Download American History – A Survey

American History – A Survey
By Alan Brinkley
Chapter 29
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The Cold War
o Origins of the Cold War
 Soviet-American Tensions
 Reasons for American hostility toward the Soviet Union
o The fundamental American animosity toward communism
o The first act of the new Soviet regime had been to negotiate a
separate peace with Germany in 1918, leaving the West to
fight the Central Powers along in WWI
o The Soviet Union had called for the overthrow of capitalist
regimes
o The Stalin Purges
o The Nazi-Soviet Pact
 Reasons for Soviet hostility toward the United States
o The United States had opposed the revolution in 1917 and had
sent in troops into Russia at the end of WWI to work
o The West had excluded the Soviet Union from the
international community throughout the two decades
following WWI
o The United States had refused to recognize the Soviet
government until 1933
o Most Russian communists harbored deep suspicions of an a
genuine distaste for industrial capitalism
 In some respects, the wartime experience helped to abate that mistrust
 In other respects, the war deepened the gulf between the two nations
 At the heart of the tensions between the Americans and the Soviets in
the 1940s was a fundamental difference in the ways the great powers
envisioned the postwar world
o America – nations would abandon their traditional belief in
military alliance and spheres of influence and govern their
relations with one another through democratic processes, with
an international organization serving as the arbiter of dispute
and the protector of every nation’s right of self-determination
o Soviet Union – the great powers would control areas of
strategic interest to them, in which something vaguely similar
to the traditional European balance of power would reemerge
 Wartime Diplomacy
 Serious strains began to develop in the alliance with the Soviet Union
as early as 1942
 New tensions had emerged in the alliance as a result of the refusal by
the British and Americans to allow any Soviet participation in the
creation of a new Italian government
 Unresolved Poland debate
 Yalta
 February 1945, Yalta Conference
 On a number of issues, the Big Three reached mutually satisfactory
agreements
o In return for Stalin’s promise to enter the war against Japan,
Roosevelt agreed that the Soviet Union should receive the
o
Kurile Islands north of Japan; that it should regain southern
Sakhalin Island and Port Arthur
o The negotiators also agreed to accept a plan for a new
international organization
 The United Nations
 Would contain a General Assembly
 The most important decision-making body
would be a Security Council, with
permanent representatives of the five major
powers
o The United States, Britain, France,
the Soviet Union, and China
 These agreements became the basis of the United Nations charted
drafted in 1945
 Fundamental disagreement remained about the postwar Polish
government
o Stalin had already imposed a pro-communist government
o Roosevelt and Churchill insisted that the pro-Western
government must be in place
 There was no agreement about the future of Germany
o Roosevelt wanted a reunited Germany
o Stalin wanted is taken apart piece by piece
 They finally agreed
o The United States, Greta Britain, France, and the Soviet Union
would each control its own “zone of occupation” in Germany
o Berlin would be divided into four sectors
 The Yalta accords were less a settlement of postwar issues than a set of
loose principles that sidestepped the most divisive issues
 April 12, 1945 FDR died
The Souring of the Peace
 The Failure of Potsdam
 Truman had been in office only a few days before he decided to “get
tough” with the Soviet Union
 Truman felt that the United States should be able to get “85%” of what
it wanted, but he was ultimately forced to settle for much less
 He conceded first on Poland
o Truman recognized the Warsaw government
 Truman met with Churchill and Stalin in July 1945 at Potsdam
o Truman reluctantly accepted adjustments of the PolishGerman border that Stalin had long demanded
o The result was to confirm that Germany would remain divided
 The China Problem
 Central to American hopes for an open, peaceful world policed by the
great powers was a strong, independent China
o Those hopes faced an obstacle
 The Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek
 At Potsdam, Truman had managed to persuade Stalin to recognize
Chiang as the legitimate ruler of China
 In the last months of the war, American forces diverted attention from
the Japanese long enough to assist Chiang against the communist in
Manchuria
 The American government began considering an alternative to China as
the strong, pro-Western force in Asia
o A revived Japan
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The United States lifted all limitations on industrial development and
encouraged rapid economic growth in Japan
The Containment Doctrine
 By the end of 1945, the Grand Alliance of WWII was in shambles
 A new American policy was slowly emerging
 Rather than attempting to create a unified “open” world, the West
would work to “contain” the threat of further Soviet expansion
 The new doctrine emerged in part as a response to events in Europe in
1946
o In Greece, communist forces were again threatening the prowestern government
 Britain could no longer work to stop them
o On March 13, 1947, Truman appeared before Congress and
delivered the Truman Doctrine
 “I believe that it must be the policy of the United
States to support free peoples who are resisting
attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by
outside pressures”
o He also asked for $400 million dollars to fight in Greece
 Congress approved it
