Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
COLD WAR: ORIGINS, 1945-53
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.
HARRY TRUMAN
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.
DORIS DAY
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.
RED CHINA
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.
JOHNNY RAY
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.
SOUTH PACIFIC
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.
WALTER MITCHELL
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 DIMAGGIO
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.
JOE MCCARTHY
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 anti-communist 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.
RICHARD NIXON
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.
STUDEBAKER
The idea that rights exist applicable to all members of the human family originated in the 18th 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).
TELEVISION
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.
NORTH 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.
SOUTH KOREA
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.
MARILYN MONROE
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.
ROSENBERG’S
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.
H-BOMB
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.
SUGAR RAY
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.
PANMUNJOM
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.
BRANDO
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.
THE KING AND I
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.
AND THE CATHER IN THE RYE
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
EISENHOWER
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.
VACCINE
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.
ENGLAND’S GOT A NEW QUEEN