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