, Dewey’s victory seemed assured.
 “Give em Hell speeches” Trumans speacking tour.



On the election night the Chicago Tribune ran off an early edition with the
headline “Dewey Defeats Truman”
Thurmond 39 electoral votes Truman 303 Dewey 189
Truman’s victory rested on the farmers, workers, and blacks, all of whom were
Republican-wary
Fair Deal – Truman’s Domestic Policy
 Improving housing, full employment, a higher minimum wage, better farm price
price supports, new TVAs, and an extension of Social Security
 But most of the Fair Deal fell victim to congressional opposition from
republicans and southern democrats
 The only major successes came in raising the minimum wage, providing for
public housing in the Housing Act of 1949 and the extension of social security
Foreign poilcy lend U.S. money and technical aid to underdeveloped lands to help them
help themselves. Truman wanted spend millions to keep underprivileged peoples from
becoming communists rather than spend billions to shoot them after they had become
communists.
Korean War –
Background –
 Japan occupied Korea, but when it collapsed in 1945. The Soviets took the area
North of the 38 parallel and the American troops occupied the area south of the 38
parallel
 Both superpowers professed to want the unification of Korea, but as in Germany,
each helped to set up rival regimes.
 1949 both the US and the Soviets leave, but not a united Korea existed the two
regimes became suspicious of each other.
Beginning –
 The explosion came on June 25, 1950. Spearheaded by Soviet made tanks, North
Korean army colums rumbled across the thirty-eighth parallel. Caught flatfooted, the South Korean forces were shoved back to Pusan.
NSC-68 – The national Security Council recommended in a famous document of 1950
that the United States should quadruple its defense spending. It was initially buried, but
resurrected by the Korean Crisis.
o Truman announces military buildup 13% of GNP
o Marked a major step in the militarization of American foreign policy
o NSC-38 rested on the assumption that the enormous American economy
could bear without strain the huge costs of a gigantic rearmament
program.
 June 25, 1950 the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned the
North Koreans as the aggressors (Soviets not there)
o The council also called upon all UN members, including the United States,
to restore peace

Two days later Truman ordered American air and naval units to support South
Korea without congressional consent.
o Officially the United States was simply participating in a United Nations
“police action”
o But the United States made up a bulk of the UN contingents and General
MacArthur, appointed UN commander of the entire operation, took his
orders from Washington not from the Security Council.
The War –
 MacArthur launched a daring amphibious landing behind the enemy’s lines at
Inchon. – Success
 But MacArthur is ordered to continue if there was no Chinese or Soviet
resistance.
o The Chinese publicly warned that they would not just sit and watch the
take over.
o MacArthur believed that the Chinese would not be able to stop them
 In Nov. 1950 Hordes of Chinese “volunteers” fell upon his rashly overextended
lines. The fighting now sank into a frostbitten stalemate.
 MacArthur wanted to bombard and blockaded the Chinese coast, but Washington
did not agree (afraid of Moscow)
 When the general began to take the issue publicly, Truman had no choice buut to
remove the insubordinate MacArthur from command ( April 11, 1951)
 In July 1951 truce discussions began and the talks dragged on unproductively for
nearly two years while men continued to die.