 The American commitment established a basis for American foreign
policy that would survive for over forty years
The Marshall Plan
 An integral part of the containment policy was a proposal to aid in the
economic reconstruction of Western Europe
o Above all, American policymakers believed that unless
something could be done to strengthen the shaky proAmerican governments in Western Europe, they might fall
under the control of rapidly growing domestic communist
parties
 In June 1947 George C. Marshall announced a plan to provide
economic assistance to all European nations that would join in drafting
a program for recovery
o Sixteen Western European nations eagerly participated
 In April, Congress approved the creation of the Economic Cooperation
Administration
o The agency that would administer the Marshall Plan
Mobilization at Home
 In 1948 Congress approved a new military draft and revived the
Selective Service System
 The Atomic Energy Commission established in 1946, became the
supervisory body charged with overseeing all nuclear research, civilian
and military alike
 The National Security Act of 1947
o Created several new instruments of foreign policy
o A new Department of Defense would oversee al branches of
the armed services, combing functions previously performed
by the War and Navy Departments
o A National Security Council operating out of the White
House, would advise the president on foreign and military
policy
o A Central Intelligence Agency would be responsible for
collecting information through both open and covert methods
and for engaging secretly in political and military operations
on behalf of American goals
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o
The Road to NATO
 At about the same time, the United States was moving to strengthen the
military capabilities of Western Europe
o Truman reached an agreement with England and France to
merge the three western zones of occupation into a new West
German republic
 On June 24, 1948, Stalin imposed a tight blockade around the western
sectors of Berlin
o Truman ordered a massive airlift to supply the city with good,
fuel, and supplies
o In the spring of 1949 Stalin lifted his blockade
o In October, the division of Germany into two nations became
official
 On April 4, 1949 twelve nations signed an agreement establishing the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization and declaring that an armed attack
against one member would be considered an attack against all
o It spurred the Soviet Union to create an alliance of its own
with the communist governments in Eastern Europe
 The Warsaw Pact
 The Open-Ended Crisis
 A series of events in 1949 launched the Cold War in new directions
o An announcement in September that the Soviet Union had
successfully exploded its first atomic weapon shocked and
frightened many Americans
o So did the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist
government in china
 Chiang fled with his allies to Taiwan
 Truman called for a through review of American foreign policy
o The result was a national Security Council report
 NSC-68
 Argued that the United States could no
longer rely on other nations to take the
initiative in resisting communism
 Among other things the report called for a
major expansion of American military
power, with a defense budget almost four
times the previously project figure
American Politics and Society After the War
 The Problems of Reconversion
 Under intense public pressure, the Truman administration attempted to
hasten that return to normal economic conditions
 The result was a period of economic problems
 The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, the GI Bill, provided
economic and educational assistance to veterans
 There was a flood of consumer demand
o It ensured that there would be no new depression, but it
contributed to more than two years of serious inflation
 In the summer of 1946, the president vetoed an extension of the
authority of the wartime Office of Price Administration, thus
elimination price controls
 Compounding the economic difficulties was a sharp rise in labor unrest
o In April 1946 John L. Lewis led the United Mine Workers out
on strike, shutting down the coal fields for forty days
 Truman finally forced the miners to return to work by
ordering government seizure of the mines
Almost simultaneously, the nation’s railroads suffered a total
shutdown as two major unions walked out on strike
 Truman pressured the workers back to work after
only a few days
 With veterans returning home and looking for jobs in the industrial
economy, employers tended to push women, blacks, Hispanics,
Chinese, and others out of the plants to make room for white males
The Fair Deal Rejected
 Days after the Japanese surrender Truman submitted to Congress a
twenty-one-point domestic program outlining what he later termed the
“Fair Deal”
 It called for
o Expansion of Social Security benefits
o The raising of the legal minimum wage from 40 to 65 cents an
hour
o A program to ensure full employment through aggressive use
of federal spending and investment
o A permanent Fair Employment Practices Act
o Public housing and slum clearance
o Long-range environmental and public works planning
o Government promotion of scientific research
o Federal aid to funding for the St. Lawrence Seaway
o Nationalization of atomic energy
o National health insurance
 But the Fair Deal programs fell victim to the same public and
congressional conservationism that had crippled the last years of the
New Deal
 Labor Management Relations Act of 1947
o Taft-Hartley Act
o It made illegal the so-called closed shop (a workplace in
which no one can be hired without first being a member of a
union)
o It permitted states to pass “right-to-work” laws prohibiting
union shops
o Also empowered the president to call for a “cooling-off”
period before a strike by issuing an injunction against any
work stoppage that endangered national safety or health
The Election of 1948
 Democrats - Truman
 Dixiecrats – Strom Thurmond
 Progressive Party – Henry A. Wallace
 Republicans – Thomas E. Dewey
 Democrats tried to elect Eisenhower for the presidency, he declined
 Everyone thought that Dewey was going to win because the
Democratic Party was so split
 Truman won
The Fair Deal Revised
 Congress raised the legal minimum wage from 40 cents to 75 cents an
hour
 It approved an important expansion of the Social Security system,
increasing benefits by 75 percent and extending them to 10 million
additional people
 It passed the National Housing Act of 1949
o Provided for the construction of 810,000 units of low-income
housing, accompanied by long-term rent subsidies
o
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Truman ordered an end to discrimination in the hiring of government
employees
He began to dismantle segregation within the armed forces
He allowed the Justice Department to become actively involved in
court battles against discriminatory statues
Shelley v Kraemer (1948)
o Ruled that the courts could not be used to enforce private
“covenants” meant to bar blacks from residential
neighborhoods
The Korean War
 The United States first military engagement of the Cold War
 The Divided Peninsula
 By the end of 1945 both Soviet and American troops occupied Korea,
dividing it at the 38th parallel
 When the troops left Korea was divided into a Northern Communist
government and a Southern Pro-Western government
 The relative weakness of the south offered a strong temptation in
nationalists in the North Korean government who wanted to reunite the
country
 The Truman administration responded quickly to the invasion
 On June 27, 1950, the president ordered limited American military
assistance to South Korea
 American delegates were able to win UN agreement to a resolution
calling for international assistance to the Rhee government the
intervention in Korea was the first expression of the newly expansive
American foreign policy outlined in NSC-68
 From Invasion to Stalemate
 Chinese armies came to the rescue of Communist Northern Korea
 From the start, Truman was determined to avoid a direct conflict with
China, which he feared might lead to a new world war
 On April 11, 1951 Truman relieved MacArthur of his command
because he wanted to attack China itself and could not keep his
objections to himself
o There was a storm of public outrage
 The Korean stalemate continued on
 The war dragged on until 1953
 Limited Mobilization
 Just as the war in Korea produced only a limited American military
commitment abroad, so it created only a limited economic mobilization
at home
 Office of Defense Mobilization
o To fight inflation by holding down prices and discouraging
high union wage demands
 In 1951 after a railroad strike Truman ordered the government to seize
control of the railroads
o That helped keep the trains running, but it had no effect on
union demands
 In 1952 after a steel strike Truman seized the steel mills
 Truman was forced to relent
 The Korean War gave a significant boost to economic growth by
pumping new government funds into the economy at a point when
many believed a recession was about to begin
 It became a time of rising insecurity about America’s position in the
world and intensified anxiety about communism
o
The Crusade Against Subversion
 HUAC and Alger Hiss
 Much of the anticommunist furor emerged out of the Republican
Party’s search for an issue with which to attack the Democrats, and out
of the Democrats’ efforts to stifle that issue
 The House Un-American Activities Committee held widely publicized
investigations to prove that the government had tolerated communist
subversion
 They first went after Hollywood
 More alarming to the public was HUAC’s investigation into charges of
disloyalty leveled against former high-ranking member of the State
Department: Alger Hiss
 The Hiss case not only discredited a prominent young diplomat; it cast
suspicion on a generation of liberal Democrats and made it possible for
many Americans to believe that communists had actually infiltrated the
government
 The Federal Loyalty Program and the Rosenberg Case
 The Truman administration in 1947 initiated a widely publicized
program to review the "loyalty” of federal employees
o The president authorized sensitive agencies to fire people
deemed no more than “bad security risks”
o The employee loyalty program became a signal throughout the
executive branch to launched a major assault on subversion
 In 1950, the Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act
o Requiring all communist organizations to register with the
government and to publish their records
 The Rosenburgs were thought to have leaked government secrets about
the bomb to Russia
o They were sentenced to death
 A pervasive fear settled on the country
o It was a climate that made possible the rise of an extraordinary
public figure
 McCarthyism
 Joseph McCarthy
o He raised a sheet of paper and claimed to “hold in my hand” a
list of 205 known communist currently working in the
American State Department
 He conducted highly publicized investigations of subversion in many
areas of the government
 The Republican Revival
 Public frustration over the stalemate in Korea and popular fears of
internal subversion combined to make 1952 a bad year for the
Democratic Party
 Democratic Party – Adlai E. Stevenson
 Republicans – Dwight D. Eisenhower
 Eisenhower and Nixon both made effective use of allegations of
corruption in the Truman administration ad pledge repeatedly to “clean
up the mess in Washington”
 Eisenhower